Payment processing

Square has opened an office in St. Louis, which will serve the mobile point of sale company's clients in the Midwest.

As payments technology went into warp speed the past four years, many banks, acquirers and independent sales organizations (ISOs) faced the difficult task of keeping up with all of the potential changes.

The U.S. restaurant industry is still challenged to fit EMV-chip card payments into an ordering and payment structure built around cash and magstripe cards. The vendor MyCheck sees this uncertainty as an opportunity to win restaurants over to its mobile payment system.

Buy buttons are shaping up to be the next battleground in tech-driven retail, and retailers are gearing up to take the field on social media sites like Twitter, Pinterest and others. But the new payments technology presents challenges that retailers must consider.

It wasn't long ago that mobile point of sale companies like Shopkeep were the alternative, the way for very small merchants to finally start accepting cards.

Major payment processors are lining up in support of Android Pay, which Google began rolling out in the U.S. last week.

It's no secret that restaurants are going to be slow to adopt EMV relative to other retail categories, but in the past two months more dining establishments have begun to focus on the business-side issues and changes to customer interaction brought on by chip cards.

The two-sided retail payment network ecosystem is undergoing a tectonic shift. Distinctions between e-commerce, mobile commerce and payments at the physical point of sale are starting to blur, and a range of digital wallet platforms are changing the way that customers make purchases and payments. It may therefore be time for interchange 2.0.

PayPal's previous efforts to come to the physical point of sale about three years ago never managed to topple the entrenched payment methods. Now the company is taking another stab at it, securing an arrangement with Macy's Inc.

Amazon Dash Button is all about the data, not just the repeat purchase.

Discover was one of the most notable holdouts when Apple Pay first launched in Oct. 2014, but it now plans to launch Apple Pay compatibility Sept. 16.

With the EMV liability shift less than a month away, U.S. merchants have far more on their plates than merchants in other countries had when only weeks from migrating to chip-based payment cards.

Kash Corp. is prepared to move into the money transfer world, launching an application programming interface (API) that will allow companies of all sizes to accept direct debit payments without credit card fees.

Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati has tapped a new chief strategy officer to replace Dan Poston, who will leave the bank to join the payment processor Vantiv.

Stockholm-based mobile wallet provider Seamless Distribution AB is seeking beta testers for a new digital cash register service that would become part of its SEQR wallet application.

Young people have a much different relationship with credit, requiring retailers to find different ways to enable financing to encourage larger purchases.

The Automated Clearing House is too expensive and complex to provide faster payments for smaller banks and businesses, claims Dwolla, which contends its open system is a better option for those market segments.

Three large U.K. banks have suffered recent payment glitches, including temporary outages at HSBC, Natwest and Royal Bank of Scotland—suggesting existing bank payment systems are challenged to process digital transactions.

MCX has announced Inmar will be the promotions management and processing vendor for its CurrentC mobile payments system, but it has not revealed the names or number of consumer goods manufacturer participants, a lack of disclosure that analysts say challenges the launch's credibility.

CaixaBank’s is managing smartphone hardware challenges for its new mobile payment app by adopting host card emulation (HCE).