Payment processing

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 has withdrawn a list of merchant categories, including payday lenders, debt consolidation firms, pornography businesses and others, that it said warranted heightened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.

Total System Services (TSYS) is working with well-known brands like Western Union and Brinks to boost adoption of prepaid cards as the CEO of its NetSpend prepaid unit prepares to leave the company.

Payments provider Shazam Inc. has agreed to make MasterCard's EMV debit application available to participants in the Shazam electronic funds transfer network.

San Francisco-based Pose, one of the many companies in the cloud-based mobile point of sale market, aims to differentiate itself by eliminating its $49 monthly subscription fee.

Cardfree, a mobile payments provider run by several of the people who designed the successful Starbucks mobile payment app, is using cloud-based technology to simplify the process of deploying its technology as it eyes international markets.

Mobile point of sale provider Appetize is targeting entertainment venues and music festivals, a niche that's often a testing ground for payments technology.