Cards

American Express' Serve prepaid account has its roots as a digital wallet, but the card issuer is finding many of its enrollments are coming through a very non-digital process: in-person activations at mobile phone stores.

Total System Services Inc. plans to build upon NetSpend's new partnerships with Western Union and Paychex to boost its presence in the prepaid card market, which it says can reach 68 million underserved consumers throughout the world.

Commuters in Sydney, Australia now have the option to use a contactless smart card to pay train fare.

The prepaid card marketer NetSpend is working with Western Union to launch a prepaid card this year.

American Express is expanding its cash reload network for its Serve prepaid cards through a partnership with Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

MasterCard has entered an agreement to buy Pinpoint Pty. Ltd., a Sydney, Australia-based provider of loyalty and rewards services in the Asia Pacific region.

American Express' joint travel venture may get delayed as it awaits regulatory approval, CFO Jeff Campbell told investors Jan 16.

Momentum is building for debit EMV as the Shazam Network and Visa Inc. announced an agreement today to enable issuers to use Visa's common debit application identifier (AID) for Visa- and Shazam-branded cards and transactions.

SCVNGR's LevelUp is reducing its mobile wallet's transaction fee from 2% to 1.95% in its continued attempt to shave interchange costs.

CO-OP Financial Services has entered into an agreement with Visa to make the Visa EMV common debit solution available to its credit union clients.

The conventional wisdom has always been: prepaid card customers will pay a fee for mobile check deposit, but bank customers won't. A year ago, Regions Bank decided to charge a fee to both audiences and has monitored the results.

Wave Crest Group Ltd. will be the prepaid program manager for Advanced Cash's new MasterCard program.

Payment processor Heartland Payment Systems has acquired MCS Software.

Merchants are eager to sell prepaid cards to increase revenue, and they'll be looking to expand their offerings through partnerships with prepaid providers and networks, according to a new report from Aite Group.

Prepaid program managers face a much different set of considerations than banks do when deciding how to deploy EMV-chip cards in the U.S.

The "buy local" Buzz Points loyalty program is adding mobile marketing technology to increase payments volume for non-chain merchants.

VeriFone Systems plans to offer a new portable card terminal that can accept EMV-chip card payments and uses several wireless technologies.

Digital coupon provider Coupons.com Inc. is offering consumers the option to link the site's offers directly to their credit or debit cards.

Gyft, a provider of virtual gift cards, plans to launch Gyft Cloud, a marketplace for merchants to sell their own digital gift cards with Clover Station, a tablet-based point of sale system developed by First Data Corp.

Data security provider Foregenix is in the thick of the endless war on cybercrime. And the payments industry's biggest weapons are no deterrent to fraudsters, says Andrew Henwood, CEO of U.K.-based Foregenix.