Payment processing

Through an arrangement with First Data and JCB International, Discover will expand its card acceptance at merchant locations in Hong Kong to better accommodate travelers carrying Discover cards.

OnPlan serves the education and health care industries, and under Flywire its services will be available for the first time outside the U.S.

Ingenico Group has agreed to acquire Paymark, a leading payments processor in New Zealand, for about US$140 million.

Japanese card network JCB has expanded its acceptance to Belarus for the first time through an agreement with Belinvestbank.

Lighthouse Network has acquired payment gateway Shift4 Corp. and will rebrand its company as Shift4 Payments.

Payments security experts are warning of the risks to some merchants with payment systems that transmit cardholder data from the processor back to the point of sale from the Spectre and Meltdown computer chip flaws.

To date, the vast majority of security investment has focused firmly on keeping the bad guys out. It only ever works to a certain extent. This is because there is much greater impetus for the hackers to devise new methodologies to gain access and the security industry at large is only ever playing catch up, writes James Barham, chief commercial officer at PCI Pal.

Despite the growing legality of marijuana sales, banks have largely written off the industry as being too high-risk. Recent remarks by Attorney General Jeff Sessions would seem to reinforce that position.

With merchant services provider Cayan firmly under its umbrella, Total System Services is prepared to venture deeper into retail acquiring and processing through Cayan's omnichannel Genius platform.

QR codes, NFC and host card emulation are all favored among among merchants and mobile wallet providers, writes André Stoorvogel, director of product marketing at Rambus.

Diebold Nixdorf has developed new technology to streamline and personalize the shopping and checkout experience at stores and restaurants.

The San Francisco startup behind the cryptocurrency XRP claims it can send money around the world faster, cheaper and with greater transparency.

Despite the mad rush among investors to buy up bitcoin, XRP and other prominent cryptocurrencies, these digital coins have largely failed to operate as instruments for payment. MoneyGram's deal with Ripple might change that, or it might be the first nail in the crypto coffin.

Many organizations wait for a customer request before they will convert a document to an accessible format and do not advertise the fact that they can offer accessible documents, so many customers don’t realize they can request them, writes Ernie Crawford, president, CEO and founder of Crawford Technologies.

A reverse auction service for restaurants is trying to ease the industry's costs through a decentralized payments system.

Integration is the future of business management. There’s an unlimited availability of powerful tools out there that make us wonder how we ever did business prior, writes Rob Nathan, an executive vice president at CardConnect.

Dueling blockchain stories — one arguing it was virtually useless, the other saying it could change real estate lending — seized the top spots this week, while readers also focused on tax reform aftermath and a key Senate retirement.

Merchants need to ensure they are poised and ready for a growing market of digital consumers, write Michael Mertz and Rich Wheeler from CardConnect.

Merchants have been challenging surcharge bans in numerous states on free-speech grounds. They have the wind at their backs following another court victory on Wednesday.

Commercial customers, including small businesses, seem ready to pay up to shift to faster, more sophisticated electronic invoicing and payments, and enterprising banks that provide them the technology to do so could find it lucrative.