Louis Berney

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With e-commerce shopping volume continuing to shoot up year after year, Internet retailers, banks and credit card organizations are discovering that the boost in sales is accompanied by a rise in online fraud.

With card issuers discovering that customer-rewards programs can be expensive to operate and maintain, a major Utah bank is trying a different, though not entirely novel, approach: Have participating merchants pay for the rewards going to the bank’s cardholders.

Now that Bank of America Corp. has increased from $2 to $3 the surcharge fee it assesses noncustomers at most of its ATMs, other banks and ATM operators are considering how to respond. Some ATM deployers may raise their rates. Others, though, may view BofA's decision as a marketing opportunity.

Fair Isaac Corp., whose FICO credit-scoring model is used to help gauge lender risk, is cracking down on organizations that enable individuals to inflate their credit ratings by buying into strangers' credit card ratings. But the company's new policy banning the practice, called "piggybacking," could have broader implications, including making it more difficult for legitimate cardholders to share their credit rating with their spouses or children.

Financial institutions are expressing consternation over proposed federal regulations that would require credit card issuers to establish specific procedures for resolving discrepancies between an address given by a card applicant or cardholder and the address credit bureaus have on record for that individual.

The international remittance business, spurred by an influx of immigrants sending funds home from countries across the globe, represents a potentially lucrative market for banks.