The Strawhecker Group (TSG), in coordination with the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), has developed a new infographic entitled Why Are Electronic Payments Important?

This communication piece illuminates the crucial role that the Electronic Payments Industry plays in driving healthy economic  growth and sustainability throughout the U.S.

Click here to view the infographic.

This piece is perfect to share with your local representatives in Congress, or better yet, to explain to your extended family what you do for a living at holiday parties.

TSG will utilize Kirkpatrick to help its clients develop and implement complex information and technology, strategic opportunities, and data analytics tools in the rapidly changing payments industry.

The Strawhecker Group (TSG), a management consulting company focused on the electronic payments industry, announces the addition of Senior Associate, John Kirkpatrick who brings nearly 30 years of leadership experience developing and implementing complex global business strategies for companies of all sizes using his extensive knowledge of technology valuations, gateways, and back-ends. Before joining TSG, Kirkpatrick was the Chief Information Officer at TransFirst where he oversaw the company's information and technology division, including payment gateways and all aspects of transaction processing such as security, financials, data center operations, software engineering, quality assurance and complex data analytics.  

Click here to read more.

American Express said today that it has agreed to settle two putative antitrust class actions filed by U.S. merchants that challenged the company's Card acceptance agreements. The settlement agreement will address certain merchant concerns, while helping to ensure that American Express Card Members are treated fairly at the point of sale. It will also limit the Company's exposure to future legal claims.  

A blue BMW crossed the cracked parking lot and rolled to a stop outside a tired-looking Macy's. The passenger door opened, and out sprang John Donahoe, the chief executive of eBay, who began striding toward the store. It was earlier this year, and from the outside the Westfield Valley Fair mall near San Jose had a kind of ghost-town feel to it. But Donahoe thinks he can change that. As he walked from store to store - a nearly empty GNC, a quiet Foot Locker - he pointed out how little had changed in physical retail stores over the last 30 or 40 years and what would have to change in the next few years in order for these stores to compete with Amazon and Walmart.

ETA has owned and produced the world's largest payments industry trade show for more than 20 years (2014 will be our 24th year, to be precise).  More payments industry business gets done during our show than any other place on earth.  And today, we are thrilled and proud to announce the re-branding and re-energizing of the ETA show as "TRANSACT:  Powered by ETA." I know what you're thinking.  Trade shows come and go all the time, new shows are launched and sold, they change ownership and location - why is re-naming a show such a big deal?  So let's talk about what led us to launch "TRANSACT" as our new show name.

The 2013 Federal Reserve Payments Study (the 2013 Study) is the fifth in a series of triennial studies conducted since 2001 by the Federal Reserve System to estimate aggregate trends in noncash payments in the United States.  Estimates are based on survey data gathered from depository institutions, payment networks, processors, and issuers. The 2013 Study reports the total number and value of all noncash payments estimated to have been made in 2012 by consumers and businesses, including for-profit and nonprofit enterprises and federal, state, and local government agencies.

Psychologists have recently acknowledged that something commonly referred to as "the sixth sense" really does exist. Some attribute these strong hunches or "feelings" about what might happen in the future to people being uniquely in synch with the Earth's magnetic force field which sharpens their focus in ways that those of us who aren't, just can't. Others say that it comes from being able to communicate telepathically with the spiritual world and being forewarned by those spirits about future events.   

Mobile backend service provider StackMob is being acquired in a deal expected to be announced soon, according to multiple TechCrunch sources. We've heard from a few people the acquiring company is "down south," meaning Silicon Valley or the South Bay. Some names that have been tossed around include Oracle and EMC, but we've yet to confirm. StackMob, a competitor to now Facebook-owned Parse, had raised $7.5 million in Series A funding in 2011, but was struggling to raise a B round, leading to the acquisition discussions. 

Amazon.com recently made an acquisition that gets the company into the race for the holy grail of e-commerce -- following consumers on their shopping journey from initial intent to final purchase. This goal, known in the industry at "closing the loop," is potentially lucrative because it would allow companies to see whether advertising directly results in a purchase - something that is not possible at scale yet. There is also value in handling the massive volume of payments that happen online and increasingly in stores through mobile devices.

Just this week, Amazon and PayPal shored up their future mobile payments businesses by acquiring companies specializing in this area. Amazon will soon be competing with PayPal, Square, Google and others already in the mobile payments market with its acquisition of Italian mobile payments startup GoPago.

PayPal stepped up its mobile payments business this week with the acquisition of StackMob, which provides technology that helps developers build and deploy apps across mobile operating systems. The move, which comes on the heels of PayPal's $800 million pick-up of the mobile commerce company Braintree Payment Solutions, will not only boost PayPal's mobile offerings but also should make it easier for developers to integrate its payment services with their own mobile apps.

