Point-of-sale

As the U.S. payments industry advances in its migration to EMV-chip cards, some merchants perceive the EMV push as "a giant head-fake" to establish a foundation for mobile payments based on Near Field Communication technology.

MasterCard is working on new mobile payments functions that give shoppers the choice between Near Field Communication chips and QR codes — two mobile payments methods that have competed in the market and are typically treated as mutually exclusive.

Former VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron has partnered with private equity shop GTCR to form Opus Global Holdings, a company that will pursue acquisitions in the financial technology and payments sector.

Italian mobile point of sale company Jusp has launched a mobile chip-and-PIN card reader as a plug-in device, veering from the more common approach of using a separate Bluetooth device.

U.S. banks and merchants face many obstacles in preparing for EMV chip-based cards at the point of sale — and the Web is no less reluctant to change.

Payment terminal maker VeriFone has appointed Paul Galant, previously a Citigroup payments executive, to be its chief executive officer and a member of its board of directors, effective Oct 1.

Richard Lyon is the new commercial director for Northern Europe at Spire Payments, a payments technology company.

MasterCard is actively building payments capabilities for Google Glass, Google's wearable computing device.

United Merchant Services Inc., a vendor of payment processing and point of sale systems, has received funding from The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to expand globally and to enhance its technology platform, client service and sales effort.

The Isis Mobile Wallet initiative has suffered a setback with Capital One and Barclays pulling out of current testing, but the Isis venture has just as many issuers staying on to fuel its upcoming nationwide launch.

When Google decided to create an iPhone version of its Google Wallet, it turned to Austin-based Mutual Mobile for help — the same app developer that's quietly working on an overhaul of the Isis mobile wallet.

An iOS version of Google Wallet launches today on the Apple App Store, bringing the search giant's recently revamped mobile wallet to iPhone devices.

It's been five months since PayPal began disseminating its point of sale payment system to all Discover merchants, but First Data, a massive Atlanta-based payment processor, isn't in any rush to support the initiative.

Revel Systems saw an opportunity in the power outage that halted the last Super Bowl. And it's an opportunity that has started to show results.

LevelUp's software development kit (SDK), released last week, allows companies such as Zuppler to add mobile payments without drawing users away from the merchant's branded mobile app.

When Shae Whitney was selling bitters at farmer's markets for a year and a half, she used Square's mobile card reader to accept payments. But when she opened a retail location with her partner in June, she switched to Groupon's iPad-based point of sale system, Breadcrumb.

As banks desperately try to lower their risk at the point of sale, a San Jose startup is working to create a device ID and authentication scheme that it hopes will eventually reduce fraud.

MagicBand, a system that Walt Disney Co. has been testing all year with a limited number of employees and Walt Disney World resort patrons, seems to be poised for success based on what looks like an extreme level of commitment to it — so far.

MasterCard is placing more emphasis on things like airline boarding, wearable computing and many other things the card network contends can be used to win a consumer's business long before the payment is made.

SavedPlus has launched a platform that encourages consumers to save a small amount of money every time they make a payment.