Merchant

Two point-of-sale terminal makers on Jan. 11 announced product updates. Ingenico S.A. says its new iSC350 payment terminal can display full-motion video on its consumer-facing screen with stereo sound.

U.S. revolving credit, 98% of which is credit card debt, fell to $874 billion in November from a revised total of $887.7 billion in October, the largest dollar-value drop since records began in 1968, according to a Federal Reserve G.19 report on consumer credit released Friday.

The Federal Trade Commission today identified the nine debt-buying companies that it has ordered to turn over information about their purchasing and collection practices.

The Federal Trade Commission has concluded a case against collection agency Academy Collection Service Inc. (ACS) and alleged Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) violations by imposing civil penalties totaling $675,000 against Albert S. Bastian and Keith L. Hurt III.

PowerPay, a provider of e-commerce and point-of-sale payment-processing products, will offer to its customers a terminal from Transaction Wireless, a mobile-commerce and marketing provider, under an agreement between the companies announced this week.

Lawsuits citing alleged Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) violations reached an all-time mark in 2009 at 8,287, easily topping the record of 5,188 set a year earlier, according to data from U.S. District Court complaint dockets.

Financial services companies currently face the highest card default and charge-off rates in more than 20 years, and uncollected debt is expected to grow through the end of 2009. As debt rises and internal resources shrink, the job of collections increasingly falls to customer care.

E-mail Darren Waggoner at darren.waggoner@sourcemedia.com to comment on this developing story.

For the third consecutive month, the Credit Manager's Index is signaling that the recession is over and the economy is expanding, according to a report by the National Association of Credit Management (NACM).

Seventy-six percent of more than 6,100 consumers polled by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) picked "decrease debt" as a top financial resolution for 2010. But while the collection industry looks favorably at that goal, NFCC officials are concerned about where other consumer priorities ranked.