Retailers

While Facebook is moving to phase out its Facebook Credits, Amazon.com Inc. announced the launch of Amazon Coins, a very similar virtual currency for spending on its Kindle Fire tablet.

VeriFone Systems Inc. said Chief Executive Officer Douglas Bergeron’s trading was the subject of inquiries by the U.S. Attorney and Securities and Exchange Commission, which ended their probes without action.

VeriFone announced Monday the appointment of a new chief financial officer. Marc E. Rothman, a former chief financial officer at Motorola, is becoming an executive vice president at VeriFone and its CFO. He will succeed Robert Dykes, 63, who will retire from his post at the end of the month.

As Loylogic traverses the world looking for more than just a single partner for its rewards redemption app, it's attempting to sweeten the user experience by reducing the amount of navigation needed at the point of sale.

It's shopping season in the payments industry. Just last month, Ingenico, ACI Worldwide and Fidelity National Information Services announced separate acquisitions. Many other companies have bought their peers in recent months.

Numerous merchants don't realize their systems accept Discover, prompting the network to visit their stores in person to ask that the retailers stop turning down its cards.

Verizon Wireless plans to start selling Square Inc.'s mobile card readers in its retail stores today.

Boston-based independent sales organization Merchant Warehouse is launching its Genius payment acceptance product for general availability. The system has been in testing since June 2012.

The council announced Jan. 31 its guidelines for e-commerce data safety. The information is a result of research completed by the council's e-commerce security special interest group.

Technology is moving so quickly that independent sales organizations are finding it difficult to remain relevant.

American Express Co. finds itself swirling in the middle of anti-trust litigation and proposed settlements that the company isn't directly a party to.

Mobile banking is the wave of the future. It's also the future of everything from Google's Wallet to Jack Dorsey's Square to eBay's PayPal. How long mobile payments will remain largely a technology of the future — and how quickly they'll become part-and-parcel of the here-and-now — depends largely on how quickly consumers make them their own.

Jan. 27 marked the first day merchants nationwide could hit consumers with a checkout fee for using a credit card. Nothing has changed overnight, but some merchants are likely to test the waters sooner than others.

Canada's right next door and has lots of English speakers, so it might seem the ideal place for American independent sales organizations to expand. But the two countries' business and cultural practices differ in ways that Americans may not expect.

Mainstream consumers are still slow to adopt newer payment technology, but several cities are pushing ahead of the rest of the world.

Square Inc. said Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois has resigned, marking the departure of an executive who has helped the company grow to more than 3 million customers. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar will become acting COO.

Synqera is trying to set itself apart from rivals in the targeted-offer crowd by using point-of-sale hardware with data collection tools that look at everything from weather patterns to the shopper's mood.

Priority Payment Systems LLC has signed up for payment processing services from TSYS, or Total System Services Inc.

Citibank India announced the launch of a mobile and tablet card reading device today developed by Ezetap Mobile Solutions.

Amazon.com Inc. has added an in-app purchasing feature for games and other programs developed for the Web, Mac and PC.