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7/12/12 GigaOm  
Every month, it seems players in the mobile payment market try to outdo
each other, offering merchants a slightly lower transaction fee in a
game of one-upmanship. LevelUp, a Boston-based loyalty and payment
startup, has played that game to some extent, pushing down its fee to 2
percent. But now, it’s laying down the gauntlet to competitors by doing
away with processing fees forever in what it calls a bid to achieve
“Interchange Zero.”
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7/10/12 All Things D
It may have taken some fine tuning over the past four years, but
merchants say that daily deals have started to perform better in recent
months, according to a new survey. The survey, which tracked 641
small-and medium-sized businesses during three time periods over the
past year, found that the industry is performing better based on at
least a couple of key metrics. In particular, it noted two areas of
improvement: consumers are more willing to spend beyond the deal’s value
and the amount spent by repeat customers on their next visit has
increased.
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7/13/12 PaymentsPulse.com
Key Finding: Value driven by Cielo’s desire for ecommerce platform
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7/13/12 Bloomberg
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment
dropped to 72 this month from June’s 73.2 reading. The gauge was
projected to rise to 73.5, according to a median forecast of 69
economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The weakest quarter of hiring by
companies in two years along with stock market volatility tied to
Europe’s debt crisis threaten to hold back the household spending that
accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Sales at retailers such as
Hhgregg Inc. (HGG) may struggle as fewer consumers expect incomes to
increase.
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7/12/12 The Washington Post
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says the overall economy has been
slowing down in the last two months as fears about Europe’s debt woes
mounted, but businesses tied to residential housing are improving a bit.
Buffett, who is chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said
during an interview on CNBC on Thursday that he’s not sure why the
general economy is slowing, but he sees evidence of it at Berkshire’s
retail, jewelry, carpet and other businesses.
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7/11/12 TSG
Commentary by Michael Campbell, Senior Associate – Acquiring & Issuing Risk Specialist
Merchant risk management is an art as opposed to an exact science; no
acquirer should be lulled to sleep by five plus years of low levels of
chargebacks with any high volume merchants. It is easy to do when the
merchant has great name recognition and has been in business for many
years; however, there are far too many cases wherein a merchant changes
the nature of their business, slows down on the delivery of their
product or decides to shut their doors
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7/11/12 Digital Transactions
With a trial date looming in September, speculation is rising that a
major antitrust case challenging credit card interchange will result in
new rules handing merchants wider latitude in surcharging for
transactions, routing payments, and steering customers to other cards or
forms of payment. Settlement talks in the case, known as MDL 1720, are
focusing increasingly on ways to allow merchants to track interchange
costs in a more timely way, route transactions to lower-cost networks,
and pass acceptance costs on to customers who use rewards cards and
other cards that carry higher interchange.
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7/12/12 Mashable
WikiLeaks won an important legal battle against Visa and MasterCard in
Iceland on Thursday — where the credit card companies’ local partner was
ordered by a judge to resume processing credit card donations made to
the controversial secret-sharing site. The Icelandic court ruled that
Valitor, Visa and MasterCard’s local partner, ran afoul of contract laws
when it stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks, according to the
Associated Press.
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7/09/12 Philadelphia Business Journal
TSG is advisor on this transaction.
Special purpose acquisition company Universal Business Payment
Solutions Acquisition Corp. said Monday it will acquire “three
profitable and growing companies to facilitate its strategy of providing
end-to-end transaction processing services to small businesses.” UBPS
said it will acquire: Electronic Merchant Systems, JetPay and A D
Computer Corp. in a transaction valued at about $179 million.
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7/11/12 First Data
First Data Corporation, a global leader in electronic commerce and
payment processing, today released its First Data SpendTrend® analysis
for the full month of June 2012 compared to June 2011. SpendTrend tracks
same-store consumer spending by credit, signature debit, PIN debit,
EBT, closed-loop prepaid cards and checks at U.S. merchant locations.
Year-over-year dollar volume growth was 6.4% in June, down from May’s
7.0% growth.
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7/11/12 Yahoo! Finance
Most people are keenly aware of the annoying ATM fees, late fees and
over-limit fees that some banks impose. Yet few know about the
credit-card "swipe fees," which are invisible to consumers and have been
the bane of hundreds of thousands of merchants, including Mike and
Suzanne Schumann, furniture-store owners in Minneapolis. For the
Schumanns, who own three storefronts, staying ahead of the cost of these
swipe fees is as critica as staying ahead of interior design trends.
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7/10/12 BTN
The use of mobile payments among U.S. consumers has grown dramatically
in the past year, an IDC Financial Insights study released yesterday has
found. A third of consumers — 33.9% — make purchases with their mobile
phone, according to the survey of 2,663 U.S. adults. In the same survey
last year, 19.3% of respondents had made a payment using a mobile
device. IDC uses a broad definition of mobile payments that includes
Amazon, iTunes, App Store and PayPal payments.
