Acquirers

JCB International has entered an acquiring partnership with Riyad Bank to enable acceptance of JCB cards at merchant terminals and ATMs throughout Saudi Arabia.

Several large mobile point of sale projects are hitting the market at once to reach financially troubled retailers, with JPMorgan Chase making use of a three-year-old acquisition to push back against the technology firms that have been gobbling up small-business clients.

MagicCube has launched i-Accept, a software-based replacement for traditional terminals, allowing acquiring banks and financial services providers to offer merchants an option for contactless and PIN payment acceptance through Android devices.

Longtime finance entrepreneur Jackie Reses, who led Square Capital for the last five years, is leaving the company at the end of the month. Square has not yet named a successor.

Square is moving to help minority and underserved groups by investing $100 million in nonprofit financial institutions and Black-owned businesses.

London-based Rapyd has added Mastercard and Visa acceptance to its European payments platform to help merchants take advantage of retail’s shift to online.

Square is entering the earned wage access (EWA) fray, but it’s taking a tailored approach that aims to drive transaction volume within its Cash App.

FIS' purchase of Worldpay in 2019 required Ellyn Raftery, the company's chief marketing and communication's officer, to reshape its brand to showcase the strengths of both companies — all while a major global pandemic hastened her timeline.

If the mega payments deals of 2019 left the acquiring landscape somewhat scorched, the COVID-19 pandemic planted new seeds to allow ISOs to grow by quickly converting merchants to electronic payments.

Advocates of allowing merchants to add a surcharge to defray the cost of credit card interchange have had to overcome network bureaucracy, state laws and even ingrained habits among the merchants themselves.