Cards

Sponsors of a Senate bill that would have barred the growing practice of merchants assessing surcharges on debit card transactions pulled the bill yesterday after it was amended to bar all ATM surcharges.

Fidelity National Information Services has agreed to pay the state almost $1 million and to implement data security for consumer records under a settlement of civil charges over the 2007 theft of consumer information by a former employee.

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and Micros Systems Inc. have reached an amicable settlement in a 2007 antitrust and unlawful competition lawsuit the Princeton, N.J.-based processor filed against Micros. Other defendants included Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC and its subsidiary Merchant Link LLC.

The potential to outfit 1.5 million vending machines with payment card readers has enticed Apriva, a wireless payment-services company, to start Apriva Vend, a cashless-payment service, the company announced today.

Convenience-store operators this month are launching a fresh campaign for interchange-rate reform with an interactive, animated Web video designed to explain to consumers how credit and debit card interchange fees hurt them economically.

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has a new bank-sponsor agreement with Bancorp Bank of Wilmington, Del.

MasterCard Canada says it plans to adopt the code of conduct for Canada’s debit and credit card industry that the country’s finance minister approved April 16. However, Visa Canada and Moneris Solutions Corp., Canada’s largest payments processor, say they need more time to study the code to determine how it affects their businesses.

Interest in Roam Data Inc.’s mobile-payment service appears to be high among independent sales organizations. Most of Roam Data’s 35 resellers are ISOs, says Will Graylin, founder and CEO of Boston-based Roam Data.

Wincor Nixdorf has set up a 3,325-square-foot control tower facility in the Western Indian city of Mumbai to enable the company to support the ATMs for banks remotely around the clock, the Germany-based ATM vendor announced April 15.

Citibank NA Pakistan and Orix Leasing Pakistan Ltd. signed an agreement earlier this weekextending their collaboration on point-of-sale payment terminals, Orix announced recently.

Korean federal police are asking the Financial Supervisory Service of Korea to ensure card issuers heighten credit card security, an official from the regulator confirms to PaymentsSource.

VeriFone Holdings Inc.’s upcoming VX point-of-sale terminals will be upgradeable to future Payment Card Industry security standards, the terminal maker says.

Say you are a marine deployed in Afghanistan and need to get funds to the U.S. double-time. Instead of mailing your paycheck out of a war-wracked country across the globe with no certainty when the deposit would arrive, you just take out your iPhone, snap a photo of both sides of the check, confirm the details, and the funds are in your account at home.

E-Commerce Association of Singapore has agreed to offer its online merchant clients payments services from PayPal Inc.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council will update all three of its standards this year, and it eventually may place all on a three-year update cycle, says Bob Russo, the council’s general manager.

Though some merchants experienced severe financial difficulties during the recession and some went out of business, many others made prudent business decisions and scaled back spending to remain operational, Glenn S. Goldman, president and CEO of Capital Access Network Inc., told PaymentsSource this week at the Electronic Transactions Association Annual Meeting and Expo in Las Vegas.

Aptys Solutions LLC this week