Acquiring

Pick 'n Save Metro Market, a supermarket in downtown Milwaukee, today began accepting transactions secured by Pay By Touch, a San Francisco-based company that authenticates payments through digital representations of customers' fingerprints. This development comes shortly after the announcement of a co-marketing agreement between Pay By Touch and Discover Financial …

Defenders of interchange for electronic credit and debit transactions argue merchants are losing sight of the value interchange pays for. The subject of interchange has become hotly contested in the wake of lawsuits by retailers challenging it or aspects of it, and following recent interchange hikes by the bank card …

Moneris Solutions U.S. Group, Chicago, has rolled out a check-conversion and check-authorization service for merchants at the point of sale that combines with the processor's credit and debit card product. The company says it is introducing the new offering to round out its arsenal of processing services for merchant clients …

Pamela D.A. Reeve, long-time president and chief executive of Lightbridge Inc., has resigned from the Burlington, Mass.-based company, which this spring acquired Authorize.net, a major transaction gateway for Internet merchants, from Infospace Inc. Lightbridge announced that Robert Donahue, a member of the company's board, would step in as interim president …

Arthur Blank & Co. Inc., a Boston-based maker of plastic payment and loyalty cards, is getting into the market for cards equipped with radio-frequency-identification technology, with ambitions particularly for cards supporting loyalty programs and payments in the quick-service retail market. “We as a company are very bullish [on RFID],” says …

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co., a Charleston, S.C.-based supermarket chain, today switched on an in-lane biometric payment system in four stores on the way to a planned rollout of the fingerprint authentication system to all 116 stores in the chain. The system, from San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, allows customers to …

While First Data Corp. reported strong financial results today for its second quarter, its chief executive fielded a barrage of questions on concerns that have emerged recently for the company, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s decision to switch its account processing from FDC to rival TSYS Inc., with the …

Following its agreement earlier this year with Chase Merchant Services L.L.C. for transaction-processing services, Burger King Corp. announced today it is deploying high-speed-capable card terminals in its restaurants across the country. In the past four months, it has installed VeriFone Omni 3750 devices in some 2,000 of its restaurants in …

Mountain View Calif.-based CyberSource Corp., a transaction gateway for Internet merchants, announced today it is offering a credit-based, non-card payment alternative that can be implemented with a minimum of integration hassles. The company says an arrangement with merchant processor Paymentech L.P. will allow CyberSource merchant clients to install I4Commerce Inc.'s …

Severe price compression in the merchant acquiring market drove together two major players and led to further consolidation in the merchant-processing business as Bank of America Corp. today announced it has acquired National Processing Inc.for $1.4 billion in cash. BofA says it will combine its Merchant Services unit with NPC …