Merchant

Visa Inc. last week completed a trial of mobile contactless payments in Australia in collaboration with Melbourne-based ANZ Banking Group Ltd., Vipin Kalra, Visa country manager for Australia, tells PaymentsSource.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Richard Durbin, author of the controversial rule to set caps on debit fees, yesterday denounced assertions by banks and credit unions that having card giants MasterCard and Visa set prices for debit is preferable to having the Federal Reserve set price limits on the increasingly popular form of payment.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Richard Durbin, author of the controversial rule to set caps on debit fees, yesterday denounced assertions by banks and credit unions that having card giants MasterCard and Visa set prices for debit is preferable to having the Federal Reserve set price limits on the increasingly popular form of payment.

An estimated 515 different collection agencies and creditors were sued between March 16-31, the highest half-month period thus far in 2011 and up from 417 sued between March 1-15, according to data from U.S. District Courts.

Visa Inc. has adapted the fraud scoring tool that it uses to vet card-not-present transactions to aid government agencies and private businesses with corporate card accounts.

Wells Fargo & Co. is planning to issue 15,000 EMV cards to U.S. residents in a test this year, making it by far the largest bank to offer the smart cards to domestic customers.

he breach last month at Epsilon, the email marketing arm of Alliance Data Systems Corp. of Plano, Texas, was probably four months in the making, according to an April 9 story in CNet, and it could have started with a phishing attack against an email services partner that Epsilon used, called Return Path Inc., of New York.

A consortium of technology companies with banking-industry connections is urging lawmakers to delay implementation of the Federal Reserve Board’s proposed new debit-interchange rules, warning they could heighten risk by forcing banks to reduce their investments in security and fraud-protection services.

Direct carrier billing is becoming more popular as consumers see the convenience and merchants are more willing to accept higher transaction fees to increase sales, contends Zong Inc., a mobile-payments platform provider.

Two companies and three individuals are banned from the mortgage-relief services business and must relinquish $2.2 million in assets for consumer refunds, according to a settlement reached with the Federal Trade Commission.