On the web:

• Girl Scouts Adds Mobile Payments to Drive Cookie Sales - Mobile Commerce Daily
• German P2P Lender Auxmoney Sees Growth - Peer to Peer Lending News
• Here’s How PayPal Is Pitching Mobile Payments to Major Retailers (Slideshow) - AllThingsD
• Facebook Teams up With Bango for Mobile Payments - PCWorld

On the wires:

• Plastic Jungle and InComm Announce Strategic Gift Card Partnership
• Ceridian Introduces Virtual Terminal Enabling Web-based Transactions
• New Aite Group Report on Big Four U.S. Payment Card Networks
• Heartland Handles Nearly 44,000 Transactions as Official Concessions Processor of Super Bowl
• Computop Paygate 5.0 To Expand Support for International Payments

On the web:

• A Guide to PayPal Alternatives in Asia - SGEntrepreneurs
• Contactless ATMs: The New Wave of Banking? - Think Money
• Obama Campaign Is Using Square For Fundraising - TechCrunch
• Google Wallet Struggles to Gain Acceptance - Mobile Commerce Daily
• Is the U.S. Payments Industry Following in the Footsteps of the Netherlands? - Portals and Rails
• Green Dot to Launch Bank Account This Year - American Banker

On the wires:

• PayLane Becomes a Certified American Express Partner
• GE Capital Extends Consumer Financing Program with Art Van Furniture
• MusicSkins Partners With Virtual Piggy Offering Innovative Youth Purchasing System
• South Carolina Selects Heartland as Preferred Provider for Electronic Financial Aid Disbursement
• GE Capital Retail Bank and ShopNBC Announce Renewal of Consumer Credit Card Program
• Canada's Payfirma Updates Its Mobile Payment App

On the web:

• Invasion of the Star-Studded Debit Cards - WSJ
• Bank of America, Citigroup Face Billions In Losses in (Interchange) Antitrust Case - TheStreet
• Spanish Banks Prepare Barcelona and Madrid for Mobile Payments - NFC World

On the wires:

• Valve Rewards Outstanding GlobalCollect Service with Contract Renewal
• Twenty Colleges Choose Heartland Payment Systems for Financial Aid Disbursement Services
• Eastern Mountain Sports Blazes New Trails with VeriFone iPad Retailing Solution
• Ingenico and Voltage Security Partner on End-to-End Encyrption
• NCR Launches its Highest Performing POS Terminal to Date

Heartland Payment Systems has released the state-specific data about the legislation’s actual effects on business owners in various states across the country.

“Merchants are wondering how the percentage of regulated versus non-regulated transactions in their states would impact their savings, and this data provides insight into exactly that,” said Bob Baldwin, Heartland’s president. “By providing business owners a frame of reference for how much money, on average, their peers across their state are saving from Durbin, they have an idea of what their own savings may be."

Heartland School Solutions, a division of Heartland Payment Systems, announced that it has acquired School-Link Technologies, a privately held provider of comprehensive K-12 school nutrition and point-of-sale (POS) solutions.

“Heartland’s strategic acquisition of these premier K-12 service providers positions us as the market leader and will have a meaningful impact on our future growth,” said Bob Carr, Heartland’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Heartland School Solutions provides a single, powerful suite of payment processing solutions to help take K-12 school nutrition programs to the next level of ease of use and innovation.”

On the web:

• Letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan - U.S. Senator Dick Durbin
• Citi Announces New Fees on Checking Accounts - CNNmoney.com
• Nine Ways To Avoid Debit Card Usage Fees - Fox Business
• Skrill, Born Moneybookers, Extends Rebranding Campaign - AuctionBytes
• Beggars Can be Choosers (Panhandlers Taking Plastic) - Dave Birsch Blog
• Coming Soon To A Store Near You: Tagtile, A Square-Like Mobile Loyalty Service - TechCrunch

On the wires:

• Heartland Payment Systems Releases First Actual Durbin Impact Statistics
• Weather Underground Inc. Chooses Recurly for Subscription Billing Management
• NEBA Introduces SMS Text Messaging System for Credit and Debit Card Issuers
• Pandora One Gift Cards Now Available for the First Time
• Dynamics Inc. Announces Multiple Volume Launch Agreements for Next-Generation Magnetic Stripe Payment Cards
• PenFed Eliminates Foreign Transaction Fee From Remaining Credit Card Programs in Card Portfolio
• BluePay, a Leading Chicago Credit Card Processor, Announces Acquisition of Primax Merchant Portfolio

Heartland Payment Systems announced that it will pass the debit swipe fee cost savings from the Durbin Amendment directly to its merchants.

“Business owners work hard for every penny they earn, and Heartland is helping them keep more of their money,” said Bob Baldwin, president at Heartland. “It’s easy for a processor to say it will pass the savings along to its merchants, but the reality is, many won’t. As a result, unfortunately many merchants will miss out on some or all of Durbin’s financial benefits, ultimately costing them thousands of dollars.”

Heartland Payment Systems has announced Mobuyle, a new mobile payments acceptance solution that combines a Mobuyle Android app and a Mobuyle Encrypting Reader that plugs into the audio jack (ala Square).

