Cards

An anonymous letter sent to some shareholders of PrepaYd Inc. appears to have ties to a California Department of Corporations subpoena the prepaid card company received a year ago. And it has the company's CEO fuming.

Credit card issuers may be able to target their marketing better through a new Equifax prospect-scoring model that identifies the consumers most likely to open an account.

A group of investors led by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has agreed to invest $4.8 million in a Redwood City, Calif., payments network that lets people use retailers' gift cards to buy goods and services from other merchants.

Most merchants dread the idea of surcharging consumers at the point of sale, even if Visa and MasterCard are giving them explicit permission in a proposed legal settlement. But the option could prove valuable to merchants as they negotiate new contracts.

Neiman Marcus Inc.'s exclusive credit card acceptance policies are no more.

Visa and MasterCard, in a drive to tip the scales in favor of card issuers over merchants, have established policies over the years that have led to tens of billions in costs and losses through litigation settlements and legislation.

SCVNGR's LevelUp mobile payment system added Larkburger, chef Thomas Salamunovich's burger chain, to its merchant lineup.

Some merchants are already crying foul over a proposed $6 billion swipe-fee settlement, threatening the payments industry's attempts to move past long-pending litigation.

LOMPOC, Calif. – Coast Hills FCU is notifying members of an apparent debit card fraud at a local restaurant, Orcutt Burger.

WASHINGTON – Costs for the historic settlement of antitrust charges against Visa, MasterCard and several big banks will ultimately be passed on to owners and beneficiaries of the two card networks, with hundreds of millions of dollars of the $7.2 billion settlement being paid by credit unions.

NEW YORK – Visa, Mastercard and banks issuing their credit cards have agreed to pay up to $7.25 billion and allow merchants to encourage customers to use cheaper forms of payment, according to settlement papers filed on Friday in a lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court.

Merchants and card issuers weighing the cost of investing in Near Field Communication technology have a lot riding on the success or failure of the Isis mobile-payments test set to launch soon.

A lower reduction in the allowance for loan losses compared with the same period last year helped to drive down the second-quarter profit for the Card Services and Auto (Card) unit at JPMorgan Chase & Co., the issuer reported July 13.

Student ID cards that double as debit or prepaid cards are a growth area for U.S. banks and other financial companies. And competition is heating up.

Discover Financial Services' Pulse electronic funds transfer network will use Hewlett-Packard's Converged Infrastructure to increase its transaction processing capacity, HP announced earlier this week.

LevelUp is eliminating one of the fees merchants pay to accept cards through its mobile-payment system, which uses QR codes to access pre-enrolled debit or credit cards when shopping.

More than 6,500 cabs will receive payment systems integrated with driver and passenger information tablet displays under a five-year contract awarded to VeriFone Systems Inc. by the District of Columbia Taxicab Commission, the terminal maker announced July 11.

Perhaps MasterCard Worldwide may have acted too swiftly in dropping its MoneySend funds-transfer service. Consumers queried recently listed MoneySend among the top five mobile-payment services they had used.

JCB International do Brasil Representacão Comercial Ltda. began operations in São Paulo, Brazil, on July 1, JCB International Co. Ltd., the international operations subsidiary of Japan-based JCB, announced July 11.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is expanding the availability of its new Liquid prepaid card to all 5,500 branches across the U.S., the bank announced July 10.