Retailers

Visa's rules for card acceptance exceed 800 pages — plus supplements — and MasterCard's are nearly 300 pages. But even though the card networks have explained their expectations in painstaking detail, the difference between strict rules and mere guidelines is much blurrier when finally given to the merchant.

With the CFPB flexing its regulatory muscles, it's no surprise that collectors are making compliance a priority.

Back in 2014, Dekkers Davidson, then CEO of the Merchant Customer Exchange, declared that the mobile wallet venture would draw inspiration from Uber and be just as disruptive to financial services as the popular ride-sharing app was to the taxi industry. But Uber's success stems largely from its decision to make payments invisible, whereas MCX was developing its CurrentC wallet to do just the opposite.

Mobility's incursion into merchant services is normally treated as a threat to independent sales organizations and legacy acquirers, who will find themselves on the outside as technology-based services take over the store.

Every business runs the risk of fraud, but some are more likely to be targeted than others. The customers you court, the products you sell and even the amount of time you have been in business can make you more vulnerable to an attack or more appealing to a cyber criminal.

When Walmart switched on Walmart Pay this week at 600 stores in two states, it marked the beginning of a new era, when merchants finally take the reins in mobile payments — and, by extension, the future of digital commerce.

The Merchant Customer Exchange, a retailer-backed mobile wallet venture of over three years in the works, has postponed its plans for a national rollout of its mobile wallet.

Stadiums, concert halls and other entertainment settings have long been venues in which terminal providers like NCR or Oracle would likely have units in place, offering a vast array of functions tailored to those businesses.

Transaction laundering is an increasingly popular scam, in which cyber-criminals hijack the legitimate payment process to sell all manner of illicit goods and services online.

Square, which has been aggressively adding merchant services to enhance its mobile payments product, has added an invoice scheduling feature to add flexibility to merchant payments.