Acquirers

Risk management and payments technology provider linked2pay says paycosmos has become the first independent sales organization to offer its merchants the Instant Merchant Settlements service.

The subscription payments market is increasingly popular, but acquirers won't get by on only handling the payments.

Processing.com has 25 acquiring banks lined up as its transaction network, creating a safety net for dealing with high-risk merchants.

For their own sake, GrubHub and Uber should have purchased Caviar when Square reportedly offered it to them for sale in 2016. Instead, they now have a competitor who’s looking to eat their lunch in the restaurant delivery business.

Pinduoduo's controversial IPO was seemingly a world removed from western merchant acquirers, but it's yet another example of how social payments can upend conventional relationships between merchants, shopping and payment processing.

Seeing an opportunity to address the multi-billion dollar cannabis industry’s needs for payments processings, Zodaka is launching with a system that focuses more on price than process.

One way for acquirers and independent sales organizations to stand out in a highly competitive field is to devote a part of their business to worthy causes.

In a post-Equifax world, independent sales organizations, acquirers and payment processors are under much more scrutiny over merchant account applications and underwriting.

Airborne drone delivery is becoming e-commerce's version of self-driving cars: A promising but troubled technology that's nonetheless creating opportunities to change the way people make payments.

The money flowing into alternative merchant acquiring is feeding an arms race, with each new deal adding pressure to become an automated one-stop shop for small businesses.

Forget the stereotype that a cybercriminal has to be tech-savvy to get the job done. Their true gift is in social engineering.

Merchant acquirers have moved mountains to embrace software and e-commerce over the old model of selling point of sale hardware, but there are signs that transformation is not enough to please investors.

American Express has spent years developing new marketing alliances and acquiring programs to shed its reputation as a card for the elite. But its success still hinges on premium cardholders.

The acquirer OLB Group is positioning itself as a data steward for a future in which merchants will have predictive data to inform decisions on financing.

Though Costco is no longer called out in the New York issuer's earnings calls, the loss of that business added fuel to a change within the company that is showing results.

Paul Galant will leave the CEO post at Verifone in the next few months, following a tenure in which he helped diversify and automate Verifone's merchant acquiring business and led a recovery from a series of strategic and economic missteps.

Payment processors have increasingly become full-service providers from equipment to security measures and, most recently, some mobile and omnichannel options.

Going back to the debut of the free Square card reader, the mobile payments market has made fees — or the lack of fees — a major selling point.

The simplified pricing of fintechs like Square and Stripe has finally caught up with banks' more complex fees, prompting Wells Fargo to restructure its billing for small businesses. Other banks will also face consequences—particularly community banks that depend on local merchants.

Ingenico is negotiating a business combination with BS Payone that would boost its profile in parts of central Europe and allow it to counter multichannel moves by other major payment companies.