The principals of a leading software developer and its independent sales organization partner in the card-processing application market for Apple Inc.’s iPhone have bought a key rival, a move they say will enable them to thrive in a fast-changing market that is attracting heavyweight competitors. Inner Fence LLC and Dublin, …

Payments-industry partisans of all stripes got onto their soap boxes on Friday and Monday to praise or denounce U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin’s successful amendment that could pave the way for regulation of debit card interchange and acceptance terms. Merchant interests basked in the surprisingly large (64-33) victory they scored late …

Interchange regulation is one step closer to reality after the U.S. Senate late on Thursday approved an amendment that would require the Federal Reserve to determine “reasonable and proportional” transaction fees for debit cards. Banks earn an estimated $15 billion annually from debit card interchange fees. The Senate approved the …

The gap in acceptance costs between PIN-based and signature debit, once wide, continues to narrow, payments executives say. The trend is most apparent in the new interchange schedules for Visa Inc.’s Interlink electronic funds transfer network and the signature-based Visa check card. A number of Interlink rates are rising by …

With processors, banks, and merchants across the country buttoning down credit and debit card data to keep them out of criminal hands, processors are starting to turn their attention to the information they and their client merchants collect from automated clearing house transactions. ProPay Inc., a Lehi, Utah-based merchant processor …

Banks, merchants, and others scratching their heads over the exploding popularity of social networking and its close cousin, social gaming, can harness the online phenomenon for payments but will likely have to jettison decades of settled thinking, experts say. Banks, in particular, will have to wrestle with knotty problems surrounding …

Online PINless debit transactions could get a boost if a package of four new mobile-payments services from Obopay Inc. proves to be a hit. Dubbed Mobile Money for Banks, Obopay’s new white-label service has another interesting twist besides PINless debit in that it will enable consumers to accept payment cards. …

Reflecting recent trends noted by the payment card networks, merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. reported on Thursday that it is beginning to see a turnaround in charge volume at merchants battered for the past two years by the retrenchment in consumer spending. Heartland also disclosed that it has expensed …

End-to-end encryption of payment card data is all the rage among vendors to the merchant-acquiring industry, but vendors themselves believe it will take a long time for merchants to begin using their new technology. Asked how long they believe it will take for the majority of U.S. card-accepting merchants to …

The battle over interchange regulation continues to heat up, with the introduction this week of amendments to financial regulatory reform legislation pending in the U.S. Senate that would target the controversial fees charged to merchants. The three amendments, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and co-sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy, …