Fintech

Remember that five-gigabyte hard drive that WikiLeaks allegedly had that contained damaging information about Bank of America? It appears that that data stash no longer exist, having been destroyed by a former associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after the two men got into a fight.

San Francisco's city attorney said Bank of America Corp. agreed to a $5 million settlement of a suit over its use of the National Arbitration Forum to handle credit-card disputes, according to Dow Jones.

ENDICOTT, N.J. – The $2.6-billion Visions FCU is expanding into southern New York, northern Pennsylvania and New Jersey with a merger with $330-million Paragon FCU.

Shipments of smart cards in China will exceed 1 billion by 2016, helping China catch up to Europe, Japan and other countries that have begun to transition to smart cards to improve security, according to a recently released report by IMS Research Ltd.

In a significant boost to mobile payments in China, the country’s sole card processor China UnionPay Co. Ltd. has formed a partnership with handset maker HTC Corp. to launch a phone with a built-in mobile-payment facility.

Enhancing the services it provides to merchants using its transaction-processing services, the Shazam electronic funds network on Aug. 23 unveiled an innovation it says will streamline merchants’ processes, particularly when authorizing PIN-debit transactions online.

After months of wrangling, the Federal Reserve Board’s decision to cap debit card interchange rates may have seemed like the final word. The reality, however, appears more complex.

A new point-of-sale terminal from Vivotech Inc. capable of accepting Near Field Communication mobile payments and chip-and-PIN transactions could help position U.S. merchants to embrace EMV smart card technology and perhaps save them money on security-standards compliance costs, the vendor believes.

Intuit Inc.'s Mint.com is adding bill payment reminders to its free personal financial management service.

Not only are more banks offering mobile banking, more are also releasing multiple applications to try to appeal to as many types of banking customers as possible.