For years, the payments industry has hoped to see improvement in card-data security among small merchants in the U.S. But, according to a survey released last week, it’s not happening. Indeed, in some important measures, there has been backsliding on security among the nation’s smallest retailers. A little more than …

Discover Financial Services is about to team up with Google Inc. to bring the Google Wallet to the physical point of sale with a Discover-branded plastic card, according to the latest rumor sweeping Silicon Valley. Discover recently began issuing cards for PayPal Inc., so if the Google rumor proves true, …

Visa Inc. on Wednesday reported brisk growth in its credit business and a stabilizing debit market while touting progress for its new digital wallet, V.me. Overall, the results released for Visa’s fourth quarter show the world’s biggest payments network is wising up about how to cope with a new, more …

Last month came word of what appears to be a potent new prepaid card offering from American Express Co. Dubbed Bluebird and offered through Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the card runs on AmEx’s new Serve transaction platform and eschews many of the pesky fees other prepaid cards levy on consumers. No …

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 …

Peter Lucas Despite backing from some of the country’s biggest carriers and tech firms, NFC-based mobile wallets are struggling to win acceptance with merchants and consumers alike. Does the solution lie in the cloud? It’s been tough sledding of late for digital wallets based on near-field communication (NFC), the contactless …

Jim Daly Can the old Hypercom Corp.’s reborn U.S. operation make a go of it with a new name, new owner, and new products in a fast-changing POS terminal market? After 15 months in the Makeover Department, the U.S. operation of the former Hypercom Corp., now known as Equinox Payments …

In a move that will greatly expand its business in card-not-present transaction processing, merchant processor Vantiv Inc. announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Lowell, Mass.-based Litle & Co. for $361 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close later this year and will result in 11-year-old …

A 13-cent fee increase from Parkmobile USA Inc., a specialty payments processor for parking providers and municipalities, drew heavy fire last week from U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, chief sponsor of the Durbin Amendment in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act that imposed price controls on most debit card transactions. The brouhaha is the …

Calling it a “sophisticated criminal effort,” Barnes & Noble Inc. on Wednesday reported tampering occurred on PIN pads at 63 of its stores in nine states. The company on Sept. 14 disconnected every PIN pad in all of its nearly 700 stores but indicated that in addition to personal identification …