Cards

PHILADELPHIA — In his first speech since taking over for Elizabeth Warren as the public face of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Raj Date warned that the agency will take a firm stance when it identifies practices that are harmful for consumers.

As cuts in debit card interchange and changes in credit card regulations have threatened to reduce issuer-provided card rewards, some merchants have responded by working with issuers to bolster their rewards programs. In doing so, those retailers receive a direct line to card-spending consumers and give financial institutions a way to cover their card-rewards costs.

Internet PIN-debit once was seen as a way for merchants to earn a cheaper interchange rate on card-not-present transactions conducted online. That benefit, however, disappeared when the Federal Reserve Board recently cut the fees banks can charge merchants who accept debit cards. The new fees go into effect Oct. 1.

United Kingdom-based Ryanair Ltd. is giving consumers the opportunity to avoid what have become controversial airline booking fees when tickets are purchased with plastic.

Aiming to speed up ATM lines, especially for small-business customers, BMO Harris Bank N.A. plans to replace most of the bank’s current Diebold ATMs with NCR Corp. units that accept checks and cash simultaneously through a single slot, the companies said Sept. 14.

The board of the payments technology vendor Fundtech Ltd. plans to halt its intended merger with S1 Corp. after receiving a separate offer from the private equity firm GTCR.

A global payments report issued Sept. 15 by Capgemini and the Royal Bank of Scotland strikes a positive note: the use of e-payments is rising, while use of old-school checks and cash is fading.

Capital One Financial Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Fairbank says he believes the credit card business is headed for significant consolidation and that his company intends to be one of the industry's "endgame players."

Western Union Co., in a bid to leverage its core business outside the U.S., is poised to launch and expand its reloadable prepaid debit card product in markets where consumers typically send and receive multiple funds transfers throughout the year.

Another Iowa credit union has added a Dwolla Corp. account and payments link to its online banking format, continuing a trend for the Des Moines, Iowa-based mobile-payment startup as it attempts to expand its reach.

The Indian state of Tamil Nadu in mid-September plans to test the use of biometric smart cards to help disburse pensions in an effort to prevent corruption in the process of delivering cash payments to recipients.

S1 Corp.'s board advised the company's shareholders not to accept the exchange offer ACI Worldwide Inc. made in its hostile bid for the Norcross, Ga., bank technology vendor.

Monitise was awarded a UK patent for a “virtual payment card” that will allow consumers to make payments in shops and online with their mobile phone without divulging their card details, the company said Sept. 13.

Fraudsters are increasingly using alternative payment methods to make bogus transactions, in many cases moving away from debit cards and checks, merchants report.

Acculynk Inc. is beginning to test the international market with PaySecure, its Internet PIN-debit product, and has inked an agreement with Evertec Inc. in Puerto Rico.

Efforts to streamline the various payment systems across Taiwan’s public transport operations may see progress as the country’s government pushes interoperability among locally issued smartcards.

Building on its growing momentum in contactless payments, Bank of Montreal is rolling out the Mobile PayPass Tag, a Near Field Communication-enabled sticker that consumers can attach to their mobile phones to make contactless payments in Canada, the bank announced Sept. 13.

The online payment provider eLayaway Inc. said on Monday that it would join the Secure Vault Payments network and offer the service to its customers in the fourth quarter.

Terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. has taken a key step toward bringing its recently acquired Hypercom Corp. hardware operations abroad under one roof by making its product information available to Hypercom distributors in Western Europe, the company said Sept. 12.

The time it takes to convert different brands of ATMs in a bank network to consistent operations and servicing processes using multivendor software has decreased dramatically, NCR Corp. announced Sept. 8.