The mobile-wallet race, which has attracted a slew of entrants in recent months, is about to get more crowded on fears that established merchant acquirers could be elbowed out of the nascent mobile-payments business. Apriva Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based provider of wireless technology for payments, will launch in November …

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  BY Linda Punch   New IRS reporting requirements for processors and merchants take effect soon. The extra work involved is one formidable obstacle for the acquiring business. Another one is the IRS itself.       When Congress passed a new law requiring merchant acquirers to report merchants’ electronic-payment …

  By Jane Adler   Rightly or wrongly, lots of investors are mesmerized by the high-profile startup Square. But it’s not the only newbie transforming the payments industry as venture-capital firms scramble to find the next big idea.       Some startup companies get all the attention.   The …

  By John Stewart and Jim Daly   Having beaten the banks on debit card pricing, they’re now staking out positions on mobile payments and chip cards. This could be the start of the decade of the merchant in the business of consumer payments.       Who controls consumer …

The new federal regulation requiring processors and acquirers to report merchant electronic payment transactions to the Internal Revenue Service is proving to be a major challenge for the industry, but at the same time could turn into a revenue generator for acquirers, according to a researcher. The requirements originated with …

  Two executives who helped found CoCard Marketing Group LLC have left the Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization to start their own ISO with what appears to be a unique ownership structure based on shareholding for participating offices. “Our company is going to be based on shares of stock,” says …

  John Stewart and Jim Daly   The Fed’s Durbin-inspired debit regulation is already radically reshaping the business for merchants, issuers, acquirers, and networks. Here’s how.       Well, it’s all over but the shouting. And, with the ink dry now for more than two months, there isn’t even …

  Startups and established companies alike are betting that consumers obsessed with daily deals could jump-start mobile payments. But it may take a while for that bet to pay off.   By Jane Adler       Rewards redemption with a mobile device at the point of sale isn’t a …

  Merchant acquirers once relied on independent agents, direct sales, and agent bank relationships to sign up merchants. Now, a new group has entered the picture and is accounting for a rapidly increasing share of new merchant accounts. Value-added resellers and independent software vendors will enroll 15% of all new …