Retailers

Merchant acquirers should be as concerned as the card brands over proposed legislation that would alter merchant fees, according to the Electronic Transactions Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group representing the acquiring industry.

Hypercom Corp.’s newest point-of-sale products could help the company improve its profit margins, some analysts predict.

With fierce competition for merchants and slim margins in the U.S. acquiring market, more ISOs are expressing interest in penetrating the largely unsaturated Canadian market, according to Federated Payments, an independent sales organization with operations in the U.S. and Canada.

Hypercom Corp. in the coming weeks will announce the first point-of-sale terminal produced under the company’s “joint development manufacturing model.” It plans to make the terminal available for sale later this summer, a spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.

MasterCard Worldwide has promoted Ajay Banga, president and chief operating officer, to chief executive officer, effective July 1. Banga also was named a member of MasterCard’s board of directors. Banga succeeds Joseph W. Selander, who will become executive vice chairman until his retirement on Dec. 31. MasterCard also promoted Alfredo Gangotena to chief marketing officer from global products and solution lead for MasterCard in Europe. Gangotena replaces Lawrence Flanagan, who is retiring.

With sales growth in Europe and the Asia Pacific, Hypercom Corp. on May 5 reported a $375,000 first quarter profit; the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based payment-terminal maker reported a $9.9 million loss during the same period last year.

David Leppek has an opportunity that many in the ISO and acquiring business encounter infrequently in their careers. He has the chance to design his ISO, Transaction Services LLC, without having to use years old legacy technology.

Citing a desire to remain competitive and drive issuer participation and innovation in its network, Visa Inc. in April increased the interchange rate it applies to purchases switched through its Interlink PIN-debit electronic funds transfer network.

The PCI Security Standards Council, which oversees data-security standards for the payments industry, is responding to inquiries from payments companies for more staff training by launching an internal security assessor certification program, a council spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.

Apple Inc. could be in the hunt to acquire Vivotech Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company specializing in contactless payments, Bloomberg News reported today.

As competition for clients intensifies and margins grow increasingly thin, many independent sales organizations are seeking ways to reduce costs, increase efficiency and stand out from competitors. One method gaining consideration is the use of digital signatures and contracts.

Smartphone-based transactions represent an opportunity to grow U.S. card acceptance, which largely has become commoditized because most brick-and-mortar merchants accept payment cards. However, the challenge for independent sales organizations and other resellers of smartphone-based point-of-sale products may be locating mobile-merchant clients, observers say.

Sterling Payment Technologies Inc. in November launched a merchant-security compliance program with the goal of ensuring Sterling’s merchants meet the criteria established by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

Square Inc. finally has shared some of the details about its mobile card-acceptance system, but payments executives still feel as though they have not heard the whole story.

Restaurateurs may have another reason to use pay-at-the-table terminals from Ingenico S.A., which has added software to the devices to help lower the interchange rates for credit and debit card transactions.

A directive Visa issued last week should make it clear to online merchants that they are not allowed to offer consumers third-party offers without asking for their card information a second time, the card brand noted in an April 27 statement.

The Single Euro Payments Area, an initiative the European banking industry launched in 2002 to link European Union and other euro-based countries’ separate national payment systems into a standardized system, remains a work in progress. And not everyone believes the European Payments Council, which is responsible for the initiative that has seen several delays already, can complete the task by December 2012, as the European Commission has proposed.

Companies offering smartphone-enabled point-of-sale hardware and software applications are unlikely to capture business from providers of traditional wireless-payment terminals. The more likely outcome is that the two types of wireless devices will compliment each other, with the smartphone-enabled card acceptance attracting small mobile merchants that have avoided purchasing wireless terminals because of the cost, observers say.

As card readers that attach to mobile phones continue to make headlines in the payments space, an Austin, Texas-based software company is putting a new spin on the trend.

Apriva is offering training and educational tools to its ISO resellers to help increase their knowledge of and ability to sell wireless smartphone-enabled point-of-sale products, according to the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based wireless-payments provider.