Retailers

Square Inc.’s Feb. 22 announcement that it had dropped the 15-cent transaction fee for card-present transactions represents a return to a rate scheme the merchant-services company had last spring.

First American Payment Systems L.P., a Fort Worth, Texas-based ISO, has named Liz Curtis as manager of financial institutions. Formerly with Chase Paymentech LLC, Curtis will be responsible for working on referral deals with financial institutions.

Posted on video-sharing site YouTube almost a year ago, “PCI Rocks,” the PCI Security Standards Council animated video about the 12 requirements of the Data Security Standard has drawn more than 31,000 views since then, the council says.

ISO Paperless Transaction Corp. has added remote deposit capture-services to its product offerings, Financial Transmission Network Inc., the company providing the service, announced Feb. 21.

Security Card Services LLC’s decision to renew its processing contract with National Processing Co. stems partially from a degree of comfort the companies have amassed in their 14-year history of working together, according to John Lewis, the independent sales organization’s president.

Independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers using Panoptic Security Inc.’s payment-security service now have another tool to view their merchants’ security-compliance efforts–MyPCIDashboard, a service Panoptic announced Feb. 22.

Independent sales organization Paperless Transaction Corp. has added remote deposit capture-services to its product offerings, Financial Transmission Network Inc., the company providing the service, announced Feb. 21.

Consumer adoption likely will determine whether First Data Corp.’s decision to support Acculynk Inc.’s PaySecure Internet PIN-debit product benefits the processor’s merchant partners that decide to offer the online checkout payment option, observers say.

Blue Bamboo, a China-based point-of-sale terminal maker, on Feb. 18 announced that its P25-M printer is in final testing for approval as a Bluetooth device that works with devices using Apple Inc.’s iOS software.

Vendors often tout their products in press releases and through other efforts seeking publicity. But sometimes they choose to keep things relatively low key.

Hypercom Corp.’s preview of its fourth-quarter earnings Feb. 16 raised fears about the viability of VeriFone Systems Inc.’s plans to acquire its competitor in the second half of the year.

Having successfully nudged lawmakers to reconsider interchange caps, card issuers and payments networks are weighing the ramifications of another, less-discussed part of the Durbin amendment: so-called steering rules.

A glance at fraud statistics would seem to yield an obvious answer: the United States needs to catch up with the rest of the world and upgrade old-school magnetic stripe cards to modern chip and PIN models.

Mobile-network operators NTT Docomo Inc. of Japan and KT Corp. of South Korea have inked a deal to support Near Field Communication payments for smartphones in the two countries that use Google Inc.’s Android operating system.

The Australian capital territory of Canberra plans to roll out the MyWay smart card ticketing system on its Action bus service starting Feb. 21, a spokesperson at the bus operator tells PaymentsSource.

Financial institutions and consumers will be able to more quickly detect and respond to fraudulent transactions and suspicious bank-account activity using a mobile-based fraud-management service ClairMail Inc. has developed, the San Rafael, Calif.-based company announced Feb. 17.

Until a few years ago, payment card processors and merchant acquirers found it relatively easy to incorporate biannual April and October updates of interchange-rate tables and other mandates from the payment networks into their systems.

Hypercom Corp., which is being acquired by VeriFone Systems Inc., said in a regulatory filing Feb. 14 that the combined companies should generate nearly $2 billion in revenue next year.

Better-than-expected merchant reaction to Intuit Inc.’s offer of free card readers and no monthly service fees to small merchants using its GoPayment mobile-payments service has prompted the company to extend the offer indefinitely, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced Feb. 16.

As many as 1,000 credit union members around Maine are believed to have had their card accounts compromised and are now reporting unauthorized transactions on their accounts.