Why Is First Data Dissing PayPal POS? Discover Financial Services has recruited 50 merchant acquirers to bring acceptance of leading online payment system PayPal to more than 2 million physical merchant locations by year’s end. Still holding out, at least as late as late May, was No. 1 merchant processor …

Elizabeth Whalen Merchants focus most of their attention on interchange when they think of card-acceptance costs, but now network fees and related charges are in the spotlight. Are such charges an expression of oligopolistic power? When MasterCard Inc.’s new digital-wallet fee takes effect this month, it will join a growing …

Linda Punch With law enforcement’s spotlight on Bitcoin and other digital currencies, a startup called BitMint hopes its approach will inject much-needed trust into the business. Developers of digital currencies are struggling to find the right mix of features to win over a mass market. One of the latest efforts …

There’s clearly consumer demand to speed up settlement, and it’s been done overseas. The challenges here, though, are formidable, starting with defining just what ‘real time’ is. By Jim Daly Doctors often tell their harried patients to slow down, but in payments it’s just the opposite. In an effort to …

Mitchell Cobrin Americans like a sure thing, which is not proving helpful when it comes to figuring out chip card deployment. Better to identify promising markets, like m-commerce, and recruit partners with expertise. EMV technology, or the point-of-sale payment protocol based on Europe’s Europay-MasterCard-Visa card system, has arrived on U.S. …

Peter Lucas The availability of NFC-enabled smart phones is finally ramping up in the U.S. But handset makers are promoting the snazzy other stuff that NFC delivers, not payments. For years, champions of mobile wallets based on near-field communication (NFC) technology have evangelized how their applications will revolutionize the way …

Selling small businesses on mobile payments is an exercise in frustration, but signs of a breakthrough are appearing where the benefits are most obvious—restaurants, says Rick Berry. There is a lingering perception among the smaller business owners that mobile is out of their reach, too expensive, and too complicated to …

  The fledgling Chase Merchant Services operation may now have a boss, but that doesn’t mean the considerable industry curiosity about the JPMorgan Chase & Co. payments unit is going to be quenched any time soon. Chase officials, beginning with newly appointed CMS chief executive Mike Passilla, are playing it …

Prepaid card program manager NetSpend Holdings Inc. on Wednesday said it will postpone until June 18 the shareholder meeting it planned for Friday to approve its $1.4 billion sale to processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS). The delay is an attempt in the wake of two shareholder lawsuits to create …

  If the Federal Trade Commission has its way, all telemarketers will be banned from using remotely created checks and three other payment methods in any transaction. The sweeping ban, which the FTC posted this week in a proposed rulemaking, would also prohibit telemarketers from collecting payment via remotely created …