Technology

With the economy showing signs of recovery, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday gave more clues as to how the central bank will return to normal and made clear that financial institutions are central to his plans.

News last week that North American Bancard has hired a financial advisor to help sort out its future and that Merchant Data Systems Inc. has purchased a 1,300-merchant ISO potentially is signalling a resurgence in mergersand acquisitions among portfolio buyers and sellers. It also signals further consolidation in the ISO and merchant-acquiring industry.

Automated clearinghouse transaction processor ACH Federal LLC is introducing a merchant-referral partner program for ISOs in the hopes of expanding its client base, according to the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based company.

Banks saw modestly better prices for troubled loans last quarter thanks to stronger demand from vulture investors, home builders and other buyers.

Ebay Inc.’s PayPal unit no longer will process personal online payments to India, the third-party payments provider said in a blog post this week.

Visa Inc.’s announcement Monday that this summer it will expand its “No Signature Required” program for magnetic stripe card transactions less than $25 to the majority of merchants could create yet another setback for contactless-payment growth in the United States, some observers say.

Target Corp. customers now may store gift card data electronically and make payments at the point of sale using their mobile phones.

The Secure POS Vendor Alliance, an Atlanta-based trade organization representing point-of-sale terminal makers, says it is forming the Lab Network, a collection of research labs that would work on shared security matters.

Outsourced third-party vendors managed the majority of compromised systems for businesses in 2009, and they often introduced the deficiencies fraudsters exploited to access the system, according to data from Trustwave, a Chicago-based payment-security firm.

Point-of-sale terminal maker XAC Automation Corp. will use advanced payment-data encryption technology from Voltage Security Inc. in its new devices, Voltage announced this week.