Retailers

Total Merchant Services announced today that it has acquired Fanminder, a social and mobile marketing company based in San Francisco.

In North America, QR code-based mobile payment apps from Starbucks and LevelUp generate a code for each user, and the merchant scans the code to accept a payment. In Brazil, PicPay is flipping the model and making the consumer scan codes presented by the merchant.

Payments and social media have had a rocky relationship. Many companies that have tried to blend the two have failed or been forced to change their business model. Gumroad Inc., a startup founded by a 20-year-old veteran of Pinterest, says it gets it right.

Madison Dearborn Partners is buying a minority stake in EVO Payments International LLC and helping to fund the acquirer's international expansion and other growth initiatives.

Merchant Warehouse has announced that Combase USA has been certified as an integrated partner with the Genius ITX Customer Engagement Platform.

It's going to be a big year for mobile payments. Now that several mobile wallets are in consumers' hands, the companies behind them are refining their products. What do Apple, Isis, Google, PayPal and others have in mind for the near future?

Google's initial launch of its mobile wallet at a special event in New York last year was a flashy affair meant to showcase every feature and every partnership. Its approach this year is much more low-key, as is that of its rival Apple.

If things are truly bigger in Texas, then mPowa CEO Dan Wagner figures it's a good place for merchants to be able to accept credit card payments via mobile devices in those wide, open spaces.

With many of its legal questions and organizational issues addressed, the Merchant Customer Exchange has turned its focus to the technology that will drive its mobile commerce initiative.

vPromos Inc. and Merchants' Choice Payment Solutions is making vPromos' vPunc Rewards program available to more than 50,000 merchants across the country.

ISO Advance is offering residual cash advances ranging from $5,000 to more than $1 million with terms of six to 12 months.

PayPal signed many new retail partnerships this year, while also building a digital wallet and a handful of plastic cards to complement its online payment system.

2012 began with the abrupt departure of PayPal's president. Upon putting a new leader in place, the eBay unit made many key moves to adapt its operations and its product line to the fast-changing payments market.

After a flurry of activity in the past year and a half to establish itself as a global payments processor, EVO Payments International LLC plans to move into the Spanish market with a proposed acquisition of Banco Popular's merchant acquiring business.

Fraud and data security trends can change by the minute, often making it difficult to pinpoint a specific development as a key event during the course of a year. Not so in 2012.

Digital currency, especially Bitcoin, picked up in popularity this year as the concept began garnering positive attention from payment players — but a series of negative incidents kept the skepticism alive as well.

The payments industry is no stranger to fraud, but there are some key events that stand out over the course of 2012 — and threaten to spill into 2013.

It's been a rocky year for digital currencies. Facebook began phasing out its Facebook Credits while Bitcoin continues to suffer a bad reputation. However, there are some promising developments on the horizon, with experienced payments providers joining in the digital currency game.

The Google Wallet we see today is a much different product from what we had a year ago. Here are the major changes that took place this year, and the challenges Google faced — and still faces today.

For a company that has manufactured point-of-sale terminals in the UK since 1989, Thyron Systems Ltd. admits it has done so in a fairly quiet manner.