ISO & Agent

Square recently ended a plastic card project out of concerns it would cause friction with the payment company's financial partners, according to Fast Company.

Square Appointments, the company's latest fee-based product, is the first in its lineup that can be used by merchants who do not also use Square to accept payments.

Square is the latest technology company to launch a "bug bounty" program, which rewards volunteer hackers for finding security flaws and bringing them to Square's attention.

It's hard to design a Disney's "Frozen" cake with a cash register, but it works like magic with a tablet, according to Dallas-area Society Bakery.

Mobile card readers like Square and PayPal Here must inevitably offer an EMV-chip card option to U.S. merchants, but how soon is too soon? And what are the consequences of arriving too late?

Global Payments' integrated solutions division has released CustomerBuilder, a new application designed to enable users to create, distribute and track digital card offers.

Comerica has hired payments processor Vantiv as the financial institution continues a legal battle stemming from a discontinued joint venture with Global Payments, which a judge says has taken a "hostile attitude" toward the bank.

Square Inc. has purchased food delivery company, Caviar, in a move to add non-payment features to its mobile payment and ordering system.

Roam, a Boston-based unit of Ingenico, has begun offering its mobile payment services on Leapfactor, a business software platform.

First Data Corp. has agreed to buy Gyft Inc., which sells digital gift cards, in a move to advance the Atlanta-based processor's mobile payment offerings.

Heartland Payment Systems plans to bolster its existing services to college campuses by acquiring TouchNet Information Systems Inc. for $375 million.

Square plans to offer a version of its mobile card reader that can read EMV-chip cards, but the added security may come at a cost.

The Justice Department's legal case against American Express will not benefit consumers and will weaken competition, said Jeff Campbell, executive vice president and CFO of American Express.

Amazon.com, which just launched its own smartphone, may be nearing the launch of a mobile card reader that would work like Square's device, according to reports. Such a move would complement the company's many recent payment initiatives.

Zing is releasing an iPad app that leverages Web hosted technology to access a large selection of business functions through the point of sale.

Happy Belly Curbside Kitchen, which operates out of food trucks, is planning to become a sit-down restaurant within the next year and is relying on mobile point of sale technology to make the transition.

Apple may have to place more emphasis on the iPad's capabilities as mobile point of sale devices to help it recover from a small but sharp decline in tablet sales.

San Francisco-based Pose, one of the many companies in the cloud-based mobile point of sale market, aims to differentiate itself by eliminating its $49 monthly subscription fee.

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.

Cardfree, a mobile payments provider run by several of the people who designed the successful Starbucks mobile payment app, is using cloud-based technology to simplify the process of deploying its technology as it eyes international markets.