Mobuyle is designed for brick and mortar businesses looking for off-premise processing capabilities or on-site flexibility, including the ability to easily add extra point-of-sale (POS) payment terminals to dispel long checkout lines or “line-busting.” It is also ideal for mobile businesses that want to provide customers convenient payment options.

It also features electronic signature capture, GPS location capture, merchandise picture storage, and voice authorization capabilities, and enables merchants to accept card payments even if they are out of network range with Store and Forward (SAF) functionality.

On the web:

• BillGuard Warns You About Questionable Credit Card Charges - Lifehacker
• Confrontation between Visa and China UnionPay Intensified - Investors.com

On the wires:

• Heartland Payment Systems Takes Higher Education Institutions to the Cloud with WĒPA Wireless Printing
• Memento Helps Financial Institutions Meet New FFIEC Guidance
• Avant-Garde Introduces Anytime, Anywhere Payments with Hypercom Mobile Solutions
• Intrix Technology Provides Payment Gateway Solutions to Companies of All Sizes
• New Mercator Report on Prepaid Benefit Cards

On the wires:

• Heartland Payment Systems Introduces the Next Generation of Its WaveRider Laundry System
• JCM Global and Techfirm Sign MOU to Bring Pay-by-Mobile Phone Technology to Bill Validators
• Mitek Systems Granted Four More Patents for Mobile Deposit
• EFT Source Introduces New Option for Instant Card Issuance
• NCR Healthcare Selects EPX As Its Preferred Payment Provider

On the web:

• Portals and Rails: Who Does What Fighting Payments Crimes? Agencies Acronyms and Roles
• American Banker: Google Wallet to Require Investments in Terminals
• Digital Transactions: Forget PayPal And Google; Acquirers Most Worried About Visa, MasterCard
• Credit Slips: Dodd-Frank Gotterdämerung: The Durbin Amendment Rollback
• Digital Money: Jamie Henry, Walmart (Podcast Interview)
• India InfoLine: PayMate powers Inter Bank Mobile Payment Services in India

On the wires:

• CHARGE Anywhere Turns Google Nexus Phone into NFC Payment Acceptance Terminal
• hyperWALLET Announces Support for SEPA Credit Transfers across Europe
• Litle Vault PayPage Removes All Merchant Exposure To Card Data During Online Acceptance
• Accertify is Selected by Abercrombie & Fitch for Online Fraud Prevention
• Nine Credit Unions Select Fiserv for Account Processing
• Fifth Third Processing and Planet Payment to Launch 'Pay in Your Currency' on ATMs
• Heartland Delivers Wait Management and SMS Marketing Solution to Restaurants with Freshtxt

On the web:

• Springwise: Snap a Photo of a Bill, Then Click to Pay
• Mobile Commerce Daily: PayPal Mobile Payments Growth
• Mashable: Starbucks Card Mobile Is a Hit: 3 Million People Pay Via Phone App
• New York Times: As Phones Become Wallets, Many Have Hands Out

Heartland Payment Systems has announced that it has added Automated Clearing House (ACH) functionality to its Express Funds check management platform, which is powered by transmodus. "The consolidation of the ACH feature with Express Funds allows businesses to process all check transactions — paper, online and over-the-phone — from one location in a cost-effective way."

Two payment-related themes are emerging from NRF conference being held this week in New York: POS encryption/tokenization and mobile payments acceptance. For retailers, end-to-end encryption and tokenization are all about reducing PCI scope:

• Heartland's End-to-End Encryption Solution Reduces PCI Scope by up to 69% for Merchants
• BevMo! Retail Chain Reduces PCI Scope with VeriFone’s VeriShield Protect
• Fifth Third Processing Solutions and MTXEPS Partner to Support ServerEPS Encryption Solutions
• Ingenico and Merchant Link Partner on Point-to-Point Encryption and Tokenization Solution

• VeriFone Announces PAYware Mobile Enterprise Solution and Services for Large Retailers
• GoPayment Gives Small Businesses Free Credit Card Reader and No Monthly Service Fees
• Xsilva Systems Demonstrates that Mobile Point of Sale is Accessible to Retailers of all Sizes

Heartland Payment Systems has announced the commercial launch of its new payment card security technology. According to the company, "Heartland has spent more than two years developing and ten months beta testing and iteratively improving this end-to-end encryption technology — called E3™ — that is designed to protect cardholder credit and debit card data, rendering scrambled data useless to cybercriminals." READ MORE »

Javelin has announced a new report titled "End-to-End Encryption, Tokenization, and EMV in the US: Vendor Analysis of Emerging Technologies and Best Hybrid Solutions" that "assesses the capabilities of end-to-end encryption, tokenization, virtual terminals, magnetic-stripe security and the EMV standard as solutions to combat payment-related data breaches." READ MORE »

The Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has published a discussion paper titled "Heartland Payment Systems: Lessons Learned from a Data Breach" by Julia S. Cheney.

