Merchant

Think Computer Corp. has added a contactless-payment capability to its FaceCash mobile wallet.

NEW ORLEANS–One of the prevailing themes of this year’s Mobile Banking Summit is there is nothing inherently wrong with plastic cards: A number of speakers, panelists and attendees with a major stake in mobile payments all acknowledge that physical cards work well, posing a steep hill to climb to get consumers to use their phones to make payments.

Consumers now may use China UnionPay-branded credit cards in Brazil under an agreement the card organization reached late last year with Brazil-based Itaú Unibanco S.A. that took effect in late May.

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Ltd. last week announced a free mobile-payment service that will enable its customers to make small-ticket purchases at merchant locations within the United Arab Emirates.

American Express Co. is trying to take prepaid debit cards, typically targeted at underbanked consumers, up market.

WASHINGTON — In a nail-biting conclusion after weeks of fierce lobbying by bankers and retailers, the Senate defeated a bill Wednesday that would have delayed the Federal Reserve Board's proposal to cap interchange fees for debit cards.

WASHINGTON — Just hours before the Senate votes on the biggest post-Dodd-Frank bill for the industry, no one in Washington knows what the outcome will be.

WASHINGTON – The credit union and banking lobbies were pulling out all the stops last night to round up a few more votes for their bid to delay cuts in debit fees, but the effort was still a handful of votes short.

Consumer credit jumped by a seasonally adjusted 3.1% annual rate in April, the seventh consecutive monthly gain, according to the Federal Reserve's monthly G.19 report released Tuesday.

Bling Nation, the mobile payments and loyalty company, has shut down its service in a move it insists is only temporary.