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7/11/12 ISO & Agent
ISOs and agents could use fraud data to convince merchants to take
security seriously, observers say. As it now stands, retailers and
consumers may not be pushing for stronger card security because they
feel protected by the systems already in use. But today’s security
measures are not protecting the public from the real costs for fraud.
Consumers who fell victim to fraud experienced an average loss of $240
per incident in 2011.
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7/10/12 StorefrontBacktalk
PCI version 2.0 changed July 1. There actually are no new requirements,
per se. But as of this date, the stated “best practices” for
identifying and ranking risk vulnerabilities in Req 6.2 became
mandatory. Merchants and service providers need to realize that this
change reverberates through at least two other PCI requirements.
Merchants and service providers who ignore this change may find
themselves up a PCI tree later this year or when they begin their next
compliance validation, especially if they don’t update their internal
vulnerability scanning.
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7/12/12 Finextra
UK-based mPowa became Square's latest competitor last month with the US
launch of its dongle and app-based system for turning phone handsets
into credit card readers. The company made an aggressive pitch for
business, boasting that it would be "capitalising on weaknesses" in
Square, arguing that its system is superior because it offers chip and
PIN payments and merchants can use it through their existing banking
arrangements.
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7/09/12 CNN Money
Café Grumpy is the kind of hipster hangout that wouldn't deign to
trumpet itself. Tucked away on a quiet street in New York's Chelsea
neighborhood, it's easy to miss. There's no sign out front, just a
frowning face stenciled on a large shop window. And yet when I walked in
for the first time, I immediately felt like one of the regulars.
"Charge it to Miguel," I told the barista after ordering a cappuccino,
and charge it he did -- to my phone. Not that I ever pulled my iPhone
from my pocket.
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7/13/12 HPS
Heartland Payment Systems® (NYSE: HPY), one of the nation's largest
payments processors, today announced that it has hired Ian M. Drysdale
as president - network solutions. In his new role, Mr. Drysdale will be
responsible for Heartland's growth in retail, petroleum and ecommerce
markets."Ian is a seasoned senior executive with more than 20 years of
success in electronic payments, ecommerce and POS payments," said Robert
O. Carr, Heartland's chairman and CEO.
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7/09/12 Bank Systems & Technology
In a recent interview with Bank Systems & Technology on the future
of peer-to-peer payments Arkady Fridman, head of business development at
PayPal's Financial Innovations, talked about the advantages of the
company's partnerships with financial institutions on mobile payments.
PayPal's Financial Innovations team works specifically to partner with
financial institutions to offer P2P services.
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7/11/12 SecureNet
BigCommerce, the world’s fastest growing global e-commerce platform,
has selected SecureNet Payment Systems, a leader in payment processing
technology, to provide its online retailers and merchants with advanced
payment processing solutions. Through this agreement, SecureNet will
service and support the payment processing and settlement needs of
BigCommerce’s ever-expanding 25,000+ merchants, powering nearly $1b in
online sales for retailers of all sizes and experience levels.
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7/11/12 The Green Sheet
Super G Funding, a leader in the residual based lending business has
signed an agreement with Cynergy Data, one of the larger ISO’s in the
country, to offer Business Loans to its ISOs and Agents. Super G Funding
has found that many ISO's and Agents are in need of additional capital
to expand their sales force, increase marketing, open a new office, buy
equipment in bulk, upgrade their technology, or buyout a partner.
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7/09/12 Heartland Payment Systems
Heartland Payment Systems, one of the nation's largest payments
processors, has acquired LunchByte Systems, Inc., a school foodservice
back office management and point-of-sale (POS) company led by its
NUTRIKIDS® ( www.nutrikids.com)
solution of menu management, inventory management and POS solutions for
K-12 administrators, staff, parents and students. The LunchByte Systems
acquisition further expands Heartland School Solutions' market-leading
position in the K-12 school nutrition and POS technology industry.
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7/09/12 Portals and Rails
Mobile wallets have started to make their way into the market this
year. Inevitably, industry stakeholders are joining opposing camps on
the technology that these wallets use to keep payment information and
other personal data safe and secure: contactless chips or cloud-based
technology. The chips are embedded in a mobile handset that communicates
with a terminal via NFC, while the cloud-based technology involves an
application downloaded to the mobile handset.
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7/10/12 NBC
The Mythbusters love getting to the bottom of a myth, but sometimes the
protectors of the myth hold the bigger stick. The crew was all set to
air a show about how hackable and trackable RFID chips that are found in
many credit cards are, when some big name advertisers stepped in to
shut it down.
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