Cards

The U.S. Postal Service should consider fixing its massive budget shortfall by offering financial products such as debit cards, remittances and loans to underbanked consumers, according to a paper issued today by the agency's Office of the Inspector General.

Payments processor Rev Worldwide and UnionPay International, a subsidiary of China UnionPay, have entered into a partnership to handle prepaid card issuance.

Mobile carriers are becoming more heavily involved in the payments world. Many are spearheading tests and full deployments of mobile wallets throughout the world, and some like T-Mobile are launching prepaid cards as well.

Paydiant has received a patent covering technology that allows consumers to withdraw cash out of ATMs with their smartphones, a feature that it says should appeal to banks.

Major bank and retail card issuers are lacking in key security areas, according to a new study from Javelin Strategy and Research.

Whereas banks have long struggled to migrate financial relationships onto mobile devices and to attract the underserved, carriers like T-Mobile come into the market with a distinct advantage.

T-Mobile is launching a prepaid card, aiming to use mobile account access as a selling point to attract underbanked consumers.

While it is easy to vilify Target for its recent data breach, the card networks' refusal to take on real card security makes the retailer a victim along with consumers.

It's been roughly a decade since Target executives ended their attempts to convert to EMV-chip payment cards to improve security. After a massive breach of magnetic-stripe card data, it seems they have changed their minds yet again.

Target Corp. warned some Canadian customers that their personal data may have been compromised when hackers stole credit- and debit-card information from the discount chain's U.S. operations last year.

Judges for an appeals court appeared sympathetic to the Federal Reserve Board's defense of its rule capping interchange fees on debit cards, fueling hopes by bankers that the agency will beat back a legal challenge.

Total System Services has developed a product that allows consumers to control their card accounts from smartphones or computers.

A Virginia congressman is seeking a law that would provide consumers with prepaid card fee disclosures they can easily understand. But the industry doesn't operate in a one-size-fits-all manner.

Retailers are being inventive in their use of prepaid cards and mobile wallets to improve their store loyalty programs. Many are learning to use payments technology in ways that may change the way banks view their partnerships with merchants.

TD Bank is launching a new prepaid card to let parents monitor their teens' spending while easing young adults into financial independence.

The EMV Migration Forum has recruited a test group of merchants, retailers and issuers to begin handling EMV-chip cards in Orlando, Fla., early to spot and fix problems before the card networks' deadline of October 2015.

Better ATM Services plans to distribute its ATM-issued prepaid Visa cards through Advanced Network Inc.'s customers.

Walgreen Co. plans to expand the payments features of its combined loyalty and prepaid MasterCard, Balance Financial, with the goal of making it the preferred financial product of its underbanked customers.

Credit unions across the nation are moving up their EMV conversion timelines, considering more class action lawsuits against Target Corp. and calling on Congress to create rules requiring greater payment data security from retailers.

Linking loyalty to payment cards, especially through cobranded products, is a relatively new practice that retailers say helps them target offers to their best customers.