Payment processing

American Express Co. and merchants fighting the company over rules governing credit-card fees are headed back to the negotiating table.

MasterCard is talking to Merchant Customer Exchange executives about what role the card brand could play in the retailers' CurrentC mobile wallet, but the card brand insists it is just an interested observer in the merchant mobile wallet venture.

American Express Co., bracing for a decline in profit after the loss of a key retail partner, made a series of organizational changes including combining U.S. and international units and said that consumer product head Josh Silverman is leaving the firm.

The alliance between JPMorgan Chase and the Merchant Customer Exchange represents more than an olive branch between two industries that have typically been at war over fee revenue — it's a result of a years-long transformation in how Chase approaches its relationships with the retail sector.

New mobile wallets like the Merchant Customer Exchange's CurrentC may find themselves in conflict with other high-tech mobile apps that came to market sooner.

Most mobile wallets clearly favor one industry over another, with banks and retailers often pitted against each other in a battle over payment card fees. JPMorgan Chase just made a stunning move by conceding some of this ground to the benefit of the Merchant Customer Exchange.

Starbucks Corp. said JPMorgan Chase & Co. will process transactions previously handled by Square Inc. as the coffee company rolls out terminals that accept chip-based cards.

The combination of location-based marketing and mobile wallets is relatively new territory for merchants and consumers, bringing these two parties so close together that they may start to overlap.

When Square created the market for mobile point of sale devices, Verifone got defensive. Today, with the rollout of its Engage platform, Verifone is going on the offense.

Stockholm-based Seamless is threading currency exchange into its QR code-based mobile payment platform SEQR.

October 1 marked the dawn of a new era in the U.S. payment card marketplace. While there are not yet rules from the card brands that demand all parties utilize EMV technology, the financial liability shift is a significant first step across a line in the sand that cannot be erased.

With its IPO out of the way, First Data is accelerating its focus on merchant technology, and that means luring the developers who are rapidly changing how people shop and pay.

Starbucks and Square, once the hottest couple of the payments world, are splitting up. But their relationship was never perfect; signs of trouble were obvious from the very start.

When Square announced its payment processing deal with Starbucks three years ago, accompanied by a $25 million investment from Starbucks, it wasn't clear how the math would benefit the payment processor.

When Netflix announced that its new U.S. subscriber count had declined 10.2% year-over-year, it blamed the "ongoing transition to chip-based credit and debit cards." And the video-streaming company may not be the only victim of this phenomenon.

First Data Corp. raised $2.56 billion in its initial public offering, pricing the shares below the marketed range.

Payment technology that comes with the EMV stamp of approval already in place may get a boost as a result of the bottleneck newer systems face in getting certified.

The changing demands of consumers who are increasingly mobile, and the emergence of disruptive technology, are changing the payment model for financial institutions.

Many points of research show that as many as half of small businesses suffer from cash flow problems. In fact, the majority of small business owners cite cash flow as their number one challenge.

When Apple revealed that Starbucks plans to accept Apple Pay in its U.S. stores, the move spoke less to Apple's persuasiveness and more to the fallout of the country's ongoing shift to EMV security.