Payment processing

Bitcoin enthusiasts, playing off the holiday tradition of Black Friday sales, held their own Bitcoin Friday last week, leading to a spike in Bitcoin transactions at some — but not all — participating merchants.

When a natural disaster or other tragedy strikes, the nonprofit sector is a critical force that mobilizes to aid in the recovery effort. And to keep these organizations funded, many of these groups are using payments technologies from providers like mGive and Groupon to connect with donors and more quickly and cost-effectively raise money.

Bank of America is launching a Square-like card-swiping device for smartphones called Mobile Pay on Demand. The service will be marketed through B of A’s Atlanta-based joint venture with First Data, Bank of America Merchant Services.

Expanding its partnership with ChinaPay, Western Union is allowing institutions of higher education and universities to accept student fees and international tuition in the Chinese Renminbi.

Discover Financial Services’ Pulse PIN-debit network has joined the card brand’s EMV migration timetable, establishing requirements for point-of-sale acquirers and processors to handle smart-card payments.

Recently launched Shpock wants to facilitate the buying and selling of products listed online, but the system was designed to deliberately omit payments from the process.

A federal judge granted preliminary approval Friday to the proposed settlement of a massive lawsuit brought by retailers against Visa, MasterCard and banks that issue their cards.

Google has reinvented its mobile wallet a few times, and its latest reinvention, a rumored plastic card, raises questions about the mobile-pay product’s direction.

For retailers, buying a new point of sale payment system is becoming as easy as buying a stapler or a sheaf of paper. Staples has begun selling several pieces of hardware revolving around NCR’s point of sale system called Silver.

At first, payments players were wary of the LevelUp mobile-pay system, but the startup behind it is fast building relationships with the very companies it could potentially disrupt.

Several months after Starbucks announced it was investing $25 million in Square, it has begun accepting the mobile-pay company's digital wallet at its roughly 7,000 retail stores.

Payments provider Elavon will use Ingenico's new Telium2 series countertop and wireless terminals for its customers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

VeriFone announced that Glob Taxi Co. of Warsaw, Poland has chosen its payments technology for in-cab transactions.

With a community-based state charter, Veridian Credit Union isn’t supposed to have members outside its market in Iowa. And yet the credit union has been handling funds nationwide for the alternative payment company Dwolla since 2009.

It may not qualify yet as a combination of QuickBooks and mobile payments such as Intuit Inc. offers, but Braintree figures it is on the right path in working with an accounting services provider for online merchants.

The storm left many without electricity, phones and use of the roads. But in many of the affected areas, consumers and merchants continued to conduct business and found a way to handle payments.

Though Heartland Payment Systems claims its “Durbin Dollars” debit-pricing campaign contributed to its most profitable quarter ever, the processor is also encountering the limitations of that model at a time when many new technologies threaten to disrupt the way the payments industry does business.

Visa Inc. announced adjusted quarterly net income of $1 billion on Wednesday, up nearly 14% from the same period last year, as revenues grew by 15%.

Vantiv, the payments processor, is buying Litle & Co., which processes payments for companies that sell to goods and services to consumers via the Internet, for $361 million.

Fundtech announced Tuesday that its payments platform is compatible with two Oracle database products.