Acquiring

How many point-of-sale terminals have to be enabled for near-field communication (NFC) before the technology becomes a must-have experience for consumers in stores? In the U.S., at least, the answer is 35% of the installed base, according to Osama Bedier, president of Poynt Co., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that …

In a move that recognizes the powerful role application developers play in the global payments arena, Visa Inc. on Thursday opened scores of its application programming interfaces to thousands of outsiders worldwide, including merchants, banks, and technology companies. The new program, called Visa Developer, embraces some 155 APIs and includes …

Two leading merchant acquirers, Vantiv Inc. and Heartland Payment Systems Inc., are reporting strong transaction growth in their most recent financials. Boosted in part by its first full year of owning Mercury Payment Systems, Symmes Township, Ohio-based Vantiv on Wednesday said its Merchant Services segment processed 19 billion transactions in 2015, …

When the U.S. rollout of EMV cards started in earnest last year, many experts predicted consumers would soon tire of the time-consuming chip-reading routine, putting pressure on the payments industry to usher in contactless EMV and more mobile wallets. But that’s not happening, at least not all that much and …

Just as there are two sides to every coin, there’s a second side to the mobile wallet beyond payments. It’s marketing. That’s one of the takeaways from a recent survey from Vibes, a Chicago-based mobile-marketing specialist. Though the survey of more than 1,000 smart-phone owners found that only 32% of …

Consumers seem to be very forgiving of retailers who experience data breaches, according to findings from a recent survey for the Merchant Acquirers’ Committee, a trade group of payment processors. Most customers resume shopping—and using a payment card—at a breached retailer within a few months, and among those that don’t …

Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) is buying acquirer TransFirst Holdings Inc. for $2.35 billion, Columbus, Ga.-based TSYS announced Tuesday. The deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, puts an end to TransFirst’s plans to explore an initial public offering. Hauppauge, N.Y.-based TransFirst last October filed an …

For e-commerce merchants, the screen is getting smaller very quickly, according to the latest quarterly report from payments company Adyen. Some 17.5% of all e-commerce transactions on Adyen’s platform in the fourth quarter were made with a smart phone, compared to 16% with a tablet, the Netherlands-based company said late …

In response to pleas from merchant acquirers, Visa Inc. this month modified a deadline in its program to get small merchants into compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, a program the leading payment card network announced to acquirers in October. The change affects the usage of qualified integrators …

In 2015, American Express Co. had a bad year. Hit hard by competitive pressures on merchant fees and cobrand-card returns, as well as swooning gasoline prices, the big card network on Thursday reported a 4% decline in revenue net of interest expense for the year to $32.8 billion, its first …