Office Depot has announced the launch of Office Depot Merchant Services, an electronic payment processing service for small and medium-sized businesses.

In partnership with Century Payments, Office Depot is the first office supply retailer to provide a private branded solution to enable small and medium-sized businesses with direct access to accept electronic payments via all major debit and credit cards at the point-of-sale. Businesses can now conveniently accept payments using a variety of cutting-edge equipment options that will allow companies to process payments from a retail location, through the Internet or with a mobile device.

Office Depot Merchant Services website has all the details.

TSYS has announced that it has acquired the remaining 49% interest in First National Merchant Solution (FNMS) from First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO). The company will be rebranded as TSYS Merchant Solutions. TSYS formed a joint venture with FNBO in April 2010, when it acquired a 51% controlling interest in the direct merchant acquirer and transaction processor. FNMS is ranked as the 10th-largest merchant acquirer in the U.S. by dollar volume in 2009.

Credicard, a wholly-owned Brazilian subsidiary of Citigroup, and Elavon have announced a binding agreement to establish a joint venture creating a merchant services company that will offer a full suite of payment solutions to the Brazilian marketplace. "The new company will be branded as “Elavon” and will be supported with the launch of a sales force with national coverage, as well as in-market operations, technology and product resources."

Global Payments and "la Caixa," the largest retail bank in Spain, have announced they are forming a merchant acquiring and payment processing joint venture in Spain.

"la Caixa", headquartered in Barcelona, was founded over a century ago, and is the market leader in Spanish merchant acquiring with over 150,000 merchant outlets. "la Caixa" also has the largest consumer banking footprint in Spain with more than 5,000 branches, 10.5 million customers and a 21 percent market share in merchant acquiring.

Discover has announced that it has signed a merchant acquirer agreement with First National Bank Alaska, furthering is growth in merchant acceptance.

The agreement with First National Bank Alaska also marks a significant milestone for Discover, representing the completion of a multi-year effort to secure agreements and implement merchant acquiring programs with all of the top 100 merchant acquirers in the United States.

Atos Origin today announced the acquisition of Venture Infotek, the leading independent player in the Indian payments market. Created in 1991, Venture Infotek operates in merchant acquiring, card processing, loyalty programs, government benefits programs on behalf of the Indian banks and major retailers. Venture Infotek operates in the major cities of India.

GDS Link has announced that is has been selected by RBS WorldPay to incorporate its DataView360 decisioning technology for better portfolio segmentation and merchant fraud identification. According to the company, "with DataView360, clients can implement and manage their fraud-based rules for several business functions, including screening for fraudulent transactions or generating knowledge-based questions and answers." READ MORE »

CoreLogic Credco has announced the introduction of OneCheck, a suite of merchant verification and risk mitigation products, provided through a newly established merchant services division. According to the company, "OneCheck is the industry’s most flexible and competitively priced suite of merchant verification solutions available. It instantly collects, sorts and combines hundreds of decisioning data elements into an easy-to-read comprehensive report – all in a single transaction. The result is a consolidated one-source solution for fast, reliable risk mitigation and merchant prequalification." READ MORE »

India's Economic Times is reporting that the State Bank of India "has selected US-based Elavon Incorporation and Visa International as its joint venture partners for merchant acquiring business." See also this article in The Hindu Business Line. It reports that SBI will retain a 51 percent interest in the jV called SBI Payment Services Pvt Ltd.

Merchant e-Solutions (MeS) has announced it has completed the acquisition of the Columbus Bank and Trust (CB&T) merchant business from Synovus. As part of the acquisition, MeS and Synovus have agreed to a 10-year joint marketing agreement to provide payment processing services for new Synovus bank merchant customers. READ MORE »

Global Payments has announced that Jeffrey S. Sloan, Managing Director, Partner and Global Head of the Financial Technology Group at Goldman, Sachs & Co., has been appointed the President of Global Payments Inc. Mr. Sloan has led Goldman Sachs' investment banking activities for the worldwide payments industry over the last decade. Mr. Sloan will be responsible for the Company's lines of business in North America, as well as all worldwide business development activities. He will report to Paul R. Garcia, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and will assume his new role on June 1, 2010. READ MORE »

TSYS has announced that Mark D. Pyke has been named president of TSYS Acquiring Solutions. Prior to joining TSYS Acquiring Solutions, Pyke served as president of Bank of America Merchant Services in Louisville, KY.

TSYS has announced a joint venture agreement with First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO) to form a new company, First National Merchant Solutions, LLC (FNMS). The new alliance gives TSYS a top-10 presence in the merchant acquiring market in the United States. TSYS will acquire 51 percent ownership of FNMS for approximately $150.5 million, while FNBO will control the remaining 49 percent. FNMS had net revenue of $93 million in 2009. The transaction is expected to close April 1, 2010. A presentation on the new joint venture is available. READ MORE »

Mercator Advisory Group has published a new report titled "The Economics of Debit Acquiring". The report "provides an overview of the costs associated with enabling merchants to accept debit cards for payment. This report evaluates EFT network pricing trends and provides an in-depth analysis on the implications these trends will have on acquirers. This report also offers the U.S. market share for the top companies in payment acquiring, discusses ways in which share can be measured, and analyzes PIN debit's role in skewing market share depending on which metric is used."

