While hoping that it's seeing the light at the end of its long data-breach tunnel, Heartland Payment Systems Inc. also is restructuring its sales force in an effort to boost flagging productivity. The Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer fired 98 low-performing relationship managers in November, but is in the process of …

While many bankers and even technologists may regard handset-based electronic deposits as esoteric, consumers seem not only familiar with the product but favorably inclined toward it, according to a survey by Mercatus LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that follows mobile banking and payments. The survey, conducted in December among more …

Underbanked and unbanked consumers who use check-cashing stores rely heavily on traditional payment forms such as checks, cash, and money orders for bill payments and few use electronic payment methods, according to new survey data from Aite Group LLC. While that may not be a surprise, Aite's study shows the …

Here's one way credit card issuers could win back some popularity in an increasingly debit card world: make credit cards function like debit cards. That's the essence of a new product from processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS), which last week unveiled its TSYS Hybrid card. The patent-pending product enables …

Visa Inc.'s announcement this week that starting this summer it will no longer require signatures for transactions of $25 or less at most U.S. merchants heralds a policy that will result in faster and smoother transactions but could also undermine the payments industry's move toward contactless technology. “The merchant proposition …

The number of identity-fraud victims increased by 12% last year to 11.1 million from 9.9 million in 2008 and was 37% higher than in 2007, and the estimated amount of fraud hit $54 billion, the highest since 2006. That's according to Javelin Strategy & Research's 2010 Identity Fraud Survey Report. …

The explosive growth of social networks and online games in the U.S., which in the past year or so has drawn the attention of a number of micropayments startups, has now attracted a foreign processor with deep pockets and the ability to offer a wide array of payment options. France's …

In expectation that legislation regulating online gambling in the U.S. will pass, the United Kingdom-based payments-processing company UC Group Ltd. has opened a U.S. subsidiary, SecureTrading Inc., headed by three former MasterCard Inc. senior executives. UC Group, a provider of online payment-processing services, is an advocate for regulated Internet gambling …

Americans now spend more than half a trillion dollars a year on PIN-debit cards, but the merchant-acquiring industry is still adjusting to consumers' embrace of point-of-sale debit. At the same time, debit card pricing is shifting from a simple, flat-fee model to a more complex one, which is raising the …

USA Technologies Inc. and a dissident shareholder group buried the hatchet last week, but their settlement agreement sets some high hurdles for the provider of vending-machine card readers and remote networking transaction-processing services to clear. If not, the dissidents could reassert themselves?just as competition for processing payments from unattended locations …