Acquiring

In short order, competition in the business of funding small merchants has ratcheted up to new highs, with new, online and technology-based entrants flooding the market. One of the most recent, and successful, of these new entrants is Atlanta-based Kabbage Inc., which this year will hit the $500 million mark …

• American Express Co. is testing a mobile-payment service built on its Serve platform with the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and their home arena, the Barclays Center. The Brooklyn eWallet is part of the Nets' mobile app for iOS and Android smart phones; fans can store up to 10 payment cards in …

Tablet-based point-of-sale technology is moving apace in restaurants. Ziosk LLC, which installs tabletop tablets in eateries, announced this week Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill will install its system in all 65 of its U.S. locations. The rollout is expected to wind up by the end of February. Dallas-based Ziosk, which …

Square Inc.’s 6-month-old cash-advance product, Square Capital, has distributed $75 million to some 15,000 small businesses, the San Francisco-based payments company announced via Twitter this week. Further, merchants that have accepted the advances have processed in excess of $1 billion in sales through Square, the company said. It also pointed …

Payment processor JetPay Corp. on Monday reported that it had acquired ACI Merchant Systems LLC, an independent sales organization that works through financial institutions to provide credit and debit card processing to their small and mid-sized business customers. Meanwhile, the big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. recently bought Xpient …

Just because merchants have until next October to install terminals capable of processing chip cards and avoid shouldering liability for counterfeit card transactions doesn’t mean most of them will have done so by that date. Many experts, and a number of merchants themselves, have made that point. But major terminal …

Tip.ly is a new app that wants to make it easier for patrons to tip their servers. The iPhone-only app is designed to solve the problem of how to leave a tip when a consumer has no cash. Consumers associate a payment card with their Tip.ly accounts. Recipients collect the …

Conspicuously absent from new point-of-sale terminal maker Poynt Inc.’s Oct. 30 unveiling was how the new company’s L-shaped, portable devices would be distributed. The answer to that question came Monday when Poynt chief executive Osama Bedier revealed that two of the nation’s largest merchant acquirers, Chase Paymentech and Vantiv Inc., …

First Data Corp.’s Clover point-of-sale system now is available in a mobile version that enables merchants to roam their store aisles with the device. Dubbed Clover Mobile, the service can be paired with the stationary Clover Station or used as a standalone service, First Data says. Like Clover Station, Clover …

With financial institutions lending less to small businesses, new, technology-based companies are moving into merchant lending to fill the void. This is a market typically served by so-called merchant cash-advance firms, companies that lend money in the form of advances against a merchant’s expected credit card volume. In many cases, …