Merchant

While Facebook is moving to phase out its Facebook Credits, Amazon.com Inc. announced the launch of Amazon Coins, a very similar virtual currency for spending on its Kindle Fire tablet.

VeriFone Systems Inc. said Chief Executive Officer Douglas Bergeron’s trading was the subject of inquiries by the U.S. Attorney and Securities and Exchange Commission, which ended their probes without action.

VeriFone announced Monday the appointment of a new chief financial officer. Marc E. Rothman, a former chief financial officer at Motorola, is becoming an executive vice president at VeriFone and its CFO. He will succeed Robert Dykes, 63, who will retire from his post at the end of the month.

As Loylogic traverses the world looking for more than just a single partner for its rewards redemption app, it's attempting to sweeten the user experience by reducing the amount of navigation needed at the point of sale.

It's shopping season in the payments industry. Just last month, Ingenico, ACI Worldwide and Fidelity National Information Services announced separate acquisitions. Many other companies have bought their peers in recent months.

Numerous merchants don't realize their systems accept Discover, prompting the network to visit their stores in person to ask that the retailers stop turning down its cards.

Verizon Wireless plans to start selling Square Inc.'s mobile card readers in its retail stores today.

Boston-based independent sales organization Merchant Warehouse is launching its Genius payment acceptance product for general availability. The system has been in testing since June 2012.

The council announced Jan. 31 its guidelines for e-commerce data safety. The information is a result of research completed by the council's e-commerce security special interest group.

Technology is moving so quickly that independent sales organizations are finding it difficult to remain relevant.