Payment processing

For the financial and retail industries, mobile is becoming a significant part of the strategy for delivering valuable content and services to customers. Two technologies in particular are available on many of today’s smartphones and are being looked at to enhance consumer experience: Near Field Communications (NFC) and Bluetooth low energy (BLE).

First Data has launched a payments platform for online and casino-based gaming.

Alternative finance provider CAN Capital is offering its payments industry partners a digital platform to give merchant clients a fast application process for funds.

London has ended cash payments for city buses, leaving the transit system's Oyster and other contactless cards as the methods to pay fares.

Seamless' international expansion plans have gotten a boost via a deal with the Finnish sporting goods chain store Top-Sport.

Merchants are wary of the proprietary look and feel of the process by which the card networks and issuers are adopting new security standards.

Bindo wants to combine its cloud-based iPad point of sale product with an online marketplace, similar to how Square's iPad system links merchants to Square Marketplace. This hybrid approach is meant to make Bindo more appealing to local merchants.

Ingenico Group, a French maker of payment terminals, said it's in exclusive talks to acquire GlobalCollect in a deal valuing the target at 820 million euros ($1.1 billion).

The telco is offering Payleven's hardware to enable its small-business customers to comply with an Italian mandate to cut back on cash use.

Revel has added a dashboard for Yelp and Foursquare to its point of sale tablet, giving businesses a way to respond immediately to any complaints or praise posted to social media.

SCVNGR's LevelUp, which is not content to listen only to its merchant clients, is once again giving consumers a voice in evaluating its mobile payments experience.

First Data is under pressure on a several fronts. While tasked with easing its debt, the Atlanta-based processor is also responding to the many disruptions brought by mobile technology and other innovations.

Philip W. Tomlinson, CEO of Total Systems Services (TSYS), will retire on July 31. He will be succeeded by M. Troy Woods, the company's president and COO.

Oracle Corp. agreed to buy Micros Systems Inc. for $5.3 billion as Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison seeks to reignite slowing growth by adding software for hotels and restaurants.

Vend will integrate its payment system with QuickBooks Online, making it the second point of sale company this week (along with Flint) to tout a link to Intuit's accounting software.

KKR & Co., the private-equity firm led by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, led a $3.5 billion private placement for First Data Corp. to help the payment processor it acquired in 2007 repay debt and strengthen its balance sheet.

An issuer's decision to deploy EMV chip-and-signature credit cards in the U.S., rather than the chip-and-PIN model common in other countries, has as much to do with technology constraints as it does with Americans' reluctance to using a PIN.

Payment processor Vantiv Inc. now offers EMV testing software for U.S. merchants to use to validate the steps of their acceptance of chip-based payment cards.

The numerous recent retailer data breaches have led issuers to realize that they may have to replace most of their cards with little or no warning.

Vantiv has completed its acquisition of Mercury Payment Systems.