Technology

Preventing a damaged reputation, more so than cost, is what drives online merchants to improve their data security and comply with industry standards. And more merchants are starting to use third parties to store their payments data to improve security and protect their reputations, new research suggests.

Merchants selling digital content likely grimace at the thought of a consumer making a 99-cent purchase using a credit card because of the fees involved with that transaction.

Buoyed by a reduction in loan-loss reserves and a modest increase in credit and debit card purchase volume, U.S. Bancorp on July 20 said second-quarter net income for its payments services unit doubled from the same period last year.

Giftango Corp. wants to give merchants a head start on the mobile-wallet age by placing two-dimensional barcodes on the back of their proprietary, closed-loop gift cards to enable consumers to convert the plastic to a digital format via a smartphone camera, among other capabilities.

Banks are still digesting a full plate of mortgage and other economic woes, but that is not stopping them from adding ambitious technology projects to their diet, if the first of the vendor earnings reports is an indication.

Default rates for first and second mortgages, bank cards and auto loans decreased in June, according to a report released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's and Experian.

Boosted by a massive reduction in loan-loss reserves, Bank of America Corp.’s global cards unit produced second-quarter net income of $2 billion, up 142% from $826 million a year earlier, the company announced Tuesday.

The biggest trend in merchant acquiring this year is a concentration on developing and selling mobile card acceptance to micromerchants, a new report suggests.

Isis, the wireless carrier-led mobile-payments venture, just crossed off a relatively small but integral item on its to-do list in signing Visa Inc., American Express Co. and MasterCard Worldwide to its system.

Electronic invoicing companies Transactis Inc. and Data Impact have merged their operations to better serve billers and banks, the companies announced July 19.