Merchant

Garanti Bank is using VeriFone Systems Inc.’s Near Field Communication/contactless PIN-pad system in its nationwide rollout of an NFC mobile-payment initiative in Turkey, the payment-terminal maker announced Feb. 14.

MetroBank S.A. and Accertify, a leading provider of software, tools and strategies for preventing fraud, have formed a partnership to help merchants, banks and payment processors across Latin America to combat credit card fraud, the companies announced Feb. 15.

Quarterly and yearly profits at Encore Capital Group Inc. beat market expectations, helped by a huge jump in gross collections, the debt buyer and collection agency reported Monday.

Hypercom Corp., which is being sold to VeriFone Systems Inc., said in a regulatory filing Monday that the combined companies should generate nearly $2 billion in revenue next year.

Merchant surcharges for debit and credit card purchases in the United Kingdom are unfair, and merchants should be upfront regarding any additional fees they might charge, contends Which?, a UK-based consumer-protection advocacy group.

VeriFone Systems Inc. is taking its PayWare Mobile point-of-sale service outside the United States for the first time and is adding acceptance for EMV chip-and-PIN cards and Near Field Communication-enabled devices, the company announced Feb. 14 at Mobile World Congress in Spain.

As European and Chinese payment card issuers steadily move to support EMV-only cards that lack a magnetic stripe to conduct transactions, global competitive pressure may force the U.S. to adopt EMV chip-and-PIN technology, a top exec from a major international card manufacturer contends.

Banks are still debating the use of two-factor authentication for account access, even though hackers are getting more cunning and the tech bellwether Google Inc. just endorsed the extra layer of security.

Financial institutions are still faced with the age-old problem of trying to help their customer service representatives (CSRs) be successful at selling more banking products.

Until a few years ago, payment card processors and merchant acquirers found it relatively easy to incorporate biannual April and October updates of interchange-rate tables and other mandates from the payment networks into their systems.