Retailers

The biggest trend in merchant acquiring this year is a concentration on developing and selling mobile card acceptance to micromerchants, a new report suggests.

Isis, the wireless carrier-led mobile-payments venture, just crossed off a relatively small but integral item on its to-do list in signing Visa Inc., American Express Co. and MasterCard Worldwide to its system.

Isis, the mobile carrier-led mobile payments venture that initially planned to compete against incumbent payment networks, now has formed relationships with them, it announced July 19.

Citigroup Inc. plans to issue chip-based credit cards that adhere to the EMV Integrated Circuit Card Specifications later this year.

Continuing efforts to get its Serve digital wallet into consumers’ hands, American Express Co. has signed a deal with Sprint Nextel to put the payments application on the Sprint Zone website, where Sprint customers go to manage their mobile-phone accounts, Amex announced July 18.

Still on the fence about EMV? High uptake from an early adopter, the United Nations Federal Credit Union, is allowing it to expand the card's availability, and provides evidence U.S. cardholders really like to use chip and PIN cards when traveling overseas.

As the first Irish bank to promote contactless payments, The Bank of Ireland plans to use one-on-one communications with cardholders to promote the benefits of contactless payment technology when it rolls out Visa payWave cards later this year.

Supporting acceptance of electronic payments at large, international sporting events promotes higher transaction volumes among tourists for the countries that host them even after the events are over, according to a recent tourism impact report from Visa Inc.

As his company continues its mission to replace wallets and traditional payment terminals, MobilePayUSA CEO Randy Smith believes his company’s Virtual Terminal represents “more than a new way to pay; you are getting payments and marketing.”

Acknowledging the growing movement toward EMV chip-and-PIN technology in the U.S., most card-security professionals believe banks eventually will move away from issuing magnetic stripe cards, albeit slowly, a new survey report suggests.

Collective Point of Sale Solutions Ltd., a Toronto-based merchant-services provider, is deploying Hypercom Corp. point-of-sale terminals to split and transmit EMV credit and debit card transactions to the least-costly processors, the companies announced July 12.

Not many companies are doubling their business estimates for the next year, but PayPal Inc. has done just that by projecting a 100% upside for mobile payments. Today it pushed the gas even harder by making Near Field Communication technology available as part of peer-to-peer payments.

The Chicago area’s regional transportation systems have until 2015 to develop a universal transit fare system commuters could use across three different schemes under legislation signed into law last week.

An ATM services provider sums up the situation this way: “Don’t be discouraged. There is still ample opportunity within the ATM industry.”

With Canada being one of the world’s more developed contactless-payments markets in terms of cards issued, more merchants there are starting to accept the tap-and-go transactions, the latest being 1,400 McDonald’s restaurants, which will do so starting this summer.

Bankers know NCR Corp. for its high-tech ATMs, video teller machines and other branch gizmos. But the Duluth, Ga.-based vendor also is a big supplier of point-of-sale software for retailers and other businesses.

First it was free checking. Then it was spending rewards. Are decoupled-debit cards the next casualty of the Durbin amendment?

Cashiers now may activate entire packs of cards at once instead of swiping each card individually under a service First Data announced July 11.

Payments consumers make to health care providers will soar by more than 40% over the next three years, creating a glut of opportunities for direct-billing service vendors, according to a new Aite Group report.

PayPal revolutionized how consumers pay for goods online. It's not about to be usurped by the mobile payments movement.