Peter Lucas Acquirers routinely lose merchants lured away by offers of lower-cost processing. Result? More acquirers are marketing their own branded POS terminals as a way to boost retention. Ask a merchant acquirer how much it charges a retailer for a point-of-sale terminal and the frequent response is that it’s …

Facebook Inc. has just done the equivalent of dumping the euro in favor of national currencies with its new policy that will phase out the Facebook Credits virtual currency. The huge social network, which also is introducing a way to pay for subscriptions, says the changes will simplify the user …

American Express Co. extended the reach of its Serve digital and prepaid card platform with a rewards program it announced on Tuesday with leading online game developer Zynga Inc. The big prepaid card program manager Green Dot Corp., meanwhile, disclosed a distribution deal with Dollar Stores Inc. and the renewal …

Annual Field Guide to Alternative Payments You’ll need a fair amount of memory on your hard drive to keep track of all the comings and goings in the bubbling world of alternative payments. By now, our Field Guide to Alternative Payments needs no introduction. It’s one of our most popular …

  Barcodes for payments by smart phone have a proven track record and a diverse group of supporters, but many in the payments industry regard them as merely a way station on the road NFC-based mobile payments. Here’s where they stand today. By Jim Daly Sure, the techies and lots …

Amazon.com Inc. quietly killed its PayPhrase online-authentication service on Feb. 20, not quite two-and-a-half years after introducing the system. The PayPhrase credentials system allowed online shoppers to check out using only a word or phrase of their choosing and a PIN that they had registered with the Amazon Payments service. …

n The earliest players in the increasingly crowded market for mobile-acceptance applications were software and hardware providers like Intuit Inc., Square Inc., and VeriFone Systems Inc. Lately, though, merchant processors like North American Bancard and Heartland Payment Systems have been getting into the game. n Heartland, which released an Android …

A Look at Durbin’s Early Impact Things went pretty much according to script in the first three months of Durbin Amendment debit card price controls. Debit market leader Visa Inc. got dented while MasterCard Inc. picked up speed. Visa chairman and chief executive Joseph Saunders predicted that the slowdown Visa’s …

Though aimed mainly at debit cards, the Durbin Amendment corrals prepaid cards in a number of ways, as well. Will the restrictions choke off growth in this thriving business? By Linda Punch When the Durbin Amend­ment passed, major financial institutions issuing prepaid cards thought they had dodged the proverbial bullet. …

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