By Kevin Woodward @DTPaymentNews Almost a year after the U.S. payment card industry adopted EMV chip cards for point-of-sale transactions, approximately 44% of U.S. merchants that accept credit and debit cards have EMV POS terminals. That assessment, in The Strawhecker Group’s latest EMV survey released Tuesday, is less than an …

• The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC selected IBM Corp.’s Power8 system for its real-time payments service, expected to go live next year. The IBM system will run software from VocaLink Holdings Ltd., which TCH selected last year as a vendor for its project. VocaLink is being acquired by MasterCard …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Acquirers and processors have until Oct. 14 to prepare their systems for a new range of bank-identification numbers MasterCard Inc. intends to add to its inventory for issuers. Announced in 2014, the move is an attempt to stymie a possible exhaustion of BINs. These numbers are the …

• Processor Fiserv Inc. said a new scoring model for its Payment Fraud Manager service designed specifically for automated clearing house transactions detected more than 90% of fraud while reviewing only 2% of the transactions in model validation tests. • Payment gateway Network Merchants LLC announced its SwIPe EMV chip …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews With more than 3 million renters enrolled in an online rent-payment service, Entrata Inc.’s desire to optimize its payment-card acceptance costs is paramount. That’s why Lehi, Utah-based Entrata is working with Visa Inc. on an improved payment and authorization program for the multifamily-housing industry. Announced Thursday, the …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Merchants would like nothing more than to decipher what they call the “mysteries” of the payments universe, a select group of them told attendees Thursday at the Western States Acquirers Association conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. These mysteries, they said, include knowing whom to call when a problem …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Few things have thrown a spotlight on the 40-year-old chargeback process like the nation’s conversion to EMV chip cards at the point of sale, but it’s in online commerce where the problem has long plagued merchants. And now there’s evidence that these sellers may have more …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The dispute between Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Visa Inc. over payment card acceptance costs intensified Thursday when the retailer’s Walmart Canada unit announced that it will extend its ban on Visa credit card acceptance from Thunder Bay, Ontario, to its 16 stores in the province of Manitoba. …

• Ripple, a provider of distributed-ledger technology for financial transactions, has completed a $55 million Series B funding round. • In related news, Tipalti, which provides a platform to automate supplier payments, announced a $14 million funding round. • Time Inc. said it has integrated Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay to allow mobile …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews When it comes to actively testing sensitive data networks for problems, only 23% of companies consider themselves as “very proactive.” This finding from a new Osterman Research Inc. survey of 126 companies representing thousands of employees arrives as the onslaught of breaches and malware continues to wreak …