Retailers

Any way you slice it, 2015 was the year of fintech. From Bitcoin to marketplace lending and everything in between, fintech was a venture capital honey trap and a cocktail party buzzword.

Verifone, which is challenged to move beyond its reliance on selling traditional payments hardware, is producing an almost dizzying array of products in hopes of diversifying.

The pressure on merchant acquirers to enable transactions in more channels for more merchant types is accelerating, and TSYS is turning to the M&A market to accelerate its digital diversification, announcing an agreement with Vista Equity Partners to acquire Vista portfolio company TransFirst for $2.35 billion in cash.

Retailers often worry that their customers won't return after a breach, but as logical as this expectation is, it may be far from the truth.

Consumers may not care much about mobile payments, but many of them care a lot about mobile loyalty.

Vending machines were among the first categories to accept contactless mobile payments, but they still rely heavily on cash for impulse snack purchases — at least for now.

The payments landscape was on the rise in in the past year with the launch and adoption of several new virtual wallets.

To plan for the inevitable, issuers need to consider three essential risk-management strategies including a business continuity and disaster recovery plan, a diversified partner strategy, and continued education for EMV cardholders and merchants.

Reeling from the loss of the Costco account and other setbacks in 2015, American Express is looking to the future the same way any investor might — banking on the diversification of its portfolio to slowly climb back.

The future of retail isn't happening behind the counter; it's happening in the aisles, on mobile phones and at a much faster pace than even the Internet can accommodate. And all of these ideas were the subject of excitement and debate at the National Retail Federation's conference in New York.

For processors, EMV has been the hot topic, as the industry looked to the liability shift last fall. But the challenge has just started, as the migration presents myriad security and compliance tasks.

The newest audience flocking to omnichannel shopping is the one no one invited—fraudsters.

American Express Co., the biggest credit- card issuer by purchases, said fourth-quarter profit fell 38% as expenses rose and the company took a restructuring charge.

It may seem tough for a system that limits itself to one retailer per vertical to expand, but Plenti is making it happen.

Global Payments Inc. has finalized an agreement to distribute Mobeewave’s contactless mobile card acceptance technology to its Canadian clients beginning this spring.

Starbucks has integrated its mobile pre-ordering and payment feature into its Android app in the U.K.

For years, the financial services industry has relied on tactics such as education campaigns, sales pitches and financial penalties to get merchants to upgrade their technology. Ironically, the bad security that led to Target's 2013 data breach may have been the strongest way to deliver this message.

Financial institutions, at one time the central facilitators of payments, find themselves in a rapidly changing payment environment today and confronted by all the various competitive digital payment and money movement offerings that are available in the market and directed at their account holders.

It may seem odd for a vendor of payment acceptance hardware to discredit EMV security, which is commonly seen as a catalyst for hardware sales, but that's exactly what MagTek is doing.

Already facing technology-driven threats to their relevancy, independent sales organizations (ISOs) face another dilemma: should ISOs spread their wings with numerous acquirers and processors, or stick with one that provides the best deal for servicing merchant clients?