Payment processing

Two companies that support online payments are getting involved with Facebook Inc. to streamline micropayments for virtual goods users purchase on the popular social networking Web site.

Merchant-portfolio sellers that harbored visions of selling their portfolios at 36 times their monthly residual revenue finally have acquiesced to buyers’ demand to pay less, say observers of the acquiring market. Residual revenue is the recurring transaction revenue acquirers collect from merchants.

Sales agents for independent sales organizations increasingly are seeking additional industry training to improve their abilities to better compete for scarce business during the difficult economy, observers note.

MShift filed suit in federal court in San Francisco Friday claiming Digital Insight is infringing on its patent for the company’s pioneering mobile banking technology that Digital Insight is providing to hundreds of credit unions and banks.

Mopay Inc. has announced plans to expand its global presence. Under the initiative, the Germany-based mobile-payments company hopes to enable U.S. consumers to purchase virtual goods and other digital content using their mobile-phone accounts, the company notes in a recent press release. It also hopes to create a new revenue channel to U.S. gaming and social-network providers.

A payment breach at an unnamed Helsinki, Finland, business has exposed transaction records from more than 100,000 payment cards to hackers, reports YLE, a news service of the Finnish Broadcasting Co.

Euronet Worldwide Inc., which conducts about 75% of its operations outside the United States, last week reported fourth-quarter revenue of $285.6 million, up 11.7% from $255.7 million during the same period in 2008. Revenue for the year totaled $1.03 billion, down 1.9% from $1.05 billion in 2008.

Despite a fourth quarter net loss Heartland Payment Systems Inc. attributes largely to breach-related expenses, the Princeton, N.J.-based payment processor sees “encouraging progress” in small and midsize merchant transaction-processing volume and same-store sales, Robert Carr, Heartland chairman and CEO, told analysts during a conference call this morning.

Fraudsters on the prowl for payment card data last year increasingly turned to the hospitality industry as a source for the valuable data, according to the Trustwave Global Security Report 2010 released yesterday.

FSV Payment Systems Inc., a transaction processor and program manager for payroll, government-benefit and general-purpose reloadable prepaid cards, on Monday renewed its agreement with Cardtronics Inc.’s Allpoint surcharge-free ATM network.

Visa Inc. and Travelex Central Services Ltd. last week announced the launch of the Visa Money Transfer service in Australia.

Ritz Interactive Inc. says it is using payment-processing technology from Merchant e-Solutions Inc. to support its more than 18 Web sites, which include RitzCamera.com and Wolf Camera.com. Ritz began using the service a few months ago but only recently made the deal public.

A sales agent presents a proposition to move a portfolio of merchants from one ISO to another. While it sounds like a good deal for the ISO that receives the portfolio, it might not be. The ISO that accepts the merchant portfolio could be sued, even if it has not signed a written contract agreeing not to move the merchants in question.

Merchants always are interested in the cost of payment card processing, but sales agents should evaluate the importance of price when listening to merchants about their needs, observers say.

Processors, not ISOs, likely will handle many provisions of a law that takes effect next January requiring acquirers to report merchant credit and debit card transactions to the Internal Revenue Service, says Henry Helgeson, co-CEO of Merchant Warehouse Inc., a Boston-based ISO.

Woodforest Financial Group has renewed an agreement with the Pulse electronic funds transfer network in which Pulse will provide the privately held bank holding company ATM and PIN-based point-of-sale debit services, both companies announced recently.

Social-networking site Multiply has inked a deal for settling online payments with G-Xchange Inc., a statement from the telecom operator said. G-Xchange is a wholly owned subsidiary of Philippines-based Globe Telecom.

The Internal Revenue Service, in probing how $100 billion of credit card payments escape sales and income taxes each year, is looking at clients of processors including First Data Corp.

Cambridge University researchers looking into chip-and-PIN security say they successfully tricked a point-of-sale terminal into accepting a “dummy” PIN for a smart card using a “man-in-the-middle” attack.

Total Systems Solutions Inc., also known as TSYS, is entering the Italian market for the first time.