Technology

MasterCard Inc. on Wednesday released a dedicated application for BlackBerry owners who want to use MoneySend, the card company's mobile person-to-person payment system.

ViVOtech and DeviceFidelity announced a joint solution they say brings contactless mobile payment, loyalty, transit, ticketing and coupon redemption capabilities to leading smartphones, including BlackBerrys and iPhones.

Apriva, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based wireless-payments company, on Sept. 8 announced the release of its AprivaPay wireless point-of-sale application for Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

Australia’s taxation authority in September announced plans to seek contacts with various third-party providers to support its e-commerce payments.

Vodacom Pty. Ltd. is teaming with Nedbank Ltd. to launch the M-Pesa mobile cash-transfer service in South Africa, the mobile operator announced last week.

FICO, a provider of analytics and decision management technology, reports that a new survey found strong evidence of a credit gap for consumers as lenders expect credit availability to fall short of consumer demand through the end of 2010.

Transaction processor First Data Corp. expects to sign up more than 100,000 merchants by the end of this year for its new TransArmor payment card security product. TransArmor uses a combination of tokenization and encryption to secure transaction data as it passes through merchants’ systems.

Payments-software provider ACI Worldwide Inc. on Sept. 8 announced an extension and a broadening of its contract agreement with First Data Corp. The new agreement will enable the Atlanta-based transaction processor to more cost effectively develop products and drive infrastructure efficiencies in its global operations, ACI notes in a news release.

More banks should consider combining their debit and credit card rewards programs, which could better help them stave off customer attrition, according to the results of a survey released Tuesday by Synergistics Research Corp.

BancVue Ltd., an Austin, Texas-based product-development and marketing company focused on community banks and credit unions, on Sept. 7 announced a strategic partnership in which it will provide Total System Services Inc.’s electronic payments services to community financial institutions.