In the biggest sale of a merchant acquirer in more than a year, private-equity firm Advent International Corp. will take a 51% stake in Fifth Third Processing Solutions through a deal announced today with the big processor's parent company, Fifth Third Bancorp. Boston-based Advent will pay $561 million in cash …

After weeks of bad tidings, there is some positive news for Heartland Payment Systems Inc., the Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer struggling to recover from a data breach late last year. Last week, SAC Capital Partners, a high-profile hedge fund known for its investment savvy, bought 767,300 shares, or about 2%, …

The breach-related troubles just keep piling on for merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., according to the acquirer's annual report filed on Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In the filing, Heartland revealed the data breach it sustained last year is under investigation not only by the U.S. …

Visa Inc. will quintuple the size of its Visa ReadyLink prepaid card reload network when the big money-transfer firm MoneyGram International Inc. enables its 40,000 U.S. locations to add funds to prepaid cards under a deal Visa announced Tuesday. The MoneyGram locations will make Visa's reload network nearly as big …

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. will be releasing additional information on the recent data breach of one of its payment-processing platforms, though “I can't tell you how soon,” says Robert Carr, Heartland's chief executive. The Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer in January announced that malicious software, or malware, had been secretly planted …

Key operating metrics posted solid gains in recent quarterly reports from two of the payment industry's specialty providers, non-bank ATM network operator Cardtronics Inc. and expedited bill-payment provider TIO Networks Corp. Houston-based Cardtronics, however, still posted a $57.9 million fourth-quarter loss, most of which originated with a one-time charge involving …

The good news about identity fraud: dollar losses per incident are going down. The bad news: incidents are up. The bad news for merchants: fraud victims, especially young adults, will punish merchants they associate with ID fraud. And some bad news for the payments industry in general: more ID fraud …

Pricing is by far the biggest reason merchants cite when asked why they left their previous payment card processor, but there's more to the attrition story than meets the eye, according to a new study by Aite Group LLC. “Pricing is only the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back,” …

The message this week from the top brass at American Express Co. is: Times are bad, but no worse at AmEx than elsewhere in the payments industry. American Express, the third-largest payment card network, is still making money, though a lot less of it: $172 million in the fourth quarter, …

As merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and federal investigators continue to probe the data breach Heartland disclosed on Tuesday, evidence is building that banks and credit unions around the country are reissuing cards on a mass scale as a likely result of the breach. That could give credence to …