Analytics

Securitized credit card charge-offs in July rose from the previous month, but the jump was due to one-time factors. Charge-offs should resume their downward trend this month and reach about 4% by the end of the year, according to Moody's Investor Service.

Citing risks from Europe and budget tightening, Standard & Poor's raised the chance of the U.S. falling into recession as the economy struggles to recover.

Small business bankruptcies fell in the second quarter ended June 30, shrinking by nearly 17% from the previous quarter, according to Equifax's Small Business Bankruptcy Report.

Consumers are doing a better job paying off their debts, according to an index of defaults on mortgages, credit cards and auto loans.

Visa is offering a new data encryption service that could compete with third-party security vendors' offerings. The service's launch also indicates the card brand's growing desire to push beyond the requirements of the Payment Card Industry data security standards.

If the Shazam electronic funds transfer network had its way, smart cards issued with EMV chips would require a single PIN that would both open the chip and route the transaction for settlement. But "that's still under discussion," an exec says.

Canada's government wants to hire a collection agency to recoup an estimated $129 million in unpaid fines, according to a letter of interest.

Fifth Third Bank is launching a commercial card that has an EMV chip to allow the bank's business customers to make payments overseas.

CreditCall and ChipCap separately announced new readers that handle chip-and-PIN payments from cards that use the EMV standard.

Analytics and decision management technology provider Fair Isaac Corp. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Adeptra Ltd., a leader in cloud-based customer engagement and risk-intervention services.

Discover Financial Services is facing a new lawsuit over the marketing of its payment protection and other fee-based credit card products — this time from one of its own shareholders.

ID Tech, a supplier of point-of-sale devices, has agreed to begin outfitting its SecureMag readers with TransArmor data encryption and tokenization from First Data.

Hackers seeking cardholder data most often find openings in a small merchant's payments network because of something a third-party vendor did or did not do when installing payment applications.

The worst drought to hit the Midwest in more than 20 years is forcing bankers to make tough calls on how to handle delinquent agricultural loans.

Consumers continue to take their credit card borrowing more seriously. The ratio of credit cardholders 90 or more days past due on their payments continues to drop even as issuers are extending credit to higher-risk customers, according to TransUnion.

Credit card asset-backed securities likely will remain stable for the foreseeable future because card charge-offs and delinquencies are at historic lows, consumer bankruptcies keep falling and consumer balance sheets are getting healthier, according to Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.

A bank in Vietnam claims it has tripled its account base since it began offering cards with biometric fingerprint technology in June to the country's unbanked residents.

A penny per transaction may be enough to cover issuers' costs of preventing credit and debit fraud now, but that math could change if fraud incidents spike.

As we transact, we give life to the inner "rock star" or "accountant" in us, says Brett King, chief executive of mobile finance start-up Movenbank.

Google has changed the rules about how issuers get into its mobile wallet, and American Express is the first to vocally and vehemently oppose Google's new setup. The outcome of this dispute could decide who controls transaction data in mobile payments.