Cards

An ATM packed with high-tech functions may seem like a science-fiction dream come true, but business realities may keep many of the fanciest features on the drawing board for years to come.

Following recommendations from India’s central bank urging the country’s financial institutions to issue chip cards, ICICI Bank Ltd. has begun to issue its first EMV-compliant credit card, the issuer announced Sept. 5.

American Express Co., which lately has been rolling out prepaid and digital-payment options to expand its audience, has added yet another product: an electronic gift card.

Many institutions are considering mobile phone-enabled check capture, a popular way of depositing checks in which consumers use their smartphones to take photos of checks to deposit them remotely.

Steve Geringer is offering a second time at bat for mobile payment technology that struck out: sound innovation that didn't match business realities.

Zions Bancorp., in its attempt to spot fraud, was gathering much more data than its technology could handle. While searching for a needle in a haystack, it was just piling on more hay.

Diebold Federal Credit Union said it is offering a new service provided by its corporate sponsor, Diebold Inc., aimed at preventing unauthorized use of debit and ATM cards.

A directive earlier this month from Visa Inc. designed to motivate merchants to support the EMV chip card standard for U.S. cards and payment terminals may spark a cottage industry in EMV training seminars and consulting.

Electronic funds transfer networks such as First Data Corp.’s Star are hearing increased chatter from financial institutions about securing and authenticating purchases at point-of-sale retail locations and online.

Representatives of 13 corporate credit unions and Co-op Financial Services have abandoned efforts to buy the payments functions from U.S. Central Federal Credit Union, the latest corporate initiative to fail, the representatives announced Sept. 2.

A U.S. shift to EMV smart cards for payments helped by a recent directive from Visa Inc. may not speed up the complicated process of converting thousands of ATMs to accept the new cards, but collaboration between ATM manufacturers and financial institutions to address the change should begin now, industry experts say.

TruWest CU has signed an ATM managed services deal with CO-OP Financial Services.

Growing use of its mobile payment services for banks increased Monitise PLC revenue for fiscal 2011, but the expense of developing new markets in Europe and Nigeria resulted in a pretax loss, the mobile-payments company said Sept. 1.

Viewing the world of bloggers as a potential retail landscape, Jumio Inc. has broadened the availability of its webcam credit card reader software to anyone using a WordPress Foundation website, the company CEO says.

Large banks such as Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. have been working for years to build global payment “hubs,” or online-banking platforms their corporate customers may use to send and accept payments of different types and in foreign currencies to their customers and partners around the world.

The Federal Trade Commission is mailing more than 110,000 refund checks to consumers defrauded by an online operation that tricked payday loan applicants into paying for an unrelated debit card.

More than half of U.S. consumers use at least two credit or debit cards each month for online purchases, and many are wary of the potential for fraud associated with online banking, a study security-software vendor AVG Technologies USA Inc. released Sept. 1 suggests.

Sovereign Bank is taking its credit card operations in house.

China's new multifunction contactless social security card will support yuan-denominated cash withdrawals, funds transfers and other consumer-oriented banking applications, government officials told reporters at a press conference Aug. 30.

As Visa Inc. has been ramping up its promotion of one-time-use card data for security, Discover Financial Services is winding down its support of a similar technology.