Credit Cards

Merchants’ disdain for interchange is well documented, but one aspect of card-acceptance costs that gets drowned out by the outcry over interchange is that rising processing fees are hitting merchants harder than interchange hikes, according to some observers. Processors’ rate hikes have been running between 0.25% and 1.5% in recent …

Hospitality point-of-sale maker Toast Inc. said it now serves 120,000 merchant locations as of the end of the second quarter, a 29% increase from the same period a year ago. Its gross payment volume jumped 26% year-over-year to $40.5 billion. Toast posted second quarter revenue of $1.24 billion, a 27% increase from …

Drug store chain Walgreens announced it is enabling online SNAP/EBT payment acceptance via Instacart nationwide at more than 7,500 Walgreens stores, including more than 100 Duane Reade stores in New York. Most Walgreens locations already accept SNAP/EBT payments in store. Walgreens also added DoorDash Inc.’s SNAP/EBT acceptance earlier this year. In related news, Instacart also announced …

Major payments providers have focused in recent years on signing and providing devices and services for restaurants, but that big bet may be taking at least a temporary beating, according to the latest Small Business Index from the big processor Fiserv Inc. The overall index, which is derived from Milwaukee-based …

Chase, the banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co., has expanded its relationship with third-party delivery service DoorDash Inc. to non-restaurant merchants. The deal will enable Chase Sapphire and other eligible Chase cardholders to receive recurring benefits on orders from more than 150,000 grocery, convenience, and non-restaurant stores in the …

Mastercard Inc.’s chief executive early Wednesday deplored the recent collapse of a key interchange settlement and highlighted the card company’s rapid progress in tokenization, a key technology that masks actual card data from potential cyberthieves. Pointing to a U.S. District Court judge’s rejection last month of an agreement between merchants and …

Aurora Payments, a payments-technology developer, said it has worked with payments-hardware firm Sunmi and software developer Proxet to introduce a new line of point-of-sale terminals they say is designed for small businesses. The Western Union Co. reported processing 73.3 consumer-money transactions in the second quarter, up 3.8% year-over-year, while revenue in the segment …

Value-added resellers and independent software vendors enticed by the attractiveness of surcharging and cash-discount programs find there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for enrolling merchants. Questions about the programs abound at RetailNow 2024, the annual conference sponsored by the Retail Solutions Providers Association and in progress this week in Las Vegas. The …

Artificial intelligence tools may still be in development, but their utility for acquirers is quickly becoming apparent. “A lot of people think it’s a ‘nice to have,’ but it’s no longer a ‘nice to have,’” Sebastian Builes, cofounder and chief executive at Arcum, a merchant-retention firm that uses AI, told …

Square announced it has joined US Foods’ Check program, which offers technology to restaurants. Square is the point-of-sale payments unit of Block Inc. US Foods is a distributor to the dining industry. China’s UnionPay cards now total more than 240 million outside China, the company said in an update, with issuance in 82 …