ISOs

Payments technology provider NMI is acquiring USAePay to boost its multichannel service offerings for its independent sales organization network, as well as bank and fintech innovation partners.

Software developers and ISOs must go into payment partnerships with a full understanding of what capabilities their merchants are seeking, including flexibility and choice, says NMI's Nick Starai.

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.

As health care payments increasingly look like traditional retail payments with various provider-consumer touchpoints, those acquiring hospital and medical clients are also turning to a payment facilitator model to secure contracts.

Even the independent sales organizations that heeded the warnings of colleagues and experts for the past decade about not letting advancing payments technology pass them by weren't fully prepared for what the coronavirus pandemic would throw at them.

Emphasizing its expansion into multi-channel payments, Credorax is partnering with mobile point of sale developer BBPOS to provide mobile POS solutions for independent software vendors and sales organizations across Europe.

Payments technology is advancing at such a rapid pace, the most valuable asset for those in merchant acquiring is expertise.

For ISOs, it's hard to watch someone else deliver payment services in their place.

A new payment company is attacking the hurdles professional women face when returning to the workforce after time away, a distinct problem borne out of the broader gender gap in financial services.

Interchange rates on payments in the fuel and energy sectors can be so complicated that energy marketers can lose thousands of dollars a year because of mistakes they make in coding their authorized credit card transactions.

For several years, independent sales organizations have been warned by colleagues in the merchant acquiring business that they had to keep up with payments technology to remain relevant in the payments ecosystem. And judgment day is fast approaching.

As if they needed another reminder that their business models might not have a place in the modern payments landscape, independent sales organizations are left wondering what role — if any — they will have in launching the Apple Card.

NCR has turned to the acquisition market to shore up its defenses against fintech challengers, a further signal that longtime retail industry staples such as payment hardware and ISOs are going by the wayside as dedicated business models.

Worldnet is adding Google Pay to its cloud-hosted platform to address the pressure on payment service providers and independent sales organizations to securely embrace multiple payment channels and computing devices.

Terminal provider paycosmos has launched its "ISO in a Box" payment platform, saying the software provides everything an independent sales organization needs to support agents and acquire merchant contracts.

International e-commerce is booming these days and so too are the opportunities—and challenges—for payments players.

One way for acquirers and independent sales organizations to stand out in a highly competitive field is to devote a part of their business to worthy causes.

In a post-Equifax world, independent sales organizations, acquirers and payment processors are under much more scrutiny over merchant account applications and underwriting.

The acquirer OLB Group is positioning itself as a data steward for a future in which merchants will have predictive data to inform decisions on financing.