Merchant

A Singapore-based company last week announced the planned launched of a mobile-payment service that uses a card-reader device similar to the one offered by Square Inc. and other companies.

Speculation about one of the world’s largest payment processors going public in early 2012 had potential investors humming last summer. On March 22, Vantiv Inc. turned eight months of speculation into reality with its initial offering on the New York Stock Exchange, expected to raise $500 million for the Cincinnati-based processor.

A federal court has rejected civil claims brought by five credit unions and one bank stemming from the massive 2008 data breach at Heartland Payment Systems that exposed millions of cardholders to fraudulent transactions.

Discover Financial Services is partnering with the operator of Puerto Rico’s ATM and debit network as part of the payment card company’s ongoing effort to increase acceptance abroad by teaming with local networks.

Industry debates centering on the eventual U.S. conversion to EMV smart card acceptance at point-of-sale terminals have taken on several layers.

The Internal Revenue Service is hoping to keep merchants honest by checking up on their transaction volume. That’s fine, but the fallout is affecting independent sales organizations, their acquirer partners and their merchant clients

In a move to open the e-commerce market between Taiwan and China, Taipei-based E. Sun Commercial Bank Ltd. has entered into a partnership with Alipay Inc., China’s leading online payment service provider.

A top official at Australia’s central bank says the institution will move to ban businesses in the country from imposing excessive credit card surcharges on their customers.

It sounded like a good idea 10 years ago, but not much makes sense any longer regarding Europe establishing a third card scheme to compete with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide.

EMerchantPay Group Ltd. is partnering with WorldTicket to provide smaller airline operators an easier way to accept and process online payments for plane fares, the online payment processor announced March 19.