Content about Merchant services

Washington, D.C. -- The National Retail Federation announced that its board of directors has authorized the Federation to go to court to block the proposed $7.25 billion settlement of a federal antitrust lawsuit over skyrocketing Visa and MasterCard credit card swipe fees that cost consumers hundreds of dollars a year.

New York -- American Express Co. has become the first company to pull its gift cards from being sold in New Jersey drug stores, supermarkets and convenience stores in response to a controversial new revision in the state's unclaimed property law. (The only way New Jersey residents can now buy AmEx gift cards is directly from the company.)

By Shannon Martin, shannon.martin@onlinemediapartner.com

There are a variety of new technologies that will become available throughout 2012 to small business owners looking for ways to process credit and debit cards. In the past, business have had to rely on costly terminals purchased from merchant account providers who charged not only for the equipment, but also for the processing of the cards used by a business’ customers.

By Greg Hammermaster, Sage Payment Solutions

San Jose, Calif. -- VeriFone Systems announced it has won a contract to supply its PAYware Merchant card payment and settlement hosted service to Arcos Dorados, the largest restaurant operator in Latin America and the largest McDonald's franchisee in the world.

Beginning with 220 McDonald’s restaurants in Argentina and Uruguay, PAYware Merchant will be integrated with a proprietary POS system to accommodate card payment processing at the point of sale.

Mountain View, Calif. -- Survey results released Tuesday by CyberSource, a Visa Co., showed that the online fraud rate has remained flat in the United States and Canada; however, U.K. merchants are seeing a rise in e-commerce fraud.

According to the annual surveys of e-commerce fraud in North America and the United Kingdom, the 2010 fraud rate (the percent of accepted orders which later turn out to be fraudulent) remained at 0.9% for the second straight year.

On Wednesday, Visa Inc. launched a new payment card security initiative that the company said could eliminate the need for retailers and other organizations to store full, 16-digit credit and debit card numbers on their systems.

The move comes in response to long-standing pressure from the National Retail Federation, which maintains that merchants should not be required to store the information because of security risks.