Payment processing

Payments-industry rivals sometimes put their differences aside to achieve a common goal.

Live Gamer Inc. has typically provided virtual currency services to video game developers, but as Nevada prepares to let casinos take their high-stakes games online, the vendor is betting that its expertise will prove valuable when the games put real cash at stake.

All eyes have been on Square this month with its investment from Starbucks and its new pricing option, but Intuit says it still has an advantage in mobile payments that Square can't match.

PayPal's point of sale mobile payment system combines over half a decade of initiatives — and a few notable setbacks along the way.

As a new partner for PayPal, an early partner for Isis and the first issuer to sign on to a new method of participating with Google Wallet, Discover Financial Services is establishing itself as a foundation for mobile payments initiatives.

PayPal next year will extend its reach through Discover Financial Services' network, enabling direct acceptance of the PayPal digital wallet at more than seven million U.S. merchants.

Visa is offering a new data encryption service that could compete with third-party security vendors' offerings. The service's launch also indicates the card brand's growing desire to push beyond the requirements of the Payment Card Industry data security standards.

Issuers exempt from the regulatory caps on debit card interchange are exploring the chance to grow their business-debit initiatives, stealing customers from larger rivals that now see such programs as unprofitable.

In a week's time, the mobile payments world was turned upside down as Square announced a major partnership with Starbucks and a radically different pricing option for merchants. Now payments providers are beginning to piece together how they can ride this wave instead of getting crushed underneath it.

Square is taking a bigger bite at the small-business market by offering flat-fee processing to small merchants, furthering the company's efforts to present itself as a more full-featured option for card acceptance.

ID Tech, a supplier of point-of-sale devices, has agreed to begin outfitting its SecureMag readers with TransArmor data encryption and tokenization from First Data.

It didn't take long for Jumio to release a new version of its Netswipe mobile software-development kit.

Norwegian banking group SpareBank 1 Gruppen will license Total System Services Inc.'s Prime 4 card-management system to support its issuance and issuer-processing activities under a deal the two companies announced.

Sionic Mobile, an Atlanta-based start-up that in June launched a mobile merchant-loyalty initiative in that city, is providing extra reward points to consumers to get them to use a Dwolla account for their spending.

Pundits often criticize prepaid card providers for having high monthly fees, but the real market pressure is on the fees charged for ATM access. As it turns out, prepaid card users very much want to keep using cash — but they don't want to pay to get it.

As more consumers try out Fiserv's person-to-person payment service, Popmoney, the tool is evolving to become as much a social tool as a payments one.

Merchant processor Global Payments expects to grow its direct presence in the health care market by agreeing to acquire Accelerated Payment Technologies.

With newcomers like Square gaining momentum in mobile payments, processors are more aggressively offering customers reasons to stick with them as merchants accept more payments outside their retail stores.

When crunching the numbers, it appears Square can't possibly make a profit in its new deal to process transactions for Starbucks.

First Data has reached an agreement to provide credit card processing and related services to First Niagara Bank in Buffalo, N.Y.