From the abstract: "This paper summarizes discussions from a workshop hosted by the Payment Cards Center on August 13, 2009. The workshop examined the changing nature of data security in consumer electronic payments. The center invited the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems (HPS), Robert Carr, to lead this discussion and to share his experiences stemming from the data breach at his company in late 2008 and, as important, to discuss lessons learned as a result of this event. The former director of the Payment Cards Center, Peter Burns, who is acting as a senior payments advisor to HPS, also joined the discussion to outline HPS's post-breach efforts aimed at improving information-sharing and data security within the consumer payments industry."

Thales and Voltage Security have announced a "technology integration and partnership centered around delivering end-to-end encryption and key management solutions for the payments industry and broader enterprise security applications. Through the partnership, the two companies have worked together to integrate Voltage SecureData technology with Thales hardware security modules (HSMs) for customers, Heartland Payment Systems being an example." READ MORE »

Heartland Payment Systems and Visa have announced "a settlement agreement under which issuers of Visa-branded credit and debit cards will have an opportunity to obtain a recovery from Heartland with respect to losses they may have incurred from the 2008 criminal breach of Heartland's payment system environment. Heartland will pay up to $60 million to fund the settlement program, which is subject to certain conditions, including a specified level of participation by U.S. Visa issuers. Visa will present details of the settlement to eligible issuers in the coming days." READ MORE »

Heartland Payment Systems has announced a settlement agreement with American Express related to the 2008 criminal breach of Heartland's payment system environment. Under the agreement, Heartland said it will pay American Express $3.6 million, resolving all intrusion-related issues between the two parties.

“We are pleased to have reached an equitable settlement with American Express,” commented Bob Carr, Heartland’s chairman and chief executive officer. “This settlement marks the first agreement with a card brand related to the intrusion.”

Hypercom and Heartland Payment Systems have announced a strategic relationship to deliver integrated, high-security payment systems to retailers nationwide and implement Heartland’s end-to-end encryption E3™ solution. READ MORE »

Based on an interview with Heartland Payment Systems CEO Robert Carr, Rachael King writes for BusinessWeek about lessons learned during the Heartland data breach that began in 2008 and was discovered and announced in January 2009.

Heartland Payment Systems has announced that yesterday it successfully completed the first phase of its end-to-end encryption pilot project. According to the company, "this first step involved the transmission of live AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)-encrypted card transactions from a merchant to Heartland’s processing platform. AES is the highest level of encryption and is currently on track to replace DES (Data Encryption Standard) and Triple DES as the desired standard for sensitive data."

Earlier this month Heartland announced it was working with Voltage Security to develop its end-to-end encryption approach. READ MORE »

Heartland Payment Systems has selected Voltage Security as a partner to develop end-to-end encryption (E3) software specifically suited to payments processing.

“Heartland is developing a complete end-to-end encryption solution designed to protect cardholder data at all stages of a transaction – from card swipe through delivery to the card brands,” said Bob Carr, Heartland’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Together with Voltage, we are developing a comprehensive solution that currently does not exist.” READ MORE »

Heartland Payment Systems has announced financial results for the first quarter - including announcing a $12.6 million provision (pre-tax) for various expenses and accruals that were attributable to the processing system intrusion Heartland experienced in 2008. The company has recently returned to Visa’s and MasterCard’s lists of PCI-DSS Validated Service Providers.

Heartland Payment Systems has announced that "it has formed an internal department dedicated exclusively to the development of end-to-end encryption to protect merchant and consumer data used in financial transactions. For the past year, Robert O. Carr, Heartland's chairman and chief executive officer, has been advocating for payments industry adoption of this technology - which will protect data at rest as well as data in motion - as an improvement for payment transaction security." READ MORE »

Heartland Payment Systems issued a press release today saying that it had "added more than 400 merchants to its client base in the past few days - exceeding results for the same period from last year" - and including a statement from founder, chairman and CEO Robert O. Carr on the response his organization has made to the announcement earlier this week of a payment card data breach at Heartland. READ MORE »

Eric Dash and Brad Stone report for the New York Times on the payment card data breach announced yesterday by Heartland Payment Systems. The compromise may have occurred as early as last May but wasn't detected until late last fall.

The Heartland breach also showed that in spite of the adoption of more stringent standards and tougher oversight by banks and credit card companies, consumers are still vulnerable."

Heartland Payment Systems has announced it has learned it was the victim of a security breach within its processing system in 2008. Heartland says it "believes the intrusion is contained." The company has created a website for "to provide information about this incident and advises cardholders to examine their monthly statements closely and report any suspicious activity to their card issuers."

Brian Krebs reports for the Washington Post that the breach "may have led to the compromise of more than 100 million credit and debit card transactions."

The data stolen includes the digital information encoded onto the magnetic stripe built into the backs of credit and debit cards. Armed with this data, thieves can fashion counterfeit credit cards by imprinting the same stolen information onto fabricated cards.

Heartland Payment Systems has closed the acquisition of Chockstone, a privately held provider of gift card programs and loyalty solutions. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. READ MORE »

Heartland Payment Systems has announced it has integrated alphanumeric remittance ID tagging into its remote deposit capture solution – making it even easier for businesses to efficiently handle check payments. READ MORE »