Venture-capital and private-equity investors are on pace to meet or exceed the $753 million they infused into the payments industry in 2011, the most since the $1.4 billion they invested in payments in 2001. Through the first three quarters of 2012, venture-capital and private-equity investors pumped $711 million into startup …

Closed-loop gift cards can expect to see an increase of more than 5% in holiday load volume over 2011’s loads, according to a new forecast from Mercator Advisory Group Inc., which researches the prepaid card industry. Mercator predicts loads on closed-loop gift cards will hit $43.2 billion from Nov. 1 …

With its core daily-deal market getting crowded, market leader Groupon Inc. recently made two moves that position the company as a rival of independent sales organizations, value-added resellers, PayPal Inc., and others trolling for mobile-payments transactions from small merchants. In October, Chicago-based Groupon rolled out its Breadcrumb service, a point-of-sale …

Money transfers can bring in new customers, new revenue, and repeat business, but only if the service provider has your back, says Merrick Theobald. If this all makes it seem that entering into international electronic payment services is complicated, it’s not. Merrick Theobald is vice president for marketing at iSend …

It’s time for bankers to stop looking at mobile technology merely as a cost cutter and start using it to make money, said speakers at a retail-banking technology conference on Tuesday. Banks that add a variety of new services to their mobile offerings ranging from in-store bar-code scanning to expedited …

With a major chip card standard bearing down on U.S. merchants, acquirers, and issuers, small merchants in particular could face tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in annual fraud losses they are currently protected from, a processor executive argues. Patty Walters, senior vice president for merchant products and …

Open-loop prepaid cards are slowly but steadily gaining market share and now account for nearly 40% of the market, but closed-loop prepaid cards, especially gift cards, remain highly popular with consumers. The 9th annual study of the prepaid card market by Mercator Advisory Group Inc., released in August, shows volumes …

The prepaid card market closed in on half-a-trillion dollars in load volume last year, new data from Mercator Advisory Group Inc. show. Volumes on closed-loop cards grew 14% and loads on the newer open-loop cards increased 24%, according to Mercator’s ninth annual study of U.S. prepaid cards. In all, Maynard, …

Square Inc., the flashy mobile-payments startup that now counts Starbucks Corp. as one of its merchants, announced a new flat-pricing plan Thursday that puts the company squarely into the ring with independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers competing for established small businesses. And Dunkin’ Donuts, a rival of Starbucks for …

A new company run by electronic-payments veteran Bipin Shah announced on Monday it has agreed to buy two merchant processors and a payroll-processing company for a total of $179 million in cash and stock. The acquisitions are part of a strategy followed by Radnor, Pa.-based Universal Business Payment Solutions Acquisition …