• The Electronic Transactions Association announced its 2017 board of directors and officers, including Jeff Sloan, CEO of merchant processor Global Payments Inc., as chairman and president. An Apple Inc. executive also is serving a two-year term on the board—Eric Hoffman, director of Internet software and services. • The Federal Trade Commission is challenging the public …

Developing a point-of-sale app to operate on a tablet is but one ingredient necessary for catering to the payment-processing needs of hospitality merchants. Hospitality merchants have long been a favored customer base for many acquirers and independent sales organizations. For example, Heartland Payment Systems, now part of Global Payments Inc., …

They sell products, answer questions, and take payments in a process called conversational commerce. Just how much potential do chatbots really have? It’s been one of those days. You could use a drink. But you’re traveling on business, and you’re not sure where the local bars are. And you’re not …

The NFC Forum, the Wakefield, Mass.-based organization that supports near-field communication technology, on Monday announced updates to three technical specifications and introduced a “candidate” spec. NFC is the technology most often used, for example, to link mobile wallets with point-of-sale terminals. One update, to “NFC Controller Interface (NCI) Technical Specification Version 2.0,” …

Tablet point-of-sale terminal seller Revel Systems on Thursday unveiled its Insights by Revel service and noted a 137% growth rate in terminals for 2016. Insights by Revel enables Revel merchant to monitor business activities as they happen. “Owners and managers can oversee labor remotely, and even detect who worked overtime, …

Controversial from the start, the PCI Council faces a vastly changed security landscape from the one it confronted when it was born 10 years ago. Mobile payments, tokenization, and the growth of tech startups are new elements on the payments scene, but data breaches still abound, much as they did …

• Visa Inc. announced five key person-to-person payment integrations for its Visa Direct faster-payments system, which requires Visa issuers to make funds available to cardholders within 30 minutes. These include: Jack Henry & Associates for JHA Payment Solutions, Fidelity National Information Services for its People Pay service, Stripe Inc. for …

With an abundance of smart-terminal options available, the question is, when will EMV-weary merchants be ready to deploy this newfangled technology? Emerging from the haze surrounding U.S. EMV merchant adoption, vendor strategies are taking shape aimed at supplanting traditional payment terminals with flashy platforms that promise access to rich ecosystems …

A gift card marketed by a little-known startup and backed by shares of stock in big-name companies is coming to J-hooks near you. Gift card marketers have dominated the holiday season and other gift-giving occasions in recent years, but now a card is coming to thousands of those checkout-lane racks …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The PCI Security Standards Council is now a decade old, and as it concludes its annual North America community meeting in Las Vegas Thursday it faces a payments-security landscape vastly changed from the one it confronted 10 years ago, with mobile payments, tokenization, and so-called fin-tech startups …