Economy

American Express Co. is encouraging ISOs and agents to use Small Business Saturday to stimulate transactions, increase charge volume and differentiate themselves from competitors.

The complexities of enabling U.S. merchants to accept EMV contactless smart cards and mobile-payment technology represent a significant revenue opportunity for VeriFone Systems Inc., company executives told analysts March 5.

LAS VEGAS–Pushing a new mobile-wallet scheme seems tough when each week seems to bring news of more potentially daunting new contenders.

LAS VEGAS—Near Field Communication, a technology often cited as the future of mobile payments, may never come to dominate the category, according to a panel addressing the inaugural Cartes in North America Expo & Conference here March 5.

Square Inc. has launched a system that it says can replace cash registers. But the company might not find the same success it had meeting the needs of merchants that previously did not accept plastic.

Clarity or confusion? It’s in the eye of the beholder.

Independent ATM deployers may soon find themselves dispensing prepaid gift cards from their machines.

VeriFone Systems Inc. is offering retailers a digital marketing system that touts discounts and suggests additional purchases based on what shoppers are buying at that moment at the point of sale.

Cardtronics Inc. is deploying a series of NCR Corp.’s new SelfServ 14 ATM, billed as the world’s smallest cash machine, the ATM deployer announced March 1.

More than a million merchant locations, or about 10% of the nation’s total, now have some form of breach protection through their acquirers, according to the best guess by Robert Halsey, president of Royal Group Services Ltd. LLC, a Troy, Mich.-based insurance brokerage specializing in the payments industry. That figure has grown from perhaps 30,000 in early 2008, Halsey estimates.

Just after working with Google Inc. in merchant testing of its mobile wallet last year, VeriFone Systems Inc. says it is ready to expand its own wallet-acceptance service and software to all wallet providers, mobile networks and merchants.

Details trickling in about new monthly network-participation fees Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide plan to charge merchant acquirers hint at complex negotiations going on behind the scenes.

MasterCard Worldwide will start charging a new acquirer licensing fee in July, the company confirmed on Feb. 23.

French terminal maker Ingenico SA posted strong fourth-quarter earnings despite Europe’s economic woes.

Trustwave wants to establish barriers at the “front door”–software-applications customers use to enter and move around a merchant or bank website–that many cyberhackers enter to attack payment systems and retrieve personal or card data.

The acquiring industry may as well come to terms with the Payment Card Industry data security standards and make the best of it, security experts told ISO&Agent Weekly in response to requests for the hottest tips on the subject.

Facebook Inc. is becoming a payments contender a lot faster than it has led observers to believe.