Acquiring

• The nation’s movement toward faster payments took a step forward with Early Warning LLC’s announcement that it is now processing real-time peer-to-peer payments for Bank of America Corp. and U.S. Bancorp. Customers of these banks can send payments via mobile or online banking apps to other customers of either …

Processor Square Inc. expects its strategy of providing what it calls a “cohesive” set of services to merchants will aid its efforts to reach profitability, the company reported Wednesday in its first-ever earnings result since becoming a publicly-traded company. It reported earnings for the fourth quarter and all of 2015. …

• Processor Jack Henry & Associates Inc. said its JHA Payment Solutions unit will hook into the The Clearing House Payment Co.’s pending real-time payment system, which could bring 6,300 banks and credit unions served by Jack Henry into the new network. • Digital Check Corp. launched two products this …

  Nothing like an unexpected chargeback to turn a recalcitrant merchant into an EMV believer. According to new survey results from Javelin Strategy and Research, only 8% of small and so-called micro businesses queried in February who didn’t accept EMV chip cards cited as a reason the lack of a …

Merchant acquirers are reporting more chargebacks now that the U.S. conversion to the EMV chip card standard is underway, but chargeback exposure varies widely by acquirer. And, so far at least, relatively few of the chargebacks are translating into actual financial losses. That’s the word from First Annapolis Consulting Inc., …

A new Tennessee law governing merchants’ payment card contracts could create headaches for non-bank entities such as independent sales organizations and payment facilitators, merchant-acquiring industry sources say. The law will require processors on a monthly basis to list all fees assessed since the last statement. That’s certainly not unusual in …

Flint Mobile Inc., a startup whose app allowed merchants to process transactions by using their smart-phone camera to scan customers’ card numbers, abruptly ceased operations earlier this month and has arranged for merchants to switch over to Stripe for processing. That’s according to MerchantMaverick.com, a merchant-processing review site Flint, which …

Patience, it seems, will be the watchword when it comes to merchant adoption of EMV chip card technology, while the number of cards issued bearing a chip continues to grow. A new report from The Strawhecker Group, a payments consultancy, finds that 37% of U.S. merchant locations are EMV-ready, falling …

Editor’s note: Read the latest by clicking here. A spate of media reports that Visa Inc. owns nearly 10% of Square Inc. are wrong and are based on a misreading of a filing Visa made Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a person familiar with the matter …

It was all over the financial press Friday morning that Visa Inc. owned nearly 10% of merchant processor Square Inc. But it turns out that Visa’s real stake is a tad lower—try less than 2%. The news stories, which started with a Reuters report out of India, were based on …