Kate Fitzgerald is an Arizona-based senior editor for American Banker and longtime payments reporter. Fitzgerald began her journalism career at the San Diego Tribune, and has worked as a reporter and editor at several other publications, including Advertising Age and the Arizona Republic. She is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College and holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
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Approximately 70% of Mexico’s estimated population of 109 million is unbanked, operating in an informal, cash-based economy with no participation in savings or credit products. But a new crop of financial-services providers led by retailers is working to change the landscape by offering credit and debit cards to these typically lower-income consumers.
March 1 - PSO content
The rise of new, customizable business-to-business payment networks could help speed the sluggish migration of corporate payments from legacy paper-based checks and invoices to more-efficient electronic payment platforms.
March 1 - PSO content
Proposed rules introduced recently by the United States government to enforce the 2-year-old Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 would place responsibility on banks, card issuers, processors and card networks to block U.S. participation in the estimated $13 billion worldwide online gambling industry.
February 1 - PSO content
Health care-benefits programs in the United States that enable consumers to use debit cards to access flexible spending and health reimbursement accounts got a boost this year from a new requirement that affects the way retailers handle payments for health care purchases. Consumers with health savings accounts tied to debit cards indirectly will benefit from the change.
February 1 - PSO content
A new era began for the European payments industry in January, as the Single Euro Payments Area initiative commenced to link the European Union’s many fragmented national payment systems into a zone where payments flow seamlessly across countries’ borders.
February 1 - PSO content
The worldwide payments industry in 2008 is facing a year of unprecedented growth opportunities and possible upheavals, as economic and political pressures converge with new technological and competitive developments in key markets.
January 1 - PSO content
Discover Financial Services is betting heavily on a broad expansion plan whose results over the next year could determine Discover's future as a standalone card brand.
December 1 - PSO content
Credit card charge-offs this year generally returned to the normal levels issuers experienced before a new bankruptcy law took effect in October 2005. The law, which makes it more difficult for holders of card and other loans to erase their debts, triggered a tsunami of bankruptcy filings shortly before it took effect and a dearth of filings for several months thereafter.
December 1 - PSO content
Merchants fed up with paying ever-rising credit card interchange fees soon may get a break. But experts say immediate relief is more likely to come from new payment-system innovations than from federal legislation.
November 1 - PSO content
Near-term damage from the subprime mortgage market's collapse will be minimal for most credit card issuers, say experts. But ripple effects over the next 12 months could be more severe.
October 1 - PSO content
Like many U.S.-based credit card issuers and transaction processors hungry to expand into international markets, Global Payments Inc. needed a place to anchor its operations in Europe. Looking at a map, it became obvious to Paul R. Garcia, chairman, president and CEO of the Atlanta-based processor, that the geographic center of Europe is in Prague, in the Czech Republic, not in a more obvious financial capital such as London.
September 1 - PSO content
Many senior payments-industry executives received significant boosts in their total compensation packages last year. Overall, the median total compensation for top executives appears to have declined 23% last year, to $2.3 million from $3 million in 2005, according to exclusive data supplied to Cards&Payments by Standard & Poor's.
August 1 - PSO content
Many of the millions of Hispanics who have arrived in the United States in recent years want a credit card just as much as any U.S. citizen. But because there are little historic data about new immigrants, issuers usually classify them as higher-risk customers who require laborious, case-by-case evaluation.
May 1 - PSO content
Intense competition is forcing even the most conservative credit card issuers to venture into riskier territory in search of more revenue.
April 1 - PSO content
A wave of new government regulations is spurring many credit card issuers to root out bad data lurking in their information systems, while simultaneously the issuers are improving business processes.
March 1