Retailers

PayPal’s most recent updates to its tools for programmers reflect a desire to simplify the process of integrating with mobile apps and other new channels.

Michael Duffy, president of Chase Paymentech, passed away Thursday night. He was 54. Dan Charron, the executive vice president of client services, has assumed the role of acting head of the Dallas-based merchant acquirer subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase.

Vacation property rental companies and bed-and-breakfast operators will now be able to accept online payments as they book clients through cloud-based WebReserv.com.

Many times, marketing constraints can slow financial institutions' rollout of Fiserv's SpotPay card readers. Fiserv's new spotpay.com website addresses this concern without compromising the vendor's mission of offering the device almost exclusively through banks and credit unions.

A relationship between McDonald's Corp. and Seamless allows consumers in Sweden to pay for their fast food with their mobile phones.

PayOne's lawsuit against Home Depot over its use of PayPal's point of sale payments technology is not the first legal battle PayOne has pursued with an entity tied to PayPal — and, the company says, it may not be the last.

Noting a series of “self-inflicted” issues that have hampered the company's performance, VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron promised a series of overhauls at the payments technology provider, including a renewed focus on research and development and better management of the resources dedicated to creating country-specific configurations of its products.

Teaching legislators how electronic payments work could help protect the industry from unwise regulation, according to speakers at the Southeast Acquirers Association annual conference.

JPMorgan Chase will assume ownership and begin servicing the AirTran-branded credit card in April, a move that consolidates Southwest Airlines’ two frequent flier cards under the same issuing bank, amid the ongoing combination of the two airlines’ operations.

"Shopping is boring," says ShopSavvy CEO John Boyd. His company is working with Capital One to turn the stale process of buying a product off the shelf into an eventful experience built around a mobile wallet.

First Data is providing the technology that underpins Foursquare's recent enhancements to its deals service, which allows credit and debit card holders to link their accounts to Foursquare's social network.

Many merchants still don't take credit or debit cards, usually because of the cost. Two-year-old Plastiq aims to help these holdouts by shifting the cost of card acceptance to the consumer.

Merchant-funded rewards provider fisoc hopes the communal element of Facebook mixed with special card offers can drive repeat payments volume for small merchants focused on their local communities.

Bitcoinstore, an online seller of computers, monitors, cameras and other electronics, opened for business recently with the promise of undercutting competitors who accept only conventional payments.

Small businesses are often the toughest sell for payments automation, and WePay is attempting to boost its penetration into this market by offering a new native app for iOS that enables remote invoicing and credit-card charging.

Affirm, the new mobile payments company that counts PayPal co-founder Max Levchin among its own founders, is already drawing buzz—and some head-scratching over certain aspects of its business model.

Merchant Warehouse announced it is adding a former VeriFone executive, Greg Cohen, as chief revenue and strategy officer.

Consumers are notoriously reluctant to choose new payment habits. This week, LevelUp and 20 retailers forced the issue by taking away their choice. The "credit card diet," which took place Feb. 26, involved 20 retailers in Boston and Washington D.C. They all refused credit cards for one day.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has positioned its merchant processing unit to provide far more services to merchant clients through its 10-year partnership with Visa Inc., a deal which potentially shifts more power to the issuer.

Independent ATM deployers worry about further reductions in interchange income, network mandates over accepting EMV cards and the possibility of another surge in lawsuits against them — this time over failing to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to a recent survey.