POS and Retail

Prepaid card and ATM management company Meta Payments has reached a partnership with Ubiquity Global Services to manage customer service and other customer management.

Banks and processors often avoid small direct response businesses out of risk concerns, though the category fits right into EVO Payments International's multi-media sweet spot.

The mobile point of sale (mPOS) market is growing quickly—ABI Research says about 46% of the overall point of sale market will be mobile in four years. But the technology is complex, requiring a careful strategy.

The big antitrust ruling against American Express could set off a price war that squeezes all payment card networks -- not just Amex -- as well as card-issuing banks.

When American Express forbids businesses from asking customers to use lower-cost credit cards, it's breaking U.S. antitrust law, a federal judge ruled.

MasterCard has launched a service that's designed to bolster wallet share of corporate clients with interests in Japan.

Payment technology company Pay.On has released an open platform for its payment infrastructure that will become available to the company’s clients.

Mobile payment company iZettle is countering the idea that EMV compliance increases merchant expense by offering a free version of its mobile chip-and-PIN card reader.

Starbucks' decision to support Apple Pay within the coffee chain's mobile payment app seems like a natural alliance of two major forces in mobile payments, but it raises a significant question: Why not do the same with Square, with which Starbucks has much deeper ties?

The Australian market has used EMV-chip cards for more than a decade, necessitating a very different approach to the mobile point of sale.

American Express will certainly suffer when its 16-year cobranding deal with Costco ends in 2016, but its executives will spend the next year building up the card brand's digital payment products to create enough opportunities to ease the company's short-term pain and guarantee its long-term health.

Encryption has become a political hot potato for the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council as it compiles a list of validated encryption vendors and services — and leaves off some companies that say they deserve to be recognized as secure.

When it comes to free loyalty programs, financial institutions are suffering from revenue model challenges and low uptake, though it's a problem that can be fixed.

Samsung is widely reported to be adding mobile-payment technology from LoopPay to its next Galaxy smartphone. Such an approach would be vastly different from that of Apple, PayPal or MCX's CurrentC — and it would address a key issue with LoopPay's own business model.

U.S. gas stations can wait until October 2017 to begin accepting EMV-chip cards or face the consequence of an increase in fraud liability, but there's already concern that the work at gas pumps could stall.

Thirty-four percent of merchants interviewed late last year for an Aite Group research report on EMV readiness had never heard of the U.S. migration to EMV-chip payment cards, despite the fast-approaching October 2015 deadline set by the card networks.

Amazon.com is a savvy and influential company in the e-commerce world, but its efforts in payments have been less consistent. It has significantly changed the way people redeem rewards and shop on third-party sites, but it has proven less successful in person-to-person payments and the mobile point of sale.

CardFlight has updated its SwipeSimple mobile point of sale device, which allows merchants to take payments and manage their business from smartphones and tablets.

Mobile wallets are typically designed to be most useful at the point of sale. Israeli location-based technology vendor WiseSec sees an opportunity to extend a mobile app's utility throughout the store by using beacons that can sense how far away a shopper is.

First Data is planning to launch a new suite of payment processing software in partnership with Capgemini, a financial consulting and outsourcing firm based in Paris.