Cards

A chip-and-signature route to U.S. EMV adoption certainly would be less painful for banks and merchants than would the chip-and-PIN approach used most everywhere else, but taking the easy way out carries risk.

A technical problem affecting the Visa network barred consumers from using their credit and debit cards for about 45 minutes on Sunday, the cards company said.

Bank of India Ltd. has signed an agreement to use TimesofMoney’s remittance services to support funds transfers from the United Kingdom, the Chennai-based bank announced March 29.

ATLANTA – Visa has taken a rare step and dropped payments processor Global Payments Inc. from its list of approved service providers after the company reported last week that as many as 1.5 million credit union and bank card accounts may have been compromised by hackers.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A technical problem affecting the Visa network barred people from using their credit and debit cards for about 45 minutes on Sunday, the cards company said.

ATLANTA – Global Payments Inc. has conceded it is the source of the huge cards breach affecting Visa and MasterCard cards.

If the Merchant Advisory Group is nothing else, it sure has been a persistent voice in supporting chip-and-PIN card transactions as the most-secure option for eventual U.S. acceptance of EMV smart cards.

Are credit card portfolios poised to begin growing again?

ATLANTA – Trading in Global Payments Inc. was halted this afternoon when the company’s shares plunged 13% after credit cards processor was identified as the likely source of the massive cards breach affecting Visa and MasterCard.

NetSpend Holdings Inc. has launched a prepaid MasterCard developed with entertainment conglomerate BET Network, the companies announced.

This is an updated version of an article posted earlier on March 30.

A federal appeals court this week affirmed a lower court’s conviction of a former ATM specialist at Pacific Marine Credit Union at Camp Pendleton who walked out of work one day in 2002 with a tissue box-sized brick of 1,000 $100 bills stuffed into a backpack.

NEW YORK – Visa and MasterCard are warning credit unions and banks this morning of a large-scale data breach that affected a credit card processor from the US sometime between January 21, and February 25.

The drumbeats are growing louder for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take action on reloadable prepaid cards.

Regions Financial has finished rolling out a suite of alternative financial services, including check cashing, money transfer and expedited bill pay services, along with a prepaid card.

With mobile-payment technology advancing seemingly at the speed of a mobile payment itself, one has to wonder how long it might be before consumers wouldn’t need, or even possess, plastic cards to conduct transactions.

Still mourning the demise of overdraft-fee income, smaller banks nevertheless are finding a variety of ways to compensate.

M-Via has added free ATM cash withdrawals to its fee structure for Boom, a service for the unbanked to manage monetary accounts through mobile phones, the mobile-payment network provider announced March 27.

Visa Inc. scored a coup in persuading Kevin Knight, Nordstrom Inc.'s credit card czar, to oversee its credit and debit card products in North America.

Financial institutions in the Shazam electronic funds transfer network now may help their members with identity-theft recovery, a process that can be costly in both dollars and time.