POS and Retail

IP Commerce Inc., a startup backed by Venrock Inc. and Intel Corp.'s venture-capital arm, is shutting its key business, which handles credit-card processing for companies including Groupon Inc., citing competition.

Phillips 66 has joined the retailer-driven Merchant Customer Exchange mobile payments and commerce initiative, the Houston-based gas station chain announced May 23. Phillips 66 also operates Conoco stations. The company joins MCX only two weeks after the mobile payment venture added another petroleum provider, Pacific Convenience & Fuels LLC.

Charge Anywhere LLC will have gateway software available when small U.S. merchants need to accept EMV-chip card payments with their smartphones.

Youth payments company Virtual Piggy is adding elements of gaming to its product mix via a partnership with JumpStart.

Blaze Mobile is developing a new Near Field Communication mobile phone attachment that attempts to build a more open mobile wallet by allowing consumers to choose from a series of payment accounts.

The most challenging and frustrating aspect of the Single Euro Payments Area project, according to a major German acquirer, is its goal of establishing common payment standards throughout Europe.

ZooZ is one several companies building new technology that attempts to improve the integration between marketing and mobile payments.

Square announced expansion into Japan with updated Register features today, after seeing two executives, Alyssa Cutright and Alex Petrov, leave the mobile payments company.

AnywhereCommerce is introducing a card reader about the size of a Zippo lighter that plugs into the audio jacks of mobile devices to accept both magnetic-stripe and chip-and-signature EMV payment cards.

Chase Paymentech Europe, a merchant acquiring and processing subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase, has introduced a new service designed to lighten the security burden for European online merchants.

ControlScan is providing online payments security for ConvergenceHealth's digital- and cloud-based healthcare software and services.

EBay Inc. said PayPal will be available in 2 million retail stores this year as it takes on Square Inc. and Intuit Inc. in the market for mobile payments.

Virtual Piggy is adding merchants in the U.K., setting up its youth money management and ecommerce system at Toy Galaxy and Toadstool companies.

ShopKeep POS designed Surround 360, its iPad point of sale software, to protect independent sales organizations from competitors out to "steal" merchant clients.

ScanPay's card-scanning technology, which allows consumers to enter their card credentials by scanning the card with a phone's camera, was designed to reduce cart abandonment at mobile shopping sites.

Google and Square have entered the notoriously challenging person-to-person payment field, sidestepping one of the major hurdles other companies have faced: signing up new users.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Starbucks Corp. are among 19 retailers opting out of a $7.25 billion antitrust settlement with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. over fees charged to merchants to process credit-card transactions.

Swipely has secured a $12 million Series B round of financing, which will fund its nationwide expansion, the payments and marketing company announced today.

Licensed gun dealers are finding it increasingly hard to accept card-not-present credit card or debit card transactions, but companies such as Tasker Payment Gateways are not gun-shy when it comes to serving the firearms industry.

Many merchants are still wary about accepting bitcoins, but new vendor partnerships and a maturation of the companies that handle bitcoin exchanges address some of the virtual currency's riskier aspects.