Merchant

With its IPO out of the way, First Data is accelerating its focus on merchant technology, and that means luring the developers who are rapidly changing how people shop and pay.

Consumer confidence in October remained flat amid concerns about slower growth in the labor market and across the broader economy.

A proposed class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday accusing debt-buying giant Portfolio Recovery Associates of abusing U.S. courts by filing collection lawsuits against tens of thousands of consumers based on false affidavits.

Starbucks and Square, once the hottest couple of the payments world, are splitting up. But their relationship was never perfect; signs of trouble were obvious from the very start.

No wonder Jack Dorsey wants to keep running Square. Dorsey, the payment company's chief executive officer who also just took on the same role at Twitter, is the largest shareholder in Square by a wide margin, with 24.4 percent. The investment firm Khosla Ventures is the second-largest with 17.3 percent, according to Square's registration for an initial public offering filed Oct. 14.

The Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act became law 10 years ago this week. The law was the culmination of a bipartisan push in Congress to change a system that seemed to encourage bankruptcy filings during a time of prosperity. It is reasonable to ask, a decade later, whether reform worked.

The changes made 10 years ago reduced abusive bankruptcies and made our nation's economy more resilient. If Congress had gone further by regulating attorney fees and increasing penalties for fraud, the economy would be that much stronger.

The reform has returned bankruptcy to its intended function as a last resort for consumers, rather than a way for the wealthy to game the system at everyone else's expense.

As mobility has become embedded in the world’s cultures, issuers are feeling the heat to create their own mobile apps, but in an era of non-top data breaches and increasing identity theft, security fears abound.

The European mobile point of sale provider payworks plans to expand in the United Kingdom through the hiring of former Verifone executive Frank Landen.