ISOs

Mobile-marketing firm Mocapay Inc. this month announced a strategic partnership with ISO eNational Payments with the goal of helping merchants deliver customized coupons and other promotions to consumers via mobile handsets.

Now that they can do so without violating contracts, merchants are expected to more aggressively steer customers toward less-expensive payment methods in the coming months.

Companies that install or manage payment-application software, such as that used in integrated point-of-sale terminals, can best protect their information by following a list of best practices Visa Inc. issued this week, the payments company contends.

Visa Inc.’s most recent statistics of merchant compliance with the PCI Data Security Standard shows that 100% of the largest U.S. merchants—those processing more than 1 million annual Visa transactions—have validated their point-of-sale systems as not storing prohibited data.

Certain definitions within new Internal Revenue Service rules requiring payment processors and merchant acquirers to track merchants’ transactions and report them to the IRS beginning next year are creating additional hassles, some industry observers say.

Legions of potential investors are clamoring to buy a piece of the merchant-acquiring business, but most ISOs would prefer not to sell. Both camps appear to believe the industry represents a safe haven in hard times and a promising prospect during a recovery.

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Paul A. Rianda is an attorney who has specialized in providing legal advice to the bankcard industry for more than 10 years. His e-mail is paul@riandalaw.com.

Enough is enough. Sales agents sometimes decide to sever their relationships with merchants who break rules, ask clueless questions, make unjustified demands, register wrong-headed complaints or bicker endlessly over prices and fees.

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC on Aug. 6 agreed to sell a majority stake in its lucrative processing business, RBS WorldPay, to two private equity firms for more than $3 billion.

Pivotal Payments says its integration with Pinnacle Cart, Desert Dog Marketing LLC’s e-commerce software designed for merchants to use on their websites, could help its sales agents increase their revenue by attracting more merchants.

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Mindbody, a San Luis Opisbo, Calif.-based company that makes business-management software for health-and-fitness businesses, has become an independent sales organization to improve its profit margin and to secure more control over its relationships with merchants, says Rick Stollmeyer, Mindbody founder and CEO.

All U.S. merchant processors likely will benefit from anticipated reductions in debit card interchange rates once the Federal Reserve Board next year finishes its rate-setting task mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill President Obama signed into law in July. But they will need to be careful in how they share their savings, Paul Garcia, chairman and CEO of Global Payments Inc., told analysts July 27 while discussing the company’s fiscal fourth quarter earnings.

IPay POS Credit Card Terminal, the new version of the mobile-payment acceptance application called ProcessAway, now works with multiple gateways and comes with a card reader to accommodate card-present transactions, according to Randy Palermo, who developed the application that works on Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

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Merchant cash-advance company AmeriMerchant LLC’s merger with CanaFunding LLC this week is enabling ISOs to sell cash-advance services in either the U.S. or Canada, says David Goldin, AmeriMerchant president and CEO.

Portability rights, which entitle sales agents to take merchant accounts with them when leaving one ISO for another, are gaining greater importance in today’s still-sluggish economy.

Efforts to grow internationally appear to be paying off for Total System Services Inc., as are indications the economy is improving.

National Processing Co., a Louisville, Ky.-based merchant acquirer, announced July 26 plans to resell integrated point-of-sale payment software made by Datacap Systems Inc.