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 …

With EMV chip card payments coming and mobile wallets using near-field communication already here, merchant acquirers are beginning to roll out their own hardware and software to handle the new technologies. This week, the big merchant acquirer Chase Paymentech introduced its “Future Proof” point-of-sale terminal and earlier this month, Merchant …

A network fee introduced this year by Visa Inc. hands so-called merchant aggregators like PayPal Inc. an unfair cost advantage relative to traditional acquirers and independent sales organizations, a top executive with one leading ISO contends. The fee, known as the fixed acquirers network fee (FANF), is a complicated affair …

With a number of startup companies now offering bill-pay capability based on smart phones, old-line payments companies are starting to respond with services of their own, relying on their reputations as established players in electronic payments. One of the first is The Western Union Co., which this week introduced a …

The chief executive officer of Discover Financial Services isn’t too pleased with what Visa Inc. is doing to retain its lead in the debit marketplace now that the Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing provisions are in place. Discover owns the Houston-based Pulse network, which like other electronic funds transfer networks stands to …

Ending months of speculation about is intentions in mobile payments and promotions, computer icon Apple Inc. on Monday entered the increasingly crowded market for digital wallets with an application it calls Passbook. At the same time, the company announced it now has card credentials for some 400 million users on …

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 …

In what may be a harbinger of things to come in mobile-payments pricing models, Boston-based LevelUp has dropped its merchant-acceptance fee from 2% of the transaction to zero. Instead, the company will earn merchant fees of 35 cents per dollar of incremental sales generated by the redemption of rewards earned …

Marketing revenue from mobile payments has the potential to dwarf payments revenue, as pundits have been saying for some time, but that potential will never be realized unless a new sort of payment network is built, argues a new report. Existing networks like Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., not to …

The Penn Station East Coast Subs submarine-sandwich restaurant chain says 59 of its 238 locations are now “potentially affected” by a debit and credit card data breach. Parent company Penn Station Inc. first said when it disclosed the breach June 1 that 43 franchisee-owned stores possibly were affected, but the …