If you've driven on Santa Clara's Lawrence Expressway sometime in the past six months, you may have seen the Bitcoin honey badger. He's on a billboard between the El Camino Real (the road that once served as the major traffic artery from San Francisco to San Jose) and Highway 101 (the modern-day equivalent). Roger Ver pays for the billboard, forking over about $1,500 a month. It's located about half a mile from Ver's company, Memorydealers, a computer-parts reseller that in 2011 became the first company to accept bitcoins - a digital currency that exists only on the internet - in exchange for real-world products. 

Even as newfound confidence pushes Bitcoin to record highs and as banks and policymakers issue guidance globally on the cryptocurrency, we keep returning to the same questions about its future. Sure, Bitcoin's rise from $13.45 a year ago to $683.84 as of Wednesday seems great, but doesn't the currency's volatility make it ineffective as a medium of exchange? If prices regularly fluctuate between $800 and $1,200, how will it ever become more than a speculative asset? Won't people want to hold onto their Bitcoin to bet on future gains instead of using it for day-to-day transactions?

Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. won approval for a $5.7 billion settlement that ended years of litigation with U.S. merchants over allegations that credit-card swipe fees are improperly fixed. U.S. District Judge John Gleeson said that he was satisfied with the settlement, which was estimated to be the largest-ever U.S. antitrust accord. "For the first time, merchants will be empowered to expose hidden bank fees to their customers, educate them about those fees and use that information to influence their customers' choices of payment methods," Gleeson wrote in his ruling yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

Retailers, and the trade associations representing them, that are opposed to a $5.7 billion settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange rates are contesting federal judge John Gleeson's affirmation Friday of the settlement amount. Defendants in the 8-year-old litigation, which was heard in the District Court of the Eastern District of New York, include Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and a handful of major banks.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) called on financial institutions to publicly disclose agreements with colleges and universities to market debit, prepaid, and other products to students. Currently, institutions only make these disclosures about college credit cards. The CFPB also released its annual report on college credit card agreements, which showed a decline of 23 percent in college agreements from 2011 to 2012. 

The United States economy grew at a torrid 4.1 percent annual pace in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday. That is the strongest growth in nearly two years, and only the third time the economy has expanded that quickly since 2006. The Commerce Department revised its estimate of third-quarter growth to 4.1 percent from 3.6 percent in this release. The refined estimate is based on "more complete source data," the department said, showing personal consumption and investment in things like factories to be higher than previously thought.

The number of United States jobs is forecast to increase by 10.8 percent in the next decade, with fastest growth in the healthcare sector as it serves an aging population. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment projections for 2012 to 2022 released on Thursday said the United States will see nearly 16 million jobs added in that decade. Even with this increase, growth in the civilian labor force is expected to slow to 0.5 percent annually in the next decade. That would be down from the 0.7% annual increase between 2002 and 2012, and potentially hurt economic growth.

Sales of gift cards in 2013 are expected to surpass $118 billion in sales, an 8% increase from 2012. CEB Tower Report research suggests that the widespread adoption of e-gifting, which experienced rapid growth from $300 million in 2012 to a predicted $3 billion in 2013, will provide scale for continued industry gains through 2016. In addition, open network branded cards grew from $41 billion to $44 billion, retailer card volume grew from $36 billion to $39 billion, and restaurant and miscellaneous segments held flat at $19 billion and $13 billion, respectively.

A company that got its start 20 years ago as a supplier of accounting software made its mark in the acquiring business this year by buying all or part of five merchant portfolios. And the spree's not over. Intrix Technology Inc., which now owns thousands of merchant accounts with combined transactions of more than $1 billion annually, wants to keep acquiring portfolios, says CEO Jeff Connors. "We're buying portfolios of a hundred merchants to 10,000," Connors says.

Durango-based Mercury Payment Systems said Friday it has filed a confidential draft registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with a possible initial public offering. The fast-growing electronic-payment processor is a pioneer in the use of mobile devices at the point of sale, which can lower costs for merchants compared with more traditional systems. Mercury CEO Matt Taylor told MergerMarkets in October that the company could undertake an IPO at any time.  

Say what you like about sell-side research, it can at least tell you which way the wind is blowing about a particular stock. When it comes to VeriFone (PAY), analysts seem eager to forgive-and-forget and buy into the story of a strong turnaround in the making. Given how the stock has been performing, I'd say that investors are taking a similar viewpoint. I still have my doubts. I like the hire the company made for the CEO position, and I've liked what I've heard from him so far in terms of strategy, but two troubling facts remain.

As of this week, we've officially jumped through all the hoops and completed the many steps that go into closing a major corporate acquisition. So today I'm thrilled to announce that Braintree has officially joined PayPal in our quest to transform the payment industry through groundbreaking innovation that will change the future of money. Given what's going on in the industry as we head into 2014, this is an ideal moment to combine the resources of our two great companies.

