Cards

Banks are starting to take a three-pronged approach to the technology gap that exists between them and their small business clients: remote deposit capture, social media and, in the case of Citizens Financial Group, corporate spend controls.

First Community Federal Credit Union will return an estimated $200,000 to members as part of a three-month debit card campaign called “Skip the Fee, Swipe for Free,” the institution announced this week.

For toy store owner Buddy Wood, the one thing as familiar as Schwinn bicycles and Radio Flyer wagons is interchange. Wood has watched fees evolve in the four decades he has operated his family-owned store in Metairie, La.

Taking mobile payments to new heights, MasterCard Worldwide soon will conduct a test of contactless-based payments at 30,000 feet, enabling passengers to purchase refreshments using its contactless PayPass technology aboard planes from WestJet, a Calgary, Alberta-based airline.

CHICAGO–The mobile-commerce market is littered with various wallet models, acceptance devices and applications, and this is forcing merchant-service providers to seek out ways to bring the elements together to help retailers maximize the channel’s potential, notes one mobile-payments executive.

The Beijing branch of China Telecom Corp. Ltd. has begun enabling customers to make payments using their China UnionPay cards over its mobile network as part of a pilot that launched Oct. 20.

A flood of overdraft cases has streamed into the Miami courtroom of U.S. District Judge Lawrence King over the past two years, but a recent ruling by panel of federal judges may have turned off the spigot.

Omni Community Credit Union is encouraging members and nonmembers to switch to its debit card with a drawing to win $250 in free debit card purchases each month for a year.

The Indian Finance Ministry has approved in principle allowing white-label ATMs, potentially resulting in more ATM deployments in rural parts of the country, according to local media reports.

Roughly half of adults in major global markets are interested in mobile payments because of the ease and simplicity they offer, but significant doubts persist about mobile-payment security, according to a study of consumers in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Germany and Malaysia released in early October.

The recent spate of credit card portfolio sales is helping boost more than just the buyers and seller. The behind-the-scenes players are seeing potential opportunities, too.

All South Korean point-of-sale terminals now accept China UnionPay cards through a deal with South Korea’s BC Card Co., the companies announced Oct. 21.

ZAO Citibank has launched a free service that enables Moscow residents to pay their city real-estate, telephone and energy bills automatically by billing to their Citibank debit or credit card accounts, the Moscow-based company announced Oct. 17.

Consumers still are conducting a high number of cash transactions per month, survey data the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston released in June show.

Accepting card payments with a mobile phone is becoming as American as baseball and apple pie now that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is selling the Square Inc. reader that turns any smartphone into a card-acceptance device.

Travelex Global Business Payments Inc. is using new software to offer an online payment program designed to save U.S. universities time and money by eliminating manual tracking when various exchange fees cause an international student’s payments to be less than what is owed, the Washington, D.C.-based company announced Oct. 13.

The recent arrests in New York related to what some have called the biggest counterfeit credit card scheme in U.S. history prompted some observers to suggest that recent actions in the U.S. to adopt chip card technology could put an end to such crimes.

United Solutions Co., a credit union service organization owned by five area credit unions and one former credit union, has agreed to license the card-customization technology owned by Serverside Group.

Genome projects map the relationship between human DNA and musical preferences, so why not that of consumers and their cards?

New caps on debit card interchange fees that took effect Oct. 1 will reduce gross revenues by $4 million this quarter and by $17 million to $19 million per year, according to the chief executive at Associated Banc-Corp in Green Bay, Wis.