Economy

Visa is lowering or eliminating many merchant acquirer fees for merchants who generate less than $15,000 in annual Visa sales. It also plans to eliminate up to half its operating rules.

Key decision makers in the payments industry recently gathered for SourceMedia's 2014 Card Forum and Expo. They discussed the trends shaping the industry and their own strategies for surviving the challenges ahead. Here are a few highlights.

Square has launched an order-ahead feature and other services to boost its appeal to brick-and-mortar merchants, but history has shown that merchants can be fickle about which features they'll pay more to use.

Biometric authentication company NXT-ID will soon roll out a wallet that is designed to digitally store payment cards without a mobile phone.

As independent sales organizations (ISOs) offer new payment technology and other services to improve merchant relationships, the ISOs have to decide whether to charge a fee—a difficult decision that can differ from one merchant to another.

PayPal and the mobile technology provider QikServe are working to enable U.K. hospitality businesses to accept orders and payments through the PayPal smartphone app.

With every new value-added product or service, an ISO has to determine an appropriate sales tactic—give it away for free, bundle it, charge upfront or levy a monthly or yearly service fee.

SCVNGR’s LevelUp is reducing its mobile wallet’s transaction fee from 2% to 1.95% in its continued attempt to lower interchange costs.

American Express' Serve prepaid account has its roots as a digital wallet, but the card issuer is finding many of its enrollments are coming through a very non-digital process: in-person activations at mobile phone stores.

Biometric technology could eliminate the need to carry a payment card or even a smartphone by allowing users to authorize payments with a fingerprint, handprint, face or retina scan. But the technology has had a rocky past, and each new product comes with new quirks.

Walmart's new "Walmart-2-Walmart" transfer service will enable consumers to send money to each other by using the retail chain's store network.

Ten years from now, members of the acquiring industry may have fond recollections of the nation's transition to mobile payments, says Brian Mooney, CEO of Bank of America Merchant Services.

Ten years from now, members of the payments industry may look back with fondness upon the transition to mobile payments, according to speakers at Transact 14.

Mobile wallets and mobile point of sale systems have tried many tactics to win over merchants by cutting costs. Some vendors have been extremely inventive in how they push cheaper payment options.

The future belongs to mobile payments, but that future remains unclear, as many competing technologies are vying for consumers' attention.

A new order is emerging in the payments industry, and ISOs have a place in it, according to three keynote speakers at Transact 14, the Electronic Transactions Association trade show.

More companies are accepting "altcoins" such as Litecoin and Dogecoin in addition to the more common Bitcoin, showing that even silly currencies based on Internet memes can open merchants to new markets of consumers.

Online small business lender Kabbage has received $270 million in financing from institutional investors.

The quick-service restaurant industry is working up a hearty appetite for mobile payments as a way to make fast food sales happen even faster.

Leaf, the electronic tablet maker, is offering to put acquirers' names, logos and marketing messages on its site to attract merchant services accounts.