Transaction Processing

• In a sign of further global expansion plans, merchant acquirer Square Inc. in June incorporated a business in the United Kingdom called Square Europe Ltd. and began testing its payment system in London, Reuters reported. Besides the U.S., Square already operates in Canada, Australia, and Japan. • Processor Total Merchant …

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Canadian unit on Monday stopped accepting Visa cards at its three stores in Thunder Bay, Ontario, carrying out the threat the retailer issued last month in its dispute with Visa Inc. over card-acceptance costs. A spokesperson at Wal-Mart’s Canadian headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario, as well as a …

Payment card charge volumes and merchant-processing revenues rose at several of the nation’s biggest banks during the second quarter, according to company reports as the mid-year earnings season got underway this week. Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp reported Friday that its payments businesses produced 22%, or $328 million, of the company’s $1.52 …

The percentage of U.S. consumers who experienced credit card fraud in the past five years leaped from 41% in 2014 to 47% in 2016, according to the “2016 Global Consumer Card Fraud: Where Card Fraud Is Coming From” report released Tuesday by Aite Group LLC. The report surveyed more than …

• Processor First Data Corp. and terminal maker Ingenico Group announced a new solution supporting EMV tip adjust and the common application identifier for debit and running on Ingenico smart terminals. First Data has certified the solution on its Omaha platform. • The Merchant Advisory Group launched KnowYourPayments.com, a Web …

Fourth-quarter transaction decline rates for credit and debit cards used for subscription payments increased to 15.9% from a first-quarter 2015 low of 14.4%, based on the value of the transaction, according to a report from Recurly Inc., a recurring-payments specialist. The “Recurly Subscription Snapshot,” which analyzed 25 million recurring payments …

The acquiring business is accustomed to a slow rate of change, but that deliberate pace is masking radical underlying shifts in how merchants handle payments and whom they deal with for processing services, according to research at First Annapolis Consulting, Annapolis, Md. Change comes so slowly in this business that …

A central Illinois grocery-store chain will expand online and add mobile payments beginning this fall. The service enables consumers to use credit and debit cards along with electronic benefits transfer cards to pay for orders, says Ithaca, N.Y.-based Rosie Applications Inc., the vendor providing the technology. The move by Quincy, …

Moneris Solutions USA, the U.S. arm of Canada-based Moneris Solutions Corp., appears to have suitors, according to a recent Bloomberg.com report. Moneris is a joint venture between RBC Financial Group and BMO Bank of Montreal. Bloomberg.com reports that merchant processor Vantiv Inc. and Warburg Pincus LLC, a New York-based private …

The password is one of the oldest authentication tools known to man, and now it is rapidly becoming the least respected among security experts for use online or in-app. Consumers’ use of easily guessed codes, coupled with a recent barrage of data breaches, has these experts predicting passwords will fade …