China-based UnionPay International has created a mobile-payments platform the big payment network hopes will further expand adoption of its payment services beyond its home country. The platform, dubbed UnionPay International Mobile Payment Service (UMPS), enables banks, merchants, mobile-phone manufacturers, and other third parties to access UnionPay mobile services through open …

The PCI Security Standards Council is making changes to its qualified integrators and resellers certification program by reducing the fee to $100, making the certification an individual one, and shortening the training-course time, the council announced Wednesday. Launched in 2012, the QIR program’s focus has been on improving payments security for …

Some experts may dismiss cryptocurrency as impractical for retail payments, but at least one independent sales organization is doubling—make that tripling—down on crypto for merchant acceptance. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Aliant Payment Systems Inc. last week launched programs for Ether and Litecoin to go along with one for Bitcoin that it …

Not many merchants are doing it yet, but surcharging credit card transactions will soon gain more acceptance as businesses do whatever they can to reduce their card-acceptance costs. That’s the expectation of merchant-processing executives who participated in a panel Tuesday at the Southeast Acquirers Association annual conference in Orlando, Fla. …

Independent sales organizations and acquirers looking for a payment gateway have another resource to use. Payments consultancy The Strawhecker Group recently released its Payment Gateway Directory, which catalogs 58 data points about 73 companies. The report also analyzed the performance of the gateways by assessing the account-boarding process, evaluating developer …

If the payments industry needed further evidence that the EMV frenzy unleashed in the United States in 2015 is cooling off, it can find it in the fourth-quarter 2017 and full-year results posted Monday by CPI Card Group, one of the country’s chief manufacturers of chip cards. U.S. sales of …

In an effort to make its cards more financially attractive to merchants, American Express Co. plans to cut its worldwide discount rate by potentially up to three times the level it had previously predicted for 2018. AmEx, generally the costliest of the major card brands for merchants to accept, typically …

VeriFone Systems Inc.’s North American revenues dipped sharply in the quarter ended Jan. 31, but the point-of-sale terminal and payment software provider nonetheless said it exceeded its financial expectations as software and services sales rose even as hardware sales fell. San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone on Thursday reported total revenues of …

The search by online-payments kingpins for avenues into physical-world stores reached a new milestone with the acquisition by Stripe Inc. of point-of-sale technologist Index Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, according to an Index spokesperson, who added the company has no immediate comment on the transaction. A Stripe …

The newbie bank-controlled Zelle person-to-person payments service already is a major player on the P2P scene, but it could win even greater adoption through clear messaging, a mobile-first orientation, more emphasis on its underutilized request feature, and an appeal beyond Millennials. Those and many other recommendations and observations are included …