Cards

The European Commission’s Dec. 8 decision to accept Visa Europe’s commitment to cap a certain debit card interchange rate will do little to remove the burden of interchange fees from Europe’s merchants and consumers, EuroCommerce contends.

PURCHASE, N.Y. – MasterCard announced this morning it is acquiring the prepaid card operations of the British currency exchange company Travelex, a major provider of prepaid cards and foreign exchange for credit unions, for $458 million.

PARIS–MasterCard Worldwide is planning to buy the prepaid card business of Travelex Holdings Ltd. of London, the card brand announced Dec. 9. The $458 million acquisition, which MasterCard expects to close in the first half of 2011, should improve its business in overseas market, officials from the card company say.

After cutting off payments to Wikileaks, MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc. and PayPal Inc. have found themselves under assault.

More than three-fourths of all U.S. noncash payments in 2009 were made electronically, a new Federal Reserve study indicates, representing a 9.3% annualized increase since the Fed’s previous study that revealed that in 2006 two-thirds of noncash payments were electronic (see report).

The allure of double-digit payment card transaction volume growth and recent deregulation have prompted Elavon Inc. and Credicard, a subsidiary of Citigroup Inc., to form a merchant acquiring joint venture in Brazil, Elavon announced Dec. 9.

China’s largest telecommunication operator China Telecom Ltd. is partnering with the Bank of China Ltd. and China UnionPay to offer a mobile-payment service in the city of Ningbo in China’s Zhenjiang province.

The Qatar Central Bank, the apex banking body in the Middle Eastern country, has given its nod to mobile funds-transfer and payment services in Qatar.

As MasterCard Worldwide’s website remains inaccessible, its SecureCode payment-verification system seems also to have gone offline.

PARIS–Amid the steady drumbeat of recent mobile-payments announcements, interoperability has emerged as the watchword for developers as they bring their new innovations to market.

PARIS–As contactless payment catches on in certain pockets of Europe, key facts are emerging about what slows and accelerates adoption of the payment method, according to Mark Austin, head of contactless at Visa Europe.

PARIS–The official unveiling this week of the Open Standard Public Transport Alliance, which is developing an open security standard for mass-transit fare-collection systems, illustrates the type of broad collaboration needed to advance the payments industry, its participants suggest.

PARIS–The security of smart cards has as much to do with the financial payoff that hackers stand to gain from unraveling the data inside them as it does protecting the technology.

Green Dot Corp. has seen interchange revenue from its active prepaid debit cards rise 95.6 % during a 21-month span, according to PaymentsSource data.

MasterCard Worldwide and a Swiss bank that attempted to cut ties with Wikileaks apparently are feeling the wrath of Operation Payback, a group of hackers claiming to have shut down both company’s websites.

Visa Europe this morning announced a settlement with the European Commission, agreeing to cap its weighted yearly average intraregional multilateral interchange rate for immediate debit transactions at 0.2% of the sale for four years. This represents a reduction of less than 20% for domestic interchange fees covered by the commitments, the card brand noted in a statement.

MasterCard Worldwide has added two services to its existing fraud-detection system, enabling card issuers in the United States and parts of Europe, including Ireland and the United Kingdom, to protect cardholders and reduce fraud-related costs, MasterCard announced on Dec. 7.

MasterCard Worldwide is in the process of suspending payments to WikiLeaks, according to a spokesperson for the card brand.

A newly announced mobile phone running Google Inc.’s Android software contains the hardware groundwork for mobile payments.

Prepaid card provider Blackhawk Network is expanding its digital-content payment offerings internationally at a time when services such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes and online-gaming websites gain more users, observers note.