For years, leading U.S.-based terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. has been anticipating the move away from magnetic-stripe cards to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard. The conversion is guaranteed to induce a buying spree for point-of-sale hardware as well as the software that runs it. That’s the happy circumstance VeriFone …

Acquirers don’t have to be locked in the classic race to the bottom. From referral networks to better training to integrated technology, here’s a raft of ideas aimed at taking the pressure off profits. It’s a universal lament of many merchant-acquirer and independent sales organization executives: Selling credit and debit …

  Discover Financial Services cardholders will be able to add their payment cards to Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile payment scheme, the card brand confirmed Wednesday. “Discover is in discussions with Apple to be able to add Discover cards to Apple Pay in the future,” a spokesman tells Digital Transactions …

Is it Still Hip to Be Square? The answer, after five eventful years, is yes. But it needs to find a consumer strategy, and right now there’s no app for that. Nobody in the staid world of the payments business had ever seen anything like it before. Dozens of buttoned-down …

The spat between Mitek Systems Inc. and USAA Federal Savings Bank over remote deposit capture software is set for trial Sept. 8, but the trial won’t include Mitek’s patent-infringement allegations that had been a key part of the case. In other payments-related legal action, four retail trade groups and two …

  Heartland Payment Systems Inc. is paying $375 million to expand its position as a higher education payments provider. The Princeton, N.J.-based processor announced today it bought Lenexa, Kansas-based TouchNet Information Systems Inc. Heartland says this is its highest-priced acquisition to date. TouchNet provides a variety of payment services to …

Without fanfare, Amazon.com Inc. last week introduced a trial version of its first digital wallet. The free Android app, known as Amazon Wallet, has been available since July 17 on Amazon’s own App Store and on Google Play. It is also available pre-installed on Amazon’s recently unveiled smart phone, the …

Merchants like to gripe about the cost of payment card interchange and processing expenses, but relatively few have done a close analysis of what it really costs to accept the various tender types, according to an Aite Group LLC researcher. If they did, most would conclude that debit cards are …

With Bitcoin ATMs now having been deployed in scores of locations around the world, merchants are starting to see how the machines could potentially drive traffic and sales—especially with a younger, hipper clientele. The latest merchant to install Bitcoin machines is Locali Conscious Convenience, a three-store deli and convenience-store chain …

Near-field communication for payments has floundered for years. Now, host card emulation promises to revive it by cutting out the mobile carrier. By John Stewart If zoologists studied payments critters, they would be astounded at the gestation period of near-field communication. Here is a powerful technology that has languished in …