Cards

With Canada being one of the world’s more developed contactless-payments markets in terms of cards issued, more merchants there are starting to accept the tap-and-go transactions, the latest being 1,400 McDonald’s restaurants, which will do so starting this summer.

Merchants will have a difficult time reaping all the benefits they stand to gain from a pending settlement between the two largest U.S. credit card networks and the Department of Justice, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The U.S. may lag other countries in mobile-payment availability and use, but the rate of activity surprisingly is high, new survey data suggest.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve Board Tuesday published a list of which banks must comply with the central bank's cap on debit-card swipe fees, as well as a list of those exempt from the cap (see list).

Mitek Systems Inc., a provider of remote-deposit check capture, has ridden the wave of mobile banking to an eight-fold increase in its stock price and a relisting of its shares this week.

Bankers know NCR Corp. for its high-tech ATMs, video teller machines and other branch gizmos. But the Duluth, Ga.-based vendor also is a big supplier of point-of-sale software for retailers and other businesses.

USAA Federal Savings Bank is giving its members in the Washington, D.C., area more access to surcharge-free ATMs thanks to a new partnership with Cardtronics Inc.

Continuing a trend in which banks in India are introducing cards for higher-income consumers, Laxmi Vilas Bank Ltd. has launched a Gold debit card for its premier banking customers.

NCR Corp., a maker of automated teller machines, self-service kiosks and other financial technology, is buying hospitality software developer Radiant Systems Inc. for $1.2 billion.

Regions Bank in Birmingham, Ala., is teaming with Fiserv Inc. to use the vendor’s person-to-person payment system ZashPay to enable its customers to transfer funds to family members, friends and other individuals electronically.

First it was free checking. Then it was spending rewards. Are decoupled-debit cards the next casualty of the Durbin amendment?

The former Cannabis Medical Solutions Inc. has turned over a new leaf.

In the latest phase of Citi’s efforts to hire leaders from the retail world (including Tracey Weber from Travelocity and Frank Eliason from Comcast), the bank has hired Omar Khan, CTO at Samsung Mobile, to head mobile initiatives on a global basis. Khan is said to have led Samsung’s moves into the Android space.

Cashiers now may activate entire packs of cards at once instead of swiping each card individually under a service First Data announced July 11.

Payments consumers make to health care providers will soar by more than 40% over the next three years, creating a glut of opportunities for direct-billing service vendors, according to a new Aite Group report.

Many consumers don't know what Near Field Communication is, but the services the technology enables are becoming quite popular. That puts an onus on mobile payments projects that use NFC to move beyond disputes over revenue and other issues.

One of two foreign nationals arrested in the skimming of hundreds of thousands of dollars from ATMs last fall at BECU, formerly Boeing Employees Credit Union, was sentenced July 8 to five years behind bars.

Wikileaks supporters briefly regained access to Visa Inc.’s payment gateway in a series of rapid midweek developments, but by July 8 the gateway closed again, observers say.

MasterCard Worldwide on July 7 unveiled “Get Loot,” a promotion offering new prepaid customers free movie tickets and opportunities to win a trip to a 2012 movie premiere.

Payment networks working to steer large numbers of financially underserved U.S. Hispanics from reliance on cash to prepaid debit cards are still searching for the best way to turn such a huge opportunity into substantial numbers of new customers.