On December 12th, 2013 while most of the US were focusing on holidays, the US patent office released a patent application filed on June 12th, 2013 by Apple.  It appears to be just a small patent application but is actually a huge treasure trove of embodiments and presents a very detailed path Apple will take in retail payments. The patent application directly covers a unique system whereby a user of an iOS device could not only be presented with options of local restaurants but also the actual wait times and seating availability in real time. The patent goes on to explain remote and in restaurant ordering systems that allow customers and wait-staff to place and modify orders. 

MasterCard is looking to mine its trove of customer card payment data to build a site which will provide global travelers with a ranking of popular restaurant destinations in cities worldwide. Cristobel von Walstrom, vice president, MasterCard Advisors Information Services says the site will run on purchasing behavior, "that is, how people are voting for restaurants with their wallets."

The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), the trade association of the global payments industry, announced today the election of four new members to its Board of Directors. ETA also announced appointments to the Presidential Advisory Council, and named more than 200 payments professionals to 15 standing committees for 2014.

The Women's Network in Electronic Transactions (W.net), the premier payments organization dedicated to women in payments, has announced its board of directors for 2014. W.net aspires to be the platform to drive parity for women in payments. Whether new to the field, experienced or considering a career transition, W.net members benefit from unparalleled access to networking, mentoring, career development and educational programming and resources.

Merchant Warehouse®, a leading provider of payment technologies and merchant account services, today announced a new partnership with CGS, a leading global provider of technology solutions. Through this partnership, CGS will implement Merchant Warehouse's Authorize.Net Payment Gateway to deliver a more cost-effective and secure credit card processing solution to its customers in a real-time, online environment.

Merchant Warehouse®, a leading innovator of payment technologies and merchant account services, today announced the addition of Christopher Wuhrer as Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives and Product Marketing. With more than 18 years of experience in payments, ecommerce and mobile technology, Wuhrer is responsible for driving the product vision, direction and go-to market strategies for the company's product and service offerings.

Pivotal Payments, a leading North American merchant services provider, today announced the launch of a program that enables white labeling of its proprietary merchant portal. Modeled after Pivotal Payments' Pivotal360 online management and reporting tool, white labeling allows partners to customize their current merchant administration tools with unique branding and content, and use their own exclusive domain for client access. The result is an affordable solution that readily adds value to their suite of merchant services. 

Clearent, one of the fastest growing credit card processors in the country, proudly announced the newest addition to its ISO Sales team. Jason Hubbard joins Clearent as Vice President of Business Development, ISO Sales. Although he is based in Plano, Texas, Jason will be focused on developing relationships with new Independent Sales Offices and agents throughout the country. With more than 10 years experience in merchant credit card processing services, Jason has served in positions ranging from outside sales to managerial roles.

Bluefin Payment Systems, the leading financial technology provider of cloud-based integrated payment solutions for independent software vendors (ISVs), announced today that they have partnered with a premier international payment platform provider to expand their US and Canadian presence to include international payment processing in early 2014. Bluefin's innovative and proprietary PayConex platform will now support e-commerce and mail order/telephone order (MOTO) payments in 52 countries across six continents in 187 currencies.

TransFirst®, a leading provider of transaction processing services and payment enabling technologies, announces in conjunction with VeriFone Systems, Inc. that it now offers its merchant customers the EMV- and NFC-capable VX 680 wireless terminal from VeriFone. "As the payment processing industry evolves, TransFirst is committed to remaining on the cutting edge and helping our merchants reap the benefits," says Steve Cadden, TransFirst's president of shared services and COO.

First American Payment Systems announced the release of Version 2.0 of the popular 1stPayPOS™ tablet POS system. The first of many scheduled enhancements, 1stPayPOS™ 2.0 includes tip adjustment, upgrades to business analytics, and other features designed for restaurants, cafés, coffee shops, and bars, among other businesses. 1stPayPOS™ 2.0 allows wait staff to enjoy improved order efficiency, including the ability to forward orders to the kitchen or bar for faster preparation through the new remote printer feature.

CardinalCommerce, the global leader in consumer authentication, reports that the alternative payment brands on their platform enjoyed a 55 percent year-over-year increase in online sales secured by Cardinal during the first holiday shopping weekend. This compares to overall online sales being up 16.5 percent during the same period, according to IBM. 

La Caixa has teamed up with Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange and Visa Europe to launch what the Spanish bank claims is Europe's largest NFC mobile payments service. The three mobile operators together have an 80 percent share of the Spanish mobile phone market, Barcelona-based la Caixa said. La Caixa will launch its NFC service with a select number of clients in January, with full rollout starting in February in time for the Mobile World Congress.