Transaction Processing

PayPal Inc. on Wednesday said two more retail chains are rolling out PayPal acceptance in their stores. It also said its PayPal Here mobile-acceptance product, which it introduced in March, is now generally available to merchants in the U.S. and Hong Kong, markets where some 300,000 users have signed up …

School lunches often draw fire from students, who want tastier fare, and parents and nutritionists, who want healthier meals. But for merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., food service in schools is proving to be a profitable new payments niche. Princeton, N.J.-based Heartland on Monday said it had acquired LunchByte …

A new company run by electronic-payments veteran Bipin Shah announced on Monday it has agreed to buy two merchant processors and a payroll-processing company for a total of $179 million in cash and stock. The acquisitions are part of a strategy followed by Radnor, Pa.-based Universal Business Payment Solutions Acquisition …

Startup Revel Systems Inc. this week unveiled a device it is touting as a way for retailers using an Apple iPad for point-of-sale functions to run peripheral devices without an Ethernet router. The device, called the Revel Router, accesses the Internet via the iPad’s cellular connection. San Francisco-based Revel, which …

Cybercriminals have introduced a new version of a notorious malware threat that is not only harder to detect but also more capable of stealing card numbers, PINs, and other sensitive information. This latest variant of the so-called Zeus Trojan malware includes a change that makes it virtually invisible to programs …

A recent survey of financial institutions and service providers shows that while attempted takeovers of financial accounts by computer hackers and thieves increased last year, the percentage of successful takeovers dropped. Meanwhile, PayPal Inc. announced a program to pay security researchers for finding flaws in its system. In its second …

Check 21 saved the U.S. payments system more than $3 billion in 2010 as paper check clearing gave way almost entirely to image clearing, according to a paper released recently by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The paper sets out what is believed to be the first effort at …

The hackers who broke into merchant processor Global Payments Inc.’s computer systems added a new chapter to the disreputable history of data breaches by gaining access to information from applicants for merchant accounts, the company disclosed late Tuesday. Global’s revelation apparently is the first publicly known incidence of merchant-applicant information …

A little software company gone bust won big against leading point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. in a patent-infringement verdict June 8. A federal jury in Texas found after a five-day trial that VeriFone infringed on two patents held by CardSoft Inc. and awarded damages and royalties of $15.4 million. …

Driven by fast growth in “native payments” that dispense entirely with paper checks, total automated clearing house network volume increased 4.4% in the first quarter over the year-earlier period, the ACH network’s highest quarterly increase since 2008’s fourth quarter. Michael Herd, managing director of network rules at ACH governing body …