Elavon and Santander have announced the establishment of a joint merchant services alliance in Mexico. According to Elavon, "the alliance establishes a new global foothold for Elavon in a burgeoning credit card market and capitalizes on an existing relationship with Santander in Spain, the UK and Puerto Rico." READ MORE »

Elavon, the merchant acquiring subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp has announced the introduction of Fusebox - calling it a "next-generation hosted payment gateway that provides secure multi-point connectivity across a merchant’s enterprise." READ MORE »

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Transparent Financial Services (TransFS) has announced the launch of its TransFS Card Terminal, "an iPhone app that provides businesses with credit card acceptance capabilities in virtually any location. TransFS Card Terminal™ is the first iPhone app of its kind to be free of cost and provide complete freedom of choice in credit card processor selection." TransFS has also made the source code of the application available as open source software. READ MORE »

TD Merchant Services has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire certain MasterCard merchant acquiring accounts from First Data in Canada. Concurrently, First Data will acquire a small number of VISA accounts from TD. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions and is expected to close in December. The transaction is not expected to be material to TDBFG’s financial results.

The acquired accounts will become part of TD Merchant Services, which already provides Visa and Interac payment processing services and Point of Sale terminal solutions to all of these customers today. “Acquisition of these MasterCard merchant accounts will ensure our clients have a single source for their payment processing needs,” says Jeff van Duynhoven, President, TD Merchant Services. READ MORE »

As part of its agreement with the UK government announced today, the Royal Bank of Scotland has agreed to participation in a revised Asset Protection Scheme that, among many other conditions, requires RBS to divest itself of several businesses over the next four years including its Global Merchant Services unit. According to RBS, its Global Merchant Services unit "is the fourth largest provider of global card payment services, enabling over 5 billion card transactions to be made each year. It meets the rapidly changing and increasingly sophisticated needs of clients to accept card payments on a global, efficient and secure basis."

First Data has announced a relationship with Yahoo! Inc. to provide merchants with "easy-to-implement eCommerce solutions for small and mid-size merchants eager to extend their businesses to the Internet. First Data will provide merchants with point-of-sale terminals and payment processing services to complement Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and Web Hosting subscription-based products, which allow small businesses to set up their online stores and catalog web sites with simple design tools and tracking features." READ MORE »

In an article titled "TransFS Launches Comparison Site for Credit Card Processing Fees", TechCrunch profiles TransFS - one of a new breed of websites designed to help businesses comparison shop among various merchant acquirers and ISOs for the best deal that matches their needs. TransFS collects information from the merchant and then gathers bids from providers to present back. The TransFS blog provides a steady stream of helpful, merchant-related articles as well.

Another new entrant into this space is Payments-R-Us (www.paymentsrus.com) that focuses on online merchant payment solutions. Unlike the auction process managed by TransFS, Payments-R-Us offers a free "suggester" based upon the merchant answering some basic questions about their business. Payments-R-Us also has a collection of reference materials helpful to online ecommerce merchants.

Elavon and Santander have announced the launch of a new alliance for merchant services in the UK. This alliance combines Elavon, a wholly owned subsidiary of US Bancorp, and Santander, one of the strongest and best capitalized banks in the world. "Jointly, Elavon and Santander’s strategy is to become one of the leading players in the UK acquiring market. The new alliance will enable Santander to leverage Elavon’s end-to-end control of the processing relationship; from risk and underwriting, to processing, funding and all customer support functions, whilst Elavon will dramatically increase their presence in the UK market by partnering with one of the most respected and fastest growing institutions in the UK." READ MORE »

Elavon, a wholly owned subsidiary of US Bancorp, has signed a three-year agreement with FNC Inc., a technology company offering tailored solutions for the real-estate and mortgage industry to streamline industry processes, regulations and compliance. According to Elevavon, "the agreement provides credit and debit processing services via a new dashboard functionality offered by FNC in support of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) – a regulatory requirement impacting the mortgage industry’s appraiser selection process." READ MORE »

VeriFone Holdings has announced that RBS WorldPay has agreed to work jointly towards marketing VeriFone's VeriShield Protect end-to-end solution for encrypting payment card data. According to VeriFone, "RBS WorldPay is the first merchant acquirer to endorse a commercial end-to-end encryption solution. By encrypting the card number on swipe, right at the point of sale, RBS WorldPay merchants who choose the VeriShield Protect solution will be able to dramatically reduce both their own risk and that of their customers as well." READ MORE »

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 »

Bank of America and First Data have announced "the formation of a new company that will deliver next-generation payments solutions to merchants ranging from small business to commercial and corporate clients worldwide."

According to the two companies, Banc of America Merchant Services, LLC will provide clients "with the most comprehensive suite of innovative payments solutions including credit, debit and prepaid cards to merchant loyalty, check and eCommerce payments." 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 »

Merchant e-Solutions has announced the addition of Visa and MasterCard automatic account updating services for e-commerce and card-not-present merchants that specialize in recurring billing. According to the company, "pproximately half of all card accounts change annually in an issuing bank's portfolio, which can lead to denial of transactions billed to outdated cards." READ MORE »

Global Payments has announced that it has acquired the remaining 49% interest in its merchant services joint venture in the United Kingdom from HSBC Bank plc ("HSBC"). "In June 2008, Global Payments and HSBC formed a joint venture, HSBC Merchant Services, to provide payment processing services to merchants in the United Kingdom and Internet merchants globally. Under the terms of today's agreement, Global Payments will pay HSBC a total of USD$307.7 million in cash to acquire the remaining 49% ownership interest in this joint venture. In addition, HSBC will extend the current ten-year exclusive marketing alliance agreement whereby the bank provides merchant referrals and bank sponsorship to Global Payments to June 2019." READ MORE »