Retailers

Financial Transaction Services is rebranding by taking on the name of its recently acquired payments gateway—CardConnect—and moving its headquarters to King of Prussia, Pa., to consolidate its operations.

Avant-Garde Marketing Solutions (AGMS), a merchant service provider, will sell and deploy a number of Ingenico’s new countertop terminals, including those that handle EMV-chip card payments.

A consumer watchdog group in Canada is speaking out in support of the major card brands in response to an argument brought by the country's Competition Bureau on behalf of retailers.

ZooZ, an Israel-based mobile payment company, has secured $2 million in a Series A financing round from supporters XSeed Capital, Lool Ventures and Rhodium. The company's funding now stands at $3.5 million.

Total System Services Inc. is adopting a new infrastructure for card issuing, updating its existing "black box" to allow issuers to more quickly launch new products and services and provide a single view of consumers across multiple relationships.

BlueSnap is offering its SnapMobile optimization technology, which aims to see more consumers complete the purchases they initiate on mobile devices.

Mobile point of sale systems could expand card acceptance by adding as much as 19 million merchants, resulting in a potential $1.1 trillion uptick in annual card payments, Javelin Strategy and Research says in a new report.

The merchants chosen to speak at Nacha's Payments 2013 conference didn't waste lot of time before swinging away at the expectation that they start accepting EMV-chip cards in the near future.

Roam Data Inc. has updated its mobile app to allow merchants to operate a complete point of sale system from smartphones or tablets.

Executives at Discover Financial Services sought to temper investor expectations of quick results from its partnership with PayPal, instead emphasizing the long-term benefits of the alliance, as well as other ongoing initiatives.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, and some dispensaries enjoy millions of dollars in annual sales. However, such establishments may not be ideal clients for ISOs unless they and their sale agents exercise caution, say those who work with the medical marijuana industry.

Ian Hermon, product marketing manager at Plantation, Fla.-based Thales e-Security Inc. spoke to PaymentsSource about the obstacles and options facing the U.S. payments industry during its multiyear migration to EMV cards.

Global Payments will begin offering merchants currency conversion services at their point of sale terminals through an integration with Planet Payment.

With bitcoin in the media spotlight, everyone seems to have an opinion on the price. Few recognize the profound implications of decentralized money for the monetary system, society and government – not to mention the emerging business opportunities.

The C-1 electric car is an inventive vehicle, built by a company with an inventive marketing strategy and an inventive way of accepting payments.

When PayPal begins distributing the EMV-chip card version of its PayPal Here mobile card reader in the U.K. this year, it will follow a pattern the eBay unit established in the U.S. of targeting a narrower market than its rivals do.

First Data is offering a new way to set up its card management technology, VisionPlus, to reduce cost and the upfront work of deployment.

The chief communications officer of Visa Inc. will leave the company at the end of May as part of the card network's merger of its corporate relations and marketing departments.

The use of ultrasonic noise — silent to the human ear — in mobile payments and rewards hasn't garnered as much attention as Near Field Communication chips and QR codes, but there are a few successful implementations.

Without any clear drive to consolidate, the mobile-wallet market will remain chaotic for merchants in the near-term. But from the consumer's perspective, it won't be chaotic at all.