POS and Retail

As a new partner for PayPal, an early partner for Isis and the first issuer to sign on to a new method of participating with Google Wallet, Discover Financial Services is establishing itself as a foundation for mobile payments initiatives.

PayPal next year will extend its reach through Discover Financial Services' network, enabling direct acceptance of the PayPal digital wallet at more than seven million U.S. merchants.

Visa is offering a new data encryption service that could compete with third-party security vendors' offerings. The service's launch also indicates the card brand's growing desire to push beyond the requirements of the Payment Card Industry data security standards.

The merchant wasn't interested in buying, but Joe Porco handed him a business card anyway. The merchant disdainfully threw the card into a waste basket ... and three years of perseverance later he was doing business with the merchant.

Intrix has introduced Invoice Creator, a module for its payment gateway that enables merchants to create and manage invoices from a virtual location.

Independent sales organizations, banks and processors can now offer merchants a virtual business center with 24-7 access to information, services and tools.

In a week's time, the mobile payments world was turned upside down as Square announced a major partnership with Starbucks and a radically different pricing option for merchants. Now payments providers are beginning to piece together how they can ride this wave instead of getting crushed underneath it.

Square is taking a bigger bite at the small-business market by offering flat-fee processing to small merchants, furthering the company's efforts to present itself as a more full-featured option for card acceptance.

ID Tech, a supplier of point-of-sale devices, has agreed to begin outfitting its SecureMag readers with TransArmor data encryption and tokenization from First Data.

Some the nation’s leading merchants announced today the formation of the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, a new mobile-commerce company that will support paying at the register with customizable offers.

Total System Services is taking a different approach to sales by forming a joint venture with Central Payment Co.

Sites like Groupon have captured consumers' attention and loyalty in a way that credit card issuers often dream of. A few savvy payments companies have found ways to benefit from the daily-deals fad.

Merchant acquirers and tech companies are collaborating on mobile payments issues in a new group formed by the Electronic Transactions Association.

Transaction processor Vantiv plans to offer its new Mobile Accept card reader to help brick-and-mortar merchants handle payments outside their stores — without paying more than they do for in-store payments.

Google has changed the rules about how issuers get into its mobile wallet, and American Express is the first to vocally and vehemently oppose Google's new setup. The outcome of this dispute could decide who controls transaction data in mobile payments.

Until recently, the acquiring industry viewed Google and other high-tech firms as interlopers in the payments business. Now, acquirers are courting those very companies as potential business partners.

VeriFone shares fell the most in more than two months after Starbucks, the largest coffee-shop chain, said it will use Square’s rival payment system in 7,000 stores.

Starbucks' $25 million investment in Square says a lot about the mobile payment provider's appeal to larger merchants — but the coffee chain's decision to leave out some of Square's technology also speaks volumes.

U.S. Senator Richard Durbin said merchants should "think hard" before signing a $6.6 billion settlement with Visa, MasterCard and banks over credit-card fees.

ViVOtech has sold its ViVOpay payment-hardware business, the company said Monday in a notice on its website.