Point-of-sale

By now, many merchants should be wondering if they made the right decision by failing to act before last fall’s EMV liability shift.

Most consumers, when dining, still enjoy the simplicity of dropping cash on the table than using something newer, like an EMV card or a mobile wallet, even when those payment forms are becoming more commonplace in other stores.

Heartland Payment Systems is quickly accumulating technology to serve smaller merchants and restaurants, two key pieces of the services that made the processor attractive to Global Payments, which is in the midst of acquiring Heartland.

In the past year, Verifone's European market share has grown more than 10 percentage points, and Felix declares it her proudest moment in a career that spans 26 years.

At the four-month mark after the U.S. EMV liability shift went into effect, it's still a waiting game; larger issuers and merchants tend to be on top of the chip-card situation and many smaller ones are not, but experts say it's too early to draw conclusions.

Any way you slice it, 2015 was the year of fintech. From Bitcoin to marketplace lending and everything in between, fintech was a venture capital honey trap and a cocktail party buzzword.

Verifone, which is challenged to move beyond its reliance on selling traditional payments hardware, is producing an almost dizzying array of products in hopes of diversifying.

Vending machines were among the first categories to accept contactless mobile payments, but they still rely heavily on cash for impulse snack purchases — at least for now.

Global Payments Inc. has finalized an agreement to distribute Mobeewave’s contactless mobile card acceptance technology to its Canadian clients beginning this spring.

For years, the financial services industry has relied on tactics such as education campaigns, sales pitches and financial penalties to get merchants to upgrade their technology. Ironically, the bad security that led to Target's 2013 data breach may have been the strongest way to deliver this message.

It may seem odd for a vendor of payment acceptance hardware to discredit EMV security, which is commonly seen as a catalyst for hardware sales, but that's exactly what MagTek is doing.

Already facing technology-driven threats to their relevancy, independent sales organizations (ISOs) face another dilemma: should ISOs spread their wings with numerous acquirers and processors, or stick with one that provides the best deal for servicing merchant clients?

Subscription billing is now mainstream. Savvy consumers are happily paying small monthly subscription fees for their favorite products rather than forking over a big up-front payment.

Verifone plans to acquire payment technology and switching solutions provider AJB Software, a move that would allow the point of sale hardware maker to offer more services to its acquiring partners as merchants deploy EMV security and mobile wallet acceptance.

Seven years after placing its first smart terminal in Africa as part of a financial inclusion program, French terminal maker Ingenico says the program has progressed to where it now has 50,000 terminals that aid financial services in the region.

Through a partnership with Intel, terminal maker Ingenico Group has developed a contactless payment technology that is being used in a Panasonic tablet.

To facilitate its push into the U.S. market, Splitit (formerly PayItSimple) recently added its cloud-based interest-free installment payment technology as a free plugin for e-commerce merchants using the WooCommerce platform.

In the war on cash, Canada doesn't hold a candle to Sweden, where bills and coins are used for less than 5% of retail transactions, or Denmark, which plans to eradicate cash by 2030. But recent research suggests Canada is quickly closing the gap as its rate of contactless payments is soaring.

Walmart has entered the mobile payments industry, announcing in December that it was introducing Walmart Pay, an upgrade to Walmart’s existing app that will allow in-store shoppers to pay with their smartphones at checkout.

Payments technology provider Elavon says it is among the first payment processing companies to offer Apple Pay to Canadian businesses.