Alternative acquirers

Starbucks and Square, once the hottest couple of the payments world, are splitting up. But their relationship was never perfect; signs of trouble were obvious from the very start.

No wonder Jack Dorsey wants to keep running Square. Dorsey, the payment company's chief executive officer who also just took on the same role at Twitter, is the largest shareholder in Square by a wide margin, with 24.4 percent. The investment firm Khosla Ventures is the second-largest with 17.3 percent, according to Square's registration for an initial public offering filed Oct. 14.

The European mobile point of sale provider payworks plans to expand in the United Kingdom through the hiring of former Verifone executive Frank Landen.

When Square announced its payment processing deal with Starbucks three years ago, accompanied by a $25 million investment from Starbucks, it wasn't clear how the math would benefit the payment processor.

Square, the mobile-payments company founded and led by Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, filed for an initial public offering.

It wasn't long ago that mobile point of sale companies like Shopkeep were the alternative, the way for very small merchants to finally start accepting cards.

The Automated Clearing House is too expensive and complex to provide faster payments for smaller banks and businesses, claims Dwolla, which contends its open system is a better option for those market segments.

European mobile point of sale gateway provider payworks will offer its service through Miura Systems' EMV and Near Field Communication mobile terminals.

Wireless transactions provider Apriva and payment technology services company Global Payments have teamed up to release a white-label EMV mobile payment offering.

Heartland Payment Systems has certified Digital Dining and its iPad-based point of sale system for its EMV-ready security technologies.

The Australian market has used EMV-chip cards for more than a decade, necessitating a very different approach to the mobile point of sale.

American Express will certainly suffer when its 16-year cobranding deal with Costco ends in 2016, but its executives will spend the next year building up the card brand's digital payment products to create enough opportunities to ease the company's short-term pain and guarantee its long-term health.

Amazon.com is a savvy and influential company in the e-commerce world, but its efforts in payments have been less consistent. It has significantly changed the way people redeem rewards and shop on third-party sites, but it has proven less successful in person-to-person payments and the mobile point of sale.

CardFlight has updated its SwipeSimple mobile point of sale device, which allows merchants to take payments and manage their business from smartphones and tablets.

Mobile wallets are typically designed to be most useful at the point of sale. Israeli location-based technology vendor WiseSec sees an opportunity to extend a mobile app's utility throughout the store by using beacons that can sense how far away a shopper is.

Merchant acquirers can learn a lot from their new competitors about how to stand out in a crowd where everybody appears to be the same.

Mobile payments provider Spindle signed an agreement with Transaction Data USA, a payments industry consulting firm, to expand the sale of its products to merchants.

PayPal is revamping its lineup of mobile point of sale offerings, expanding developer tools and adding EMV in the U.S. But its new support for Microsoft devices may have the most impact as it pursues merchants that can already get payment capabilities elsewhere.

Education payments company peerTransfer has grown quickly by providing a specialized service to a specific market, but it may be time for it graduate to new lines of business.

Traditional merchant acquirers have faced disruption from a number of new entrants in recent years from companies such as Square and its peers. And now, a football team is getting into the game.