ISOs

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.

Who carries cash anymore? Just about everybody, it turns out.

Holding up his Apple Inc. iPhone, Bob Russo, general manager of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, declares, “This is the most insecure device in the world, and my life is on it.”

After a data breach, merchants are required by law to notify a host of authorities and agencies, a daunting task that presents an opportunity for ISOs and agents.

Can the owners of a small restaurant in Park City, Utah, stand up to a large bank and card-processing company in a court of law? The restaurateurs claim funds were taken from them without their knowledge to cover fines for alleged Payment Card Industry data security compliance violations. Moreover, no one has even proved a breach occurred, the restaurant owners allege.

ISOs and agents may now offer merchants a security package that combines breach protection, consulting services and software that scans computers for unprotected card data.

ACI Worldwide Inc. reported Feb. 14 that income for the fourth-quarter totaled $23.9 million, down 11.8% from a year earlier, as revenue declined.

Many small banks have never accepted that an exemption from the Durbin amendment will protect them from the measure's roughly 50% cut in debit interchange rates.

Consumers trust PayPal Inc. about as much or more than well-established payment networks such as Visa Inc. or MasterCard Worldwide when it comes to emerging mobile payments, but they place the most trust in their bank, new survey data suggest.

In what could mark the beginning of the post-Durbin fee shakeups, merchant acquirers should soon learn n the details of Visa Inc.’s new fixed acquirer network-participation fee.

Imagine a machine that makes your dinner reservations, invites your friends to join you at the restaurant and hands you the cash to cover the check. We’re talking about the ATM of the near future.