It's shopping season in the payments industry. Just last month, Ingenico, ACI Worldwide and Fidelity National Information Services announced separate acquisitions. Many other companies have bought their peers in recent months.

Visa Inc. has featured the San Francisco 49ers all season in a humorous TV commercial based on a fanatic 49ers fan somehow making his way into the team locker room to deliver a fiery pep talk.

The portion of the population that relies heavily on cash is seeing new ways to use more mainstream financial services, including methods to better load cash onto stored-value cards.

Western Union is expanding its relationship with MasterCard on two fronts, by focusing narrowly on tax preparation stores with a prepaid card and expanding its remittance program in Latin America.

Braintree Inc. had a vision of a “one-click” mobile shopping experience last summer when it purchased Venmo Inc. and its mobile payment applications. Braintree at last revealed its “one-click” Venmo Touch system.

Foreclosure activity last year decreased from 2010 - when foreclosures peaked in most markets - in 181 out of the 212 markets tracked in the report, according to RealtyTrac.

Profits at the prepaid card issuer Green Dot fell sharply in the fourth quarter but still came in higher than analysts had expected.

Salt Technology Inc. plans to take $2 million it has secured from private investors and parlay it into a cloud-based mobile payments rollout in the U.S. and Europe later this year.

Data security provider iovation Inc. has released two-factor phone authentication software it says will provide extra protection for consumers making online purchases.

MasterCard continues to ride the plastic wave in worldwide payments. The Purchase, N.Y., company on Jan. 31 reported fourth-quarter net income of $605 million, driven in large part by growing use of its credit and debit cards outside of the United States.

The Merchant Advisory Group is calling for a shift in deadlines for EMV acceptance in the U.S. — one extra month for every month the payments industry fails to find a common code for handling EMV debit transactions.

ACI Worldwide, which announced Jan. 31 its deal to buy the online banking and payments company Online Resources, has been mulling plans to make the acquisition for roughly a year, said ACI chief executive Philip G. Heasley.

Verizon Wireless plans to start selling Square Inc.'s mobile card readers in its retail stores today.

ACI Worldwide and Fidelity National Information Services each announced acquisitions of companies that provide payments technology.

MasterCard Inc., the second-biggest U.S. payments network, posted fourth-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates as customers made more purchases.

Consumers Union, the public policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, called on federal regulators Wednesday to "protect vulnerable consumers from abusive debt collection practices."

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – In the latest of a new flurry of deal-making, FIS announced this morning it has agreed to acquire the 78% it doesn’t own of mFoundry, one of the first providers of mobile technology for credit unions and banks, for $120 million in cash.

NEW YORK – ACI Worldwide, which acquired back-office service provider S1 Corp. last year, has agreed to purchase Online Resources Corp. in an all-cash deal valued at $126.6 million, the two companies announced this morning.

Boston-based independent sales organization Merchant Warehouse is launching its Genius payment acceptance product for general availability. The system has been in testing since June 2012.

The council announced Jan. 31 its guidelines for e-commerce data safety. The information is a result of research completed by the council's e-commerce security special interest group.