Payment processing

The pieces for a robust digital payments market in India are in place, and are waiting for a merchant-friendly catalyst, says Srinivas Nidugondi, head of mobile financial solutions at Mahindra Comviva, which is partnering with First Data to offer a mobile point of sale product in India.

First Data is bringing a new electronic payment offering to Brazil in collaboration with Bancoob, the banking arm of the credit union cooperative system Sicoob.

Heartland Payment Systems has purchased the mobile point of sale vendor Leaf to improve its capabilities for small businesses.

Planet Payment has partnered with Banco Espirito Santo do Oriente S.A. in Macau to provide UnionPay card acceptance to local merchants.

The fueling operations provider Gilbarco Veeder-Root is integrating VeriFone Systems Inc.'s payment technology, enabling EMV-chip card acceptance and media displays at gas pumps.

SunTrust Banks has appointed Paul Garcia, a former chairman and chief executive of Global Payments, to its board.

Total System Services Inc. is offering a tokenization service to secure payment card information for merchants accepting online, mobile or digital wallet payments.

Mobile point of sale providers claim to serve the merchants that are too small for card acceptance: the gardeners, the babysitters, the flea market sellers. But this image is quickly fading as vendors pursue larger merchants, causing the upstart mPOS players to increasingly resemble the incumbents.

As Powa begins integrating its new point of sale system with vendor partners, the company expects its experience with EMV-chip acceptance to be a selling point.

Mobile card readers like Square and PayPal Here must inevitably offer an EMV-chip card option to U.S. merchants, but how soon is too soon? And what are the consequences of arriving too late?

When Starbucks Corp came to market in January 2011 with its mobile payments app, there had yet to be a retailer or foodservice operator that had gained much traction with the newfangled idea of a consumer using a mobile phone to make an in-store purchase.

Fiserv Inc. is promoting the real-time version Popmoney person-to-person payment service as a companion to its online bill payment offering.

First Data Corp. has agreed to buy Gyft Inc., which sells digital gift cards, in a move to advance the Atlanta-based processor's mobile payment offerings.

Square plans to offer a version of its mobile card reader that can read EMV-chip cards, but the added security may come at a cost.

The Secure Remote Payment Council wants a more open process in the development of a standard for tokenization, with the goal of ensuring a single token can be handled by multiple parties to improve security.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has withdrawn a list of merchant categories, including payday lenders, debt consolidation firms, pornography businesses and others, that it said warranted heightened attention by banks processing their transactions.

Zing is releasing an iPad app that leverages Web hosted technology to access a large selection of business functions through the point of sale.

The payment processor Total System Services (TSYS) has upgraded the card management software that C. Hoare & Co. uses manage its Visa card portfolio.

Happy Belly Curbside Kitchen, which operates out of food trucks, is planning to become a sit-down restaurant within the next year and is relying on mobile point of sale technology to make the transition.

Apple may have to place more emphasis on the iPad's capabilities as mobile point of sale devices to help it recover from a small but sharp decline in tablet sales.