Payment processing

Seamless has signed an agreement with Visita, a Swedish hospitality industry and employers organization, to use the SEQR mobile payment system.

Mobile technology vendor 1OAK says it can enable any point of sale machine to accept payments from a smartphone without changes to infrastructure or back-end payment processing systems.

Total Merchant Services says it will expand its tablet-based point of sale and cloud-based offerings after acquiring Registroid LLC and its products.

A pair of companies has launched services on Twitter that allow users to transact in Bitcoin across the microblogging site. And while Twitter has been selective of what companies facilitate payments in the past, the social networking giant hasn't yet touched these Bitcoin services.

Acquirers say they're signing up new merchants and retaining established customers with the help of software that bundles payment services.

The new year got off to a mixed start for virtual currency, with regulators in Asia clamping down on Bitcoin and gaming company Zynga embracing the emerging payments option.

The Target Corp. data breach just before the holiday shopping season triggered another round of rhetoric on the merits and shortcomings of chip-based cards. But the breach's direct effect on merchant EMV plans is largely up in the air.

Consumers demand far more flexibility from their card reward programs — and some banks are getting creative about delivering it.

Union First Market Bankshares has made an equity investment in The Payments Company, which offers a software-based business payments service.

Canadian debit and credit card processor Moneris will use countertop devices from VeriFone that are designed to accept and secure a variety of electronic payments.

A computer glitch at PNC Financial last week delayed overnight processing for some customer transactions.

DoubleBeam, a white-label payments provider, has started the New Year working to fix a bug that crashed the reporting server used by GoPago, which DoubleBeam purchased last month.

The processor Global Payments Inc. now allows merchants to accept donations at the point of sale through an agreement with Digital Processing Solutions.

As more payments companies seek the next big thing, they are finding that mobile payments tech is due for a makeover, and a lot more attention surrounds digital currency such as Bitcoin.

From a consumer's perspective, the Merchant Customer Exchange mobile payment initiative ended 2013 in much the same way as it ended 2012 - with many big-name merchants signed on, but no product available to make payments in stores. Behind the scenes, MCX has made greater strides.

As the impact of Target's data breach continues to widen, credit unions have been more responsive than banks when it comes to issuing new cards, according to two recent online surveys.

Synqera treats its home turf of Russia as a proving ground for new point of sale technology, but it has global ambitions.

The payments industry is full of big ideas that haven't always found the right audience. As we enter 2014, a few trends are bringing new relevance to some older technologies.

Moscow-based cross channel payments provider Qiwi announced it has acquired 100% of Blestgroup Enterprises Limited.

Debit spending increased 12% on the shopping days following Thanksgiving, according to payments processor The Members Group.