A record decline in same-store sales and a $19.4 million charge for costs related to its data breach put big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. into the red during the second quarter. But Heartland executives on Tuesday pointed to bright spots, and also said their post-breach efforts to develop …

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a sweeping credit card reform bill that leaves out retailer-backed regulation of interchange. The bill, which the Senate sent to the House Tuesday, includes a Congressional interchange study and could open the door to controls on gift cards. The House earlier …

A new payment system called BillMyParents debuted Monday that aims to tap an estimated $40 billion in potential online spending by teens and preteens, or “tweens.” But BillMyParents' success depends not just on technology, but also on the receptiveness of parents to receive e-mails or text messages from their progeny …

Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) will buy Metavante Technologies Inc. in a $2.94 billion all-stock deal announced on Wednesday. The acquisition will create a bank- and payments-processing giant with $5 billion in combined revenue and a vast array of products in everything from core banking services to credit, debit, …

Eighteen months after introducing it to developers as a beta project (Digital Transactions News, Aug. 6, 2007), Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday commercially launched its Flexible Payments Service (FPS) as the latest entry in an increasingly crowded field of alternative-payment engines that includes industry giants PayPal Inc. and Google Inc. The …

The latest data-breach battleground has shifted to merchant-acquiring and prepaid card territory. Atlanta-based RBS WorldPay, a big acquirer owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group that also provides prepaid card programs, late Tuesday afternoon reported a breach of its computer system that may have compromised personal information on about …

A mobile-payments startup called Paymo Inc., which launched this week with service in 39 countries, hopes to succeed in what has turned out to be a tough market: micropayments for digital content. The San Francisco-based company has more than 300 merchants approved to accept payments on its platform, says Terry …

In what it calls a first for a major oil company, the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc in January plans to offer a PIN-based consumer debit card that uses the automated clearing house network, gives consumers a discount on gas, and costs Shell's retail outlets 40 cents per …

The electronic-payments industry can expect the well-established consumer shift away from credit cards and toward debit and prepaid cards to continue in today's turbulent economic climate, but other changes are afoot as the financial landscape rapidly changes, according to Maynard, Mass-based Mercator Advisory Group Inc. Some of the most significant …

Merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations took a hit in Congress this year when a reporting provision passed, but other legal threats?along with possible opportunities?await next year. That's the word from payments executives and lawyers who stay abreast of Washington affairs and who spoke at an ISO conference Wednesday in …