Merchant

Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, a Chicago-based private equity firm, is acquiring a majority 51% interest in credit reporting company, TransUnion LLC.

As competition for clients intensifies and margins grow increasingly thin, many independent sales organizations are seeking ways to reduce costs, increase efficiency and stand out from competitors. One method gaining consideration is the use of digital signatures and contracts.

Smartphone-based transactions represent an opportunity to grow U.S. card acceptance, which largely has become commoditized because most brick-and-mortar merchants accept payment cards. However, the challenge for independent sales organizations and other resellers of smartphone-based point-of-sale products may be locating mobile-merchant clients, observers say.

Two senators introduced legislation Thursday to restrict debt settlement companies from collecting fees before a settlement is reached. Under the legislation, consumers would receive detailed upfront disclosures - including a list of all costs and promised services.

Sterling Payment Technologies Inc. in November launched a merchant-security compliance program with the goal of ensuring Sterling’s merchants meet the criteria established by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

Square Inc. finally has shared some of the details about its mobile card-acceptance system, but payments executives still feel as though they have not heard the whole story.

Restaurateurs may have another reason to use pay-at-the-table terminals from Ingenico S.A., which has added software to the devices to help lower the interchange rates for credit and debit card transactions.

A directive Visa issued last week should make it clear to online merchants that they are not allowed to offer consumers third-party offers without asking for their card information a second time, the card brand noted in an April 27 statement.

An estimated 525 different collection agencies and creditors were sued under consumer statutes, primarily the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, in the first half of April, according to data from U.S. District Court dockets. The number is the same as the total in the second half of March and down slightly from 545 in the first half of March.

The Single Euro Payments Area, an initiative the European banking industry launched in 2002 to link European Union and other euro-based countries’ separate national payment systems into a standardized system, remains a work in progress. And not everyone believes the European Payments Council, which is responsible for the initiative that has seen several delays already, can complete the task by December 2012, as the European Commission has proposed.