Retailers

Billhighway, a 13-year-old Troy, Mich.-based firm that offers accounting, cash management and payment processing to nonprofit firms, plans to join the fray with a mobile payment option of its own.

ShopKeep POS, a small independent sales organization, is capturing the attention of companies big and small. Earlier this month, it worked with PayPal to test a mobile-payment system, and today it announced plans with Dwolla and SCVNGR's LevelUp.

The traditional payment terminal's future took another hit this week with ShopKeep POS announcing plans to integrate Dwolla and LevelUp mobile payments into its iPad-based checkout system.

Despite the decisions by some of the leading mobile-payment providers to work within the existing infrastructure, investors are concerned that legacy players' operations soon might become obsolete. And VeriFone is serving as their poster child.

Banks and credit unions that have watched from the sidelines as the likes of Square, PayPal and Intuit built a mobile-payments market from scratch now have their own product to offer — a product merchants can't get off a retail-store shelf or from an independent sales organization.

Advanced encryption methods, mobile payment security and various other technologies figure to be major topics once again when the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council's participants meet this week.

Discover is pushing aggressively to be at the heart of many mobile-payments initiatives. It's doing a lot that its rivals are not — but there are a few ways it might lose ground.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council plans to recruit more soldiers in its ongoing war against fraudsters and cybercrooks. A new program allows any qualified individual to become a certified PCI Professional.

VeriFone's stock price tumbled after the maker of payment terminals reported third-quarter sales that fell short of analysts' estimates, citing unfavorable currency swings, competition in Europe and a fire in Brazil.

Acculynk says it has hit "an absolute home run" in completing an acquisition that brings its online PIN-debit technology to small and midsize merchants.

Ingenico continues to pursue U.S. market share to capitalize on the breakup of rival payment-terminal maker Hypercom last year, and wireless terminals are a key part of that strategy.

Cards for Discover Financial Services will be issued in Europe for the first time through an expanded partnership between the credit card company and Russian Standard Bank.

Square has stolen the spotlight — after convincing Starbucks to switch to Square for processing, the mobile-payments vendor gave other merchants the option to accept cards for a flat $275 monthly fee. How can a rival mobile-pay provider compete?

Now's the time for independent sales organizations to start offering mobile-payments options to their merchant customers.

Merchants may have to rely on independent sales organizations and agents to help them make the best use of technology-based loyalty schemes.

VeriFone is making good on its original promise to open up its Square-like mobile card reader, Sail, to developers.

Google Wallet is under increasing pressure — though the mobile wallet has been in consumers' hands for over a year, Google still has fewer issuer partners than its rival Isis, and with the Merchant Customer Exchange wallet on the horizon, Google now faces competition from the very retailers it seeks to attract.

A payments technology provider is enabling acquirers, independent sales organizations and agents to offer a prepaid MasterCard to their merchant customers and share with them a portion of each purchase.

Small business owners in Europe certainly won't have a shortage of mobile payment options to choose from, as more companies enter the market locally and from the U.S.

Payments-industry rivals sometimes put their differences aside to achieve a common goal.