Technology

Big banks are starting to open the tech-spending spigot, but times are tight for their smaller peers.

U.S. job openings rose in December to 2.5 million from 2.4 million a month earlier, and the number of unemployed workers fell 73,000 to 15.3 million, according to the Labor Department in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Financial companies, discovering that people who bank by phone don't always bank online, are changing how they look at mobile services.

Xerox Corp. said Monday it has completed its roughly $6.4 billion acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services Inc., an outsourcer that, among other things, processes credit card applications for issuers.

Processors, not independent sales organizations, likely will bear the brunt of a law that takes effect next January requiring acquirers to report merchant credit and debit card transactions to the Internal Revenue Service, says Henry Helgeson, co-CEO of Merchant Warehouse Inc., a Boston-based ISO.

Dozens of credit unions are walking away from the $60 million payment Visa issuers will get for the costs they incurred for the massive credit card breach at Heartland Payments System.

First Bank & Trust of Brookings, S.D., today announced it is issuing a decoupled, affinity debit card for In Defense of Animals, a nonprofit animal-rights group. Tempo Payments Inc. will process the card’s transactions on its payments platform.

In today’s economy, merchants still want to know how much credit and debit card processing is going to cost, but independent sales organizations say price is only one part of the sales pitch. Listening to what the merchant says it needs can be equally as important in securing the deal.

Electronic-payment services provider Network for Electronic Transfers (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., known as NETS, has launched a mobile-payment option for its cashless-payment service iNETS, according to a company statement. The service will enable consumers in Singapore to pay bills, make purchases and book tickets using their mobile phones.

Citigroup Inc. is said to be switching its entire North American banking operations to a core processing application from Fidelity National Information Services Inc.