Payment processing

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.

Emerging payments developers shouldn't feel forced to place all their bets on one platform or another. In the shorter term, successful future models of banking will be hybrids.

MoneyGram will extend its agreement to provide services in more than 600 Albertsons locations in the U.S.

As mobile wallets mature, so will attempts to use the technology to marry payments and marketing, says Fiserv's Matt Wilcox.

Decoupled debit cards, which draw funds from an account at a separate issuer, are typically framed as a low-cost alternative to bank cards. But in the wake of the massive Target Corp. data breach, security may have suddenly become the product's biggest selling point.

Merchant Warehouse has seen a lot of momentum these past three months as small and medium-sized merchants adopt its Genius payment acceptance and customer engagement platform, which launched to the general public in January.