Retailers

Now that the Electronic Transactions Association has been administering the Certified Payments Professional credential for a full year, independent sales organizations’ executives and sales agents could start facing more pressure to obtain certification, an acquiring industry veteran says.

Since Square launched its mobile card reader, VeriFone Systems has worked feverishly to slow its rival's runaway momentum. The news that VeriFone is changing its strategy with its Sail reader is the latest in a long line of assaults and retreats.

VeriFone Systems Inc., the largest maker of credit-card terminals, is moving away from competing directly with Square Inc. in mobile payments, according to David Talach, VeriFone’s vice president of industry engagement.

Keeping up with technology could pose one of the greatest challenges for the acquiring industry in the coming year.

Visa Inc. attracted 50 banks and credit unions to its V.me digital wallet by offering a system that did not distance issuers from customer relationships and transaction data. But does the wallet hold the same appeal for the merchants that accept it?

Intuit's 2012 New Year resolution for its GoPayment card reader was to take it around the world. It did so in bookend fashion.

Like many New Year's resolutions, this one got off to a great start and then languished. Intuit started the year by offering its GoPayment reader in Canada. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company's next significant international expansion was last week's push into the UK market with a pilot program called Intuit Pay.

Cheap travel and social media continue to connect people all over the world. Companies focusing on e-commerce and payments gateways could see success as the world becomes more globalized by helping merchants handle payments from those who want to spend beyond their borders.

Typical acquirers — including banks, processors and independent sales organizations — stand to lose up to 5% of their business next month because of problems with Internal Revenue Service 1099K reporting, a tax expert says.

Square and Lemon, two companies that offer mobile wallets on Apple's iPhone handsets, have updated their apps to work with Apple's Passbook wallet.

Square, the mobile-payments startup founded by Jack Dorsey, is giving small merchants the ability to sell gift cards to shoppers on the go, stepping up competition with eBay’s PayPal business.

Apple introduced its Passbook app — a wallet that stores other mobile wallets — alongside the iPhone 5 in September. Three months later, has Passbook revolutionized mobile payments? Or is it starving from lack of support?

Merchant Warehouse, a Boston-based ISO, has certified Combase USA as an integrated partner on the Merchant Warehouse Genius ITX Customer Engagement Platform.

Before the mobile card reader phenomenon took off, it was unlikely that a small-business owner could walk into a nearby store, pay $10 and walk out minutes later with the ability to accept card payments. Today, mobile payment devices are competing for shelf space with a growing number of major retailers.

Better ATM Services offers open-loop Visa prepaid cards through ATMs, but such one-size-fits-all cards don't appeal to all consumers. To appeal to shoppers who prefer closed-loop gift cards, Better ATM is testing cards that work at nine merchants.

Isis, mobile-pay venture formed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, has signed two deals that would allow consumers to use its Near Field Communication-based mobile wallet at vending machines that accept cashless payments.

Six or so interrelated events have aligned to help a U.S.-based independent sales organization expand into a global processor operating in 41 countries.

In an effort to make its style of alternative mobile and online payments more accessible, Dwolla launched several new features.

The mobile-payment provider Spindle has entered an agreement with the point of sale technology distributor Integrated Payments to offer its mobile commerce system to Integrated Payments' clients.

Adyen is launching a portable card reader that accepts both mag-stripe and EMV chip-card payments — the latter a feature that’s still rare in the U.S. even at hard-wired point of sale terminals.

It appears Near Field Communication payment technology is on the verge of coming into its own — at least in terms of its availability, though not necessarily in consumer adoption.