In his Oct. 23, 2013, letter to the payments industry (“An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry from Bob Carr”), the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems provides a compelling historical overview of the challenges faced by our industry some three decades ago. As detailed in his letter, …

Prepaid and gift card provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. is further broadening its reach beyond supermarket gift card malls with its deal to offer gift card services within PayPal Inc.’s digital wallet and its pending acquisition of InteliSpend Prepaid Solutions, which offers corporate incentives and consumer promotion products. Announced Wednesday, …

With interchange costs ravaging their balance sheets, most merchants will tell you they’d far rather take cash than cards. Not Split Bread. In fact, the San Francisco sandwich shop doesn’t just discourage cash, it plain won’t accept it. Cards only, please. “Cash is expensive,” David Sliverglide, chief executive of Split …

By Jim Daly The deep divide within debit networks about bringing Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to the United States was on full display Monday at a conference in which a Visa Inc. executive hinted that Visa might be open to a delay in a major EMV deadline. But an executive …

Intellectual-property company Unwired Planet Inc. is suing Square Inc. alleging Square’s mobile-payments technologies infringe on three of its patents, Unwired Planet announced Monday. The suit asserts that mobile point-of-sale provider Square infringes on patents for wireless transactions and location-based services as used in Square Wallet, and location-based notifications as used …

  Ideally, merchants that use payment card acceptance services would know which merchant acquirers they work with. But in a recent report from research firm Aite Group LLC, the most common response when merchants were asked to name their acquirers was “Don’t know.” Of the 491 U.S. merchants surveyed for …

  PayPal Inc., the financial services arm of marketplace eBay Inc., continues to work on expanding PayPal acceptance beyond e-commerce, and its decision last month to buy Braintree Payment Solutions LLC for $800 million is one part of that effort, eBay executives said Wednesday. EBay has been expanding the number …

By Kevin Woodward Person-to-person and mobile payments company Dwolla Corp. is ending support for Bitcoin and other virtual currencies effective Oct. 28, Dwolla announced on Friday. Less than 0.1% of Dwolla’s merchants use virtual currencies, Des Moines, Iowa-based Dwolla says in a statement. “Dwolla has notified the few affected merchants …

Consumers this fall will be able to use their smart phones to pay for fuel at certain gas stations that use VeriFone Systems Inc. technology and offer National Payment Card Association’s mobile-payment app, VeriFone announced Monday. Point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone says convenience store and gas station operators using its Smart …

Clover Network Inc., which on Wednesday burst into a crowded market for tablet-based point-of-sale systems, is betting that merchants would like to choose their apps for customer service and checkout in the same way they can load apps on their smart phones. With the new Clover Station, merchants can download …