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Heartland Payment Systems has leveraged newly purchased merchant marketing company Beanstalk Data to build a restaurant analysis service.

A female executive sues Bank of America, accusing the company of being a "bros club" and paying her less than male colleagues; Democrats call on the overwhelmingly "white and male" Fed to prioritize diversity; Goldman, which lags when it comes to female leadership, names a new CEO for its bank unit, coincidentally swapping in a man for a woman. Also, Ruth Porat, chief culture officers, and the stubborn gender pay gap.

Google is helping developers cut steps out of the path to accepting digital payments with several key moves unveiled around the Google I/O developers conference taking place this week.

Total System Services Inc. has announced an agreement with Featurespace to apply machine-learning technology to fight fraud.

Louise Walker, the head of First Northern Bank in Dixon, Calif., will be wearing an additional hat over the next year — chair of the California Bankers Association.

Visa's rules for card acceptance exceed 800 pages — plus supplements — and MasterCard's are nearly 300 pages. But even though the card networks have explained their expectations in painstaking detail, the difference between strict rules and mere guidelines is much blurrier when finally given to the merchant.

HCSB Financial in South Carolina recently raised $45 million from a group led by Castle Creek Capital Partners, showing that big investors are still comfortable placing bets on financial firms. The challenge for banks like HCSB will be to find ways to put that capital to work years after other institutions were able to start playing offense.

Back in 2014, Dekkers Davidson, then CEO of the Merchant Customer Exchange, declared that the mobile wallet venture would draw inspiration from Uber and be just as disruptive to financial services as the popular ride-sharing app was to the taxi industry. But Uber's success stems largely from its decision to make payments invisible, whereas MCX was developing its CurrentC wallet to do just the opposite.

The $125 billion-asset company said in a press release Tuesday that Kate Randall Danella will lead a team of private wealth management professionals providing banking, trust and investment management services to affluent and high-net-worth individuals and families.

Mobility's incursion into merchant services is normally treated as a threat to independent sales organizations and legacy acquirers, who will find themselves on the outside as technology-based services take over the store.

When Walmart switched on Walmart Pay this week at 600 stores in two states, it marked the beginning of a new era, when merchants finally take the reins in mobile payments — and, by extension, the future of digital commerce.

The Merchant Customer Exchange, a retailer-backed mobile wallet venture of over three years in the works, has postponed its plans for a national rollout of its mobile wallet.

Fifth Third Bancorp has hired Citigroup's Melissa Stevens to the newly created position of chief digital officer and head of omnichannel banking.

Stadiums, concert halls and other entertainment settings have long been venues in which terminal providers like NCR or Oracle would likely have units in place, offering a vast array of functions tailored to those businesses.

Square, which has been aggressively adding merchant services to enhance its mobile payments product, has added an invoice scheduling feature to add flexibility to merchant payments.

The speculation is that Maria Vullo, who is waiting to be confirmed as New York's new banking superintendent, is less interested in being on the 6 o'clock news than Ben Lawsky was. A study shows that companies sap women of ambition to advance within two years, an effect that doesn't happen with men in part because they tend to get more encouragement. But is it any wonder women feel that way when — even now, it appears — they might get fired for refusing to wear high heels at work? Also, Sallie Krawcheck, Sheila Bair and Elizabeth Warren.

More than seven months after the EMV liability shift, the majority of U.S. retail locations still haven’t upgraded their payment terminals to accept chip cards, with some small and midsize businesses citing the difficulty of getting their equipment tested and certified by appropriate organizations.

While Walmart's lawsuit against Visa this week centers on authorization and routing methods, the Debit Network Alliance LLC — a group of independent debit networks — is also taking issue with EMV routing in addressing how terminal software is handling the choices presented to consumers.

BMO Harris Bank in Chicago has hired a former M&T Bank executive as its chief information officer.

Citigroup is testing Bluetooth beacon technology in a pilot that gives customers cardless access to branch ATMs after business hours, among other services.