Some dragons are harder to slay than others, and a few are fire-breathing. Here’s our annual look at the industry’s fiercest beasts, this time ranging from the endless war over interchange to eager-beaver regulators to the woes of digital currency. By John Stewart and Jim Daly If payments were easy, …

  USConnect, a food-service network, has ordered 50,000 ePort vending-machine payment devices from USA Technologies Inc., making it the largest single order ever, says Malvern, Pa.-based USA Technologies. EPort devices enable vending machines to accept credit and debit cards and contactless payments. USConnect will supply the devices to its network …

(An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry) n On October 16, 2013, I delivered a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) on my views of the evolution of the payments industry.  At the beginning of this address, I told the audience that …

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 …

In its latest gambit to commercialize instant payment settlement, Dwolla Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a service that will let users pay online merchants using credit rather than their own money. The service, which the Des Moines, Iowa-based alternative-payment processor is calling simply “Credit,” is intended to accelerate progress toward faster …

Merchant processors can expect federal regulators to continue cracking down on their industry, Robert O. Carr, chief executive of Heartland Payment Systems Inc., predicted in a speech Wednesday at an acquiring-industry conference. The reason for stepped-up federal oversight, Carr said, is that independent sales organizations haven’t policed themselves effectively. He …

By Jim Daly An injunction that puts New York State’s ban on merchants’ credit card surcharges on hold could be a prelude to a bigger legal assault on states’ surcharge restrictions. If pro-surcharging merchants prevail, their actions could add some oomph to a provision in the pending settlement of unrelated …

Ammo for ISOs in the Tablet Wars Independent sales organizations are starting to feel squeezed by technology companies selling tablet-based point-of-sale solutions to merchants, according to terminal kingpin VeriFone Systems Inc. So VeriFone last month rolled out a tablet-based platform for its resellers that they can price and market to …

Karen Epper Hoffman A new proposal from European regulators promises dramatic cuts in interchange revenue. Will these rules encourage even more stringent measures in the States? The United States often looks to Europe for trends in fashion, environmental sustainability, and other concerns. Now the issue is payment card expenses and …