Cards

A year after testing mobile capabilities with its customers, Wow Bao, an Asian restaurant with three Chicago locations, is planning to launch a mobile gift card program with Mocapay Inc. by the end of April, PaymentsSource has learned.

The ongoing fight between Square Inc. and rival VeriFone Systems Inc. around payment security highlights the lack of common technical standards for mobile acceptance devices.

ORLANDO, Fla.–Social-network participation is approaching 1 billion consumers globally across such different platforms as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. But prepaid industry executives and merchants are split about how the medium could improve closed-loop gift card sales.

Consumers in India might have to pay fees if they want to manage their bank accounts through their mobile phones, according to a Reserve Bank of India official.

With online orders on the increase, Domino’s Pizza Group Ltd. in the United Kingdom has decided to add PayPal Inc. as a payment method, the global pizza chain announced March 7.

DimpleDough Inc. is partnering with TxVia Inc. to provide TxVia with a prepaid-management service it can offer its customers, DimpleDough announced March 8.

CHS Inc., a diversified energy, grains and food company, plans to use Comdata Corp.’s Smart Solutions point-of-sale systems at its 1,400 convenience stores nationwide that operate under the Cenex brand, the companies announced March 10.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Public Interest Group, the leading consumer lobby in Congress, called on the Fed to maintain course and reduce fees on debit transactions while opening the cards market to greater competition.

Tanla Solutions Ltd. has launched a set of programming tools to allow micropayments within smartphone applications.

VeriFone Systems Inc. is taking off its gloves in the battle for mobile payment acceptance, claiming rival Square Inc.'s device can be adapted to use for fraud.

Regions Financial Corp. has updated its mobile banking capabilities to enable customers to transfer funds among internal accounts, pay bills and receive text alerts about balances and other details.

PHOENIX–Consumer preferences for paying by credit or debit card typically are too deeply entrenched for merchants and banks to succeed easily in steering customers to one or the other option for financial reasons, one banking industry analyst contends.

A federal judge has dismissed a shareholder class-action lawsuit brought against VeriFone Systems Inc. following a restatement of three quarters from its 2007 fiscal year caused by accounting errors, VeriFone announced March 9.

Hoping to appeal to small merchants looking for a means to process payment card transactions through mobile devices, Impact PaySystem LLC has begun offering a card-swipe device from iPhoneSwiper, initially for free, the companies announced March 5.

State Bank of India Ltd. is providing soldiers of the Indian Army with payroll debit cards as part of a special salary package, a spokesperson from the bank tells PaymentsSource.

Five cooperative banks in India have joined India’s national ATM network, enabling their customers to access more than 67,000 ATMs in the country, their technology provider InfrasoftTech Pvt. Ltd announced in February.

Executives at Global Cash Access Holdings Inc. are seeing positive signs ahead, particularly in international markets, but revenue continued to decline in the fourth quarter of 2010.

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of Senators is planning to introduce a bill as soon as next week that would delay implementation of the controversial Federal Reserve rule to cap fees on debit transactions for two years while the Fed studies the issue.

ORLANDO, Fla. — As the infrastructure to support digital gifting continues to increase, why does plastic still heavily dominate the industry?

WASHINGTON – Big Box retailers Target, Wal-Mart, SuperValu and Costco are urging the Federal Reserve to proceed with its bid to curb debit fees, insisting they will pass on billions of dollars in reduced charges to consumers.