Acquiring

The allure of recurring revenue combined with low interest rates and investors prospecting for new assets are contributing to a potentially prosperous time for sellers of merchant portfolios. That’s the assessment from a presentation Tuesday at the Southeast Acquirers Association annual conference in New Orleans. Also, the Electronic Transactions Association …

By Jim Daly Coming off a winter of discontent, American Express Co. late Thursday reported some respectable financial results for the first quarter. The loss of its relationships with Costco Wholesale Corp. in Canada, however, affected charge volumes, a prelude to the loss of Costco as a merchant acceptor and …

By Jim Daly Canada’s Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, on Monday issued an update to the government’s 5-year-old Code of Conduct for the credit and debit card industry. The update adds consumer protections, addresses the growth of mobile payments and premium cards, and makes other changes intended to give merchants more …

Independent sales organization CoCard Anderson and bill-payment software company Systems East Inc. are targeting insurance, government, and utilities merchants in a new program announced Tuesday. Merchant processing is not as widely adopted in these merchant categories as in retail, making them attractive prospects, CoCard says. In the deal, Systems East, …

By Jim Daly PayPal Inc. says the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau might sue it over its credit products by June 30. The possible lawsuit would stem from an investigation dating to 2013, when the CFPB in August of that year filed so-called civil investigative demands (CIDs) for documents, testimony …

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau named four merchant-acquiring companies as defendants in a lawsuit against six people and their associated debt-collection companies that allegedly attempted to collect millions of dollars in so-called “phantom debts” from consumers that the consumers either did not owe or were not owed to the debt …

  As the U.S. payment card industry continues its monumental shift to EMV chip card technology, one group of merchants will lag. More than 70% of small merchants will not be EMV compliant by Oct. 1, the date the card networks have set to shift liability for point-of-sale fraud to …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group and chip-maker Intel Corp. will work on producing a tablet that supports EMV chip card and near-field communication (NFC) transactions, Ingenico announced Thursday. The tablet is in response to the U.S. payment card migration to the EMV chip card standard, and the growing adoption of …

By Jim Daly Merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc.’s outspoken chief executive Bob Carr weighed in Friday with a statement on Indiana’s controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Carr says the law could relegate some people to “second-class status” and is an “invitation to discriminate.” “It is deeply troubling that the …

As Transact 15, the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference held this year in San Francisco gets under way, acquiring industry vendors and companies are releasing a bevy of news. Among the vendors making announcements is Clearent LLC, a payment-services company based in Clayton, Mo. Clearent says it will resell CardFlight …