Cards

Customer credit card data was not endangered during last week’s security breach of a small portion of websites hosted by GoDaddy.com Inc., a company executive says.

Green Dot Corp. has joined the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to participate in the standards-setting process, the Monrovia, Calif.-based prepaid card marketer announced Sept. 26.

Citigroup Inc.'s Vikram Pandit said Friday it may be time for the U.S. to follow other nation's lead and start approaching consumer lending as a corporate finance issue.

NetSpend Corp.’s recent decision to expand its prepaid debit card distribution partnership with the Blackhawk Network illustrates how prepaid card marketers will form stronger alliances within the industry to drive more card sales, notes one analyst.

New Federal Reserve Board rules that on Oct. 1 will reduce debit card interchange revenue for larger issuers may cause banks to raise fees associated with using debit cards, and that could drive consumers to use credit cards more, a new research paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston contends.

Independent ATM provider YourCash Ltd. will target supermarkets throughout Belgium as testing sites for new ATMs as it expands an ongoing program of in-store deployments with European payments processor Equens SE, the companies announced Sept. 20.

TORONTO–Banks are starting to notice that their online banking and mobile sites are not as good as customers expect.

Just as Discover Financial Services is discontinuing single-use account numbers, MasterCard Worldwide is making them a central feature of a small-business offering.

MasterCard for the past several years has been promoting its “priceless” experiences, such as behind-the-scenes access at ball games, golf tournaments, theater shows and other events. But its new “Priceless Cities” campaign, launched in New York in July, adds local and social-media dimensions.

When American Express Co. introduced its digital wallet Serve earlier this year, the company promised to enhance the product with acquisitions and partnerships that added more functionality to the platform.

A London-based payment-processing and fraud-prevention company says it has created a way to detect fraudulent online credit card use more quickly by providing merchants and card issuers with identical cardholder data and transaction histories.

Discover Financial Services more than doubled its third-quarter net income to $649 million as its customers increased their spending and its credit card loan portfolio grew for the first time in over two years.

Merchants and processors may find Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council requirements for the use of advanced encryption hardware to secure card data useful, but encryption alone is not security’s “silver bullet,” fraud-prevention vendors say.

Affinity Solutions Inc. is putting a new spin on the daily-deals market with a merchant-funded rewards program that enables businesses to track a deal’s effectiveness and deploy follow-up offers to drive repeat business with discounts consumers should find relevant based on their past purchases.

New Federal Reserve Board rules that next month will reduce how much issuers make from debit card purchases has prompted Bank of America Corp. to make a change in its Merrill Lynch deferred debit card.

Protecting customer credit card data was not on the priority list for P.J. Jacokes when he started his own business three years ago.

The convergence of the major card brands within various evolving Near Field Communication-based mobile payment schemes could inspire more merchants to prepare for contactless-payment acceptance. But the path to individual banks’ participation remains hazy, observers say.

Diebold Inc. has attacked the reliability of NCR Corp.’s new single-slot, mixed-media ATM technology that can accept intermingled cash and checks. But early returns suggest NCR’s machines work well enough to satisfy Wells Fargo & Co. and BMO.

West Bengal is planning to distribute a new credit card designed to provide credit to the Indian state’s small and midsize enterprises.

Legislation in California that would restrict fees associated with prepaid payroll debit cards likely would offer little economic incentive to providers and issuers to support such products, notes one analyst.