Offering value-added services and focusing on the right merchant categories can boost profits and take the sting out of portfolio attrition. Talk of margin compression is nothing new for merchant acquirers. The ongoing race for merchants between acquirers, independent sales organizations, and merchant aggregators has led many players into a …

  Developing a self-pay app is fairly straightforward. The tough part might be waiting for merchants and consumers to catch up. It doesn’t take much to imagine miniaturizing the large cash wraps found in home-improvement and grocery stores that consumers use to scan and pay for their own merchandise. The …

Top performing merchant acquirers make more than 103 basis points per transaction from merchants that process with them. That’s the finding from a survey of 37 independent sales organizations and acquirers conducted by Adil Consulting, an Omaha, Neb.-based payments-advisory firm. The median is 64 basis points. The top 20% of …

By Kevin Woodward None can escape the notoriety of mobile payments, but most consumers apparently are able to ignore the allure of using the smart phone-based technology. Only 18% of consumers use their mobile phones to make at least one payment a week, finds the 2015 North America Consumer Digital …

When Nikki Baird and Steve Rowen evaluated retailers’ digital gift cards this year, the thing that surprised them the most was how disjointed the shopper experience is. Card sales that worked just fine at a merchant’s desktop site just didn’t translate well to a mobile device, for example. That could …

The EMV era in the U.S. officially started Oct. 1, and for the most part this is shaping up to be an underwhelming launch for chip cards. It’s morning in America for payment cards, the accession of the EMV chip card as the successor to the half-century-old magnetic-stripe card. The …

By John Stewart Mobile payments have invaded many areas of consumer commerce, and now they’re about to show up in sit-down restaurants. Dallas-based Ziosk LLC said late last week it will add capability for Apple Pay and Android Pay acceptance to its custom-built Ziosk tabletop tablet starting early next year. …

Expectations of easily getting merchants ready to accept EMV credit and debit cards appear to be misaligned with the reality of the terminalization program. That’s one finding from a survey released Thursday by The Strawhecker Group, an Omaha, Neb.-based payments consultancy. To accept EMV chip cards, merchants must have compatible …

By John Stewart When Nikki Baird and Steve Rowen evaluated retailers’ digital gift cards this year, the thing that surprised them the most was how disjointed the shopper experience is. Card sales that worked just fine at a merchant’s desktop site just didn’t translate well to a mobile device, for …

With the business of selling merchant accounts growing more technology-based every day, how are processors going to recruit new independent sales organizations that have the necessary expertise? For at least some processors, the answer lies in inducing independent software vendors, known as ISVs, to become ISOs as well. “Two very …