Economy

Oink, which was previously called Virtual Piggy, is ready to expand its youth-oriented online payments business to include merchants with a physical presence.

A federal judge has approved the multi-billion dollar settlement of a lawsuit over credit card swipe fees, resolving an eight-year long battle between banks and retailers.

Intrix Technology Inc.,a company that got its start 20 years ago as a supplier of accounting software, made its mark in the acquiring business this year by buying all or part of five merchant portfolios.

PayPal has purchased StackMob, which provides a development platform for mobile payments.

As payment companies add more mobile applications to accept transactions and speed processing, authentication will become more complex, says Todd Wilkinson, CEO of Datacard, which plans to bolster its identity technology for government and financial services clients via its acquisition of Entrust.

The Electronic Transactions Association is rebranding its ETA Annual Meeting and Expo with the new name “TRANSACT 14: Powered by ETA.”

Branches are outdated, expensive and unwieldy. For years, bankers have postponed dealing with the dead weight. Now it looks like they’re starting to make the necessary hard decisions. Finally.

Pivotal Payments, a Montreal-based ISO, announced today that it plans to white-label its merchant reporting tool.

Many companies are already looking past the mobile phone to find the next high-tech payment device. A few companies are also equipping fashion items with Near Field Communication chips and other technology that can be repurposed by the payments industry.

Some banks have quietly begun testing computers that harness quantum physics to run 100,000 times faster than traditional computers.

Wells Fargo & Co. will link its Visa consumer credit card to the Isis Mobile Wallet in what it calls the "first phase" of an agreement with the payments venture, giving Isis a prominent new supporter shortly after the wallet's nationwide launch.

“Operation Choke Point,” the federal government’s campaign against online payday lenders and collections agencies, is unjustly attacking third-party payment processors, an association official says.

A California startup is seeking community banks to pilot its transaction analytics service. The startup's grander vision: to also track customers' physical activities and reward them with better interest rates and small business deals as they move more.

The real mobile revolution in opportunity for small business payments is occurring not in consumer wallets, but on the other side of the counter, with disruption in the point of sale terminal market.

Square has purchased Evenly, a company that provides services for person-to-person payments. The move heightens Square's competition with PayPal and bolsters its own Square Cash product.

If stores seem a little less crowded this holiday season, tablets and smartphones are likely to blame. The volume of e-commerce payments made via mobile devices is surging.

The ATM Industry Association, or ATMIA, is urging payment networks to work with ATM deployers to help keep routing choices flexible.

Square's updated mobile card reader adds a lot of new technology, but its omissions speak volumes about the company's strategy.

The FTC's goal of compensating victims of merchant fraud is laudable. But effectuating that goal through a "crackdown" on processors and ISOs, which effectively makes them insurers of merchant fraud, seems misguided.

While Diane Vogt Faro was “growing up” in the payments business, she helped the entire industry mature.