Merchant

Francoise Brougher, a former Google and Charles Schwab executive, is Square's new business lead.

Payvia Inc.'s newest clients — Skype, OnCam and Bright — demonstrate a growing appetite for charging payments to consumers' phone bills.

People — and payment companies — are starting to take Bitcoin seriously.The decentralized virtual currency is overcoming its stigma as a fringe currency for illegal transactions and is stirring up consumer scrutiny of the practices of large payment providers. The payments industry is changing rapidly, but today the movement isn't about payments — it's about data.

WorldPay, which provides electronic payment processing, has contracted to bring the NFC and EMV capabilities of VeriFone's countertop payment products to merchants.

Chirpify, which lets people initiate payments over social media, has secured another $2 million in funding and now counts rappers Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg as clients.

Financial Transaction Services is rebranding by taking on the name of its recently acquired payments gateway—CardConnect—and moving its headquarters to King of Prussia, Pa., to consolidate its operations.

Avant-Garde Marketing Solutions (AGMS), a merchant service provider, will sell and deploy a number of Ingenico’s new countertop terminals, including those that handle EMV-chip card payments.

A consumer watchdog group in Canada is speaking out in support of the major card brands in response to an argument brought by the country's Competition Bureau on behalf of retailers.

ZooZ, an Israel-based mobile payment company, has secured $2 million in a Series A financing round from supporters XSeed Capital, Lool Ventures and Rhodium. The company's funding now stands at $3.5 million.