Retailers

Independent sales organizations apparently aren’t content to stand by and let the big tech companies dominate the new market for micromerchant electronic payments.

Yahoo Inc. is on the cusp of reinventing itself, potentially as an important payments provider that could rival not only PayPal Inc. but Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide as well.

Visa Inc. has rolled out another point-of-sale fraud-fighting tool for payment card issuers already facing costly changes to block fraud at the checkout level with EMV technology.

Independent sales organizations and sales agents will play a key role in teaching America how to use EMV cards, an executive at a payment-terminal provider says.

Online coupon site RetailMeNot.com plans to ride the momentum of a paperless coupon beta test it held at last month’s South by Southwest multimedia festival in Austin, Texas, to stage a national rollout this summer, PaymentsSource has learned.

At least one vending machine payment-processing company has cut off acceptance of debit MasterCards because of new debit card interchange rates that resulted from the Durbin amendment.

Commuters who spend time in Austin, Texas, may find it simpler to locate and pay for parking in the state’s capital city.

The switch from magnetic stripe cards to EMV chip cards in the U.S. appears unlikely to create a surge in demand for EMV-capable terminals, at least in the near future.

Global Payments Inc.'s recent data breach is causing many payments-industry participants, including hundreds of small U.S. processors, to recheck their security, one security expert contends.

Payments-terminal makers are fighting a war on at least two fronts.

PayPal Inc. has recast its offerings for small merchants, a move it says builds on its recent launch of the PayPal Here portable card reader.

The availability announced last month of ACI Worldwide Inc.’s newest integrated payment service is a step in the right direction to prepare merchant acquirers, retail banks, and ATM and payment processors for market changes ahead, one analyst contends.

Global Payments Inc.’s massive data breach underscores the need for the U.S. to embrace the EMV standard without delay, at least one chip card proponent contends.

American Express Co. is working with Transaction Network Services Inc. to provide a payment-gateway service for e-commerce.

Two weeks before bitterly contested regulations regarding its debit cards went into effect in the fall, MasterCard Worldwide threw a party in New York. The company wanted to trumpet its commitment to the newest technology in payments, including a role in the about-to-launch Google Wallet, which lets a handful of eligible consumers buy chewing gum or bottled water by waving their smartphones around. Executives at the event were determinedly festive.

There’s a train pulling into the station, and it’s right on time.

The Global Payments Inc. breach and others like it suggest banks should rethink how they protect card data.

A chip-and-signature route to U.S. EMV adoption certainly would be less painful for banks and merchants than would the chip-and-PIN approach used most everywhere else, but taking the easy way out carries risk.

Global Payments' response to the data breach disclosed last week, as well as the card networks' response, followed a familiar script.

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers are calling for immediate action to pass long-stalled data-security legislation in the face of last week’s news of a massive data breach at cards processor Global Payments Inc. (see story).