Acquiring

Some 24.6 million U.S. wireless-phone subscribers?or 13.6% of the base of mobile users?downloaded ring tones in April, according to the latest monthly survey of mobile-phone usage by market-researcher M:Metrics Inc. That's up 6% from the Seattle firm's March survey. At the same time, the survey shows nearly 6 million users, …

Nova Information Systems says it is acquiring Certegy Inc.'s the merchant portfolio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The conversion of the Certegy portfolio, which consists of 14,000 merchants generating about $3 billion in annual credit and debit card volume, to Nova's platform is expected to be completed by …

A failure by major investors to understand the business model of an independent sales organization may have prompted yesterday's offer by Gregory S. Daily, chairman and chief executive of iPayment Inc., to buy all outstanding shares of the Nashville, Tenn.-based processor. The company, which went public in March 2003, closed …

United Bank Card Inc., which earlier this week announced it is selling a portfolio of 15,500 merchants to Optimal Payments Corp. for $44 million, said today it will use the cash to add new departments and hire more staff to help cope with rapid growth. Jared Isaacman, founder and chief …

Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization iPayment Inc. today reported its revenues and processed charge volume more than doubled in the first quarter compared to the year-ago period, with much of the growth driven by a December acquisition of a merchant portfolio from First Data Merchant Services. In a conference call …

A Washington, D.C.-based organization formed early this year by retail-industry trade groups says it is beginning to work out a plan of attack that it hopes will lead to regulation of the fees card-accepting merchants pay issuing banks. After years of friction between banks and merchants over the subject, this …

A proposed method by which retailers could take checks they accept at the point of sale and convert them in a back office into electronic transactions on the automated clearing house could hinder an encouraging trend among consumers away from writing checks and toward electronic transaction channels, such as credit …

Transaction gateway Shift4 Corp. reports it processed $1.1 billion on more than 13 million transactions in March, marking the first time the company has exceeded the $1 billion level in a month. Las Vegas-based Shift4, which specializes in connecting hospitality merchants and entertainment venues to back-end processors via high-speed Internet …

With online merchants facing a June 30 deadline to prove they comply with a unified card-industry standard for data security, CyberSource Corp. said today it is rolling out a new service that will help Web-based retailers meet the security requirements. The Mountain View, Calif.-based transaction gateway for Internet merchants says …

NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based organization that establishes rules for automated clearing house transactions, is working on a business case for a new payment type that would allow merchants to collect all consumer checks they receive and convert them into electronic funds transfers in a back room or other central location. …