Swipely has announced new payment acceptance functionality to help its merchants understand the customer behind every transaction.

Swipely brings the very first Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that updates automatically with every card swipe to Main Street. Swipely builds a profile for each card-paying customer to help merchants remember spending recency, frequency and lifetime value - automatically. Merchants can add notes about customer preferences or edit contact information to quickly save insights and re-engage customers online after they leave the store.

QSecure has announced IMAGO (pronounced ee-ma-go), a new powered payment card and mobile app for iPhone, Android, and Windows mobile devices.

"The war of the wallets is on between big players like Visa, MasterCard, Google, Square, and Apple, but merchants and consumers are waiting to see which of these platforms will become predominant," explains QSecure CEO Mike Cummings, "Because our solution uses the phone’s display to communicate with the card, it can be used with any smartphone running our IMAGO App. There is no need for consumers to wait for the next generation smartphone or for merchants to change their credit card terminals to take advantage of mobile wallets."

Users load their existing cards by swiping them through a dongle, sync their IMAGO card with their smartphone screen, and then use their IMAGO card at existing card terminals. Visit www.qsecure.com to see a video that demonstrates how the whole thing works.

Heartland Payment Systems announced that it has expanded its Campus Solutions division by acquiring ECSI, "a leading provider of cost-effective, customized payments processing solutions for the higher education industry."

“As the Heartland Campus Solutions division grows to become a more significant portion of Heartland’s business, we’re confident that acquisitions such as ECSI will better position us for faster growth,” said Michael A. Lawler, president, strategic markets group, Heartland Payment Systems. “Our combined suite of products, services and solutions offers higher education institutions opportunities to streamline processes and increase operational efficiency while providing enhanced convenience and value to students.”

During the fourth-quarter teleconference with analysts, VeriFone announced that it is stepping back from its role as an direct acquirer for SAIL merchants.

Earlier this year, we launched SAIL as a way to bridge the gap between the way our traditional channel partners conduct business and the specific needs of very small micro-merchants. Our experience through 2012 with tens of thousands of these micro-merchants tells us that the standalone economics of micro-merchant acquiring is fundamentally unprofitable and destined to be a negative gross margin business. Customer acquisition costs either through search engines or TV advertising cannot and will never justify the razor-thin margins produced by merchants with infrequent volume and extremely high attrition.

The company will continue to market SAIL products through banking partners and ISOs. Digital Transactions has a good story on the strategy shift.

On the web:

• Square COO Predicts Monster 2013, Says Starbucks Is Just The Beginning - CNET News
• Wonga Launches 'Bill Me Later' Rival in UK - Telegraph
• The Fraud Triangle - Portals and Rails

On the wires:

• Fiserv Mobilizes UChoose Rewards
• CorFire Integrates PayPal to Enhance Mobile Commerce Services
• Fuze Network Processes More Than 3.5 Million Cash-to-Card Transactions
• VeriFone Acquires Two Major Players in New Zealand Payments Industry
• Live Gamer Partners With Openbucks to Expand Pre-Paid Payment Options
• PAY.ON Partners With ReD To Offer Integrated Payment and Fraud Prevention Services
• CardinalCommerce Partners With Virtual Piggy To Enable Under 21 Online Acceptance
• Payzur, Acculynk’s Debit-based P2P Solution, Gains Momentum
• TSYS Signs Long-Term Payments Agreement with Merrick Bank