Ed McKinley

"I was very fortunate in that I started on the issuing side of the business and in the early ‘90s I moved over to the acquiring side. There are probably not a lot of people who grew up on both sides—merchant acquiring and card issuing."

The ATM Industry Association is forming the ATMIA Marketing Committee to share information, help members promote their products and raise the status of marketing in the ATM business.

Apriva is integrating its payments gateway with software that automatically updates point of sale systems connected with Apriva as new types of payments emerge.

Say goodbye to the Merchant Warehouse and hello to the new Cayan, as the Boston-based independent sales organization and technology provider changes its branding to fit the changes it has made to its business model.

Swipely began promoting its services through ISOs, value-added resellers and other third parties about a year ago, and the channel now accounts for a third to a half of the company's new customers.

Apple and Samsung joined the Electronic Transactions Association this week, furthering the acquiring industry trade group's efforts to welcome technology companies as members.

PALM BEACH, Fla.—Handling transactions is secondary for the tech giants now entering the payments industry, says Diane Offereins, Discover Financial Services executive vice president of payments.

PALM BEACH, Fla.—Few at the Electronic Transaction Association's Strategic Leadership Forum would deny Apple Pay could help prepare the nation for mobile payments and rescue Near Field Communication from obscurity.

Providers of rapidly changing payments products such as prepaid cards, automated payments and dispute resolution are continuing to turn to independent sales organizations to reach targeted merchants.

The Justice Department's Operation Choke Point isn't really about combatting fraud, says Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association. Federal regulators simply don't like high-risk merchants, such as payday lenders and guns dealers, he says.

A veteran acquiring executive describes recent changes at First Data Corp. as "the awakening of a sleeping giant" that has placed a renewed emphasis on independent sales organizations and sales agents.

Independent Resource Network Corp., a Westbury, N.Y.-based independent sales organization, recently agreed to pay $400,000 and waived its right to funds in a merchant's reserve account to settle a civil suit brought by the Federal Trade Commission.

Online payments provider 2Checkout is introducing application programming interface libraries that enable merchants to customize the shopping experience.

Ten years from now, members of the acquiring industry may have fond recollections of the nation's transition to mobile payments, says Brian Mooney, CEO of Bank of America Merchant Services.

The future belongs to mobile payments, but that future remains unclear, as many competing technologies are vying for consumers' attention.

The merchants who want to use Leaf's tablet for payments, called LeafPresenter, often also need transaction services. Through the launch of its online marketplace, Leaf will now be ready to offer information from a host of merchant acquirers.

Donna Embry is perhaps the only payments executive who's worn a shark costume onstage at a regional acquiring conference. But her stunt worked.

Not long ago, executives at Visa and MasterCard viewed the entrepreneurs at independent sales organizations as sketchy, shady, fly-by-night con artists. Linda Perry, a former Visa executive, did a lot to change that perception.

On the acquiring side of the payments industry, Holli Targan does it all. As an attorney in the Southfield office of Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, she chairs the firm's Electronic Payments Group. Her duties include handling mergers and acquisitions, helping clients develop their strategy and alerting the industry to regulatory changes.

The Electronic Transactions Association is lobbying Congress to enact a uniform national data breach reporting standard that would replace a welter of contradictory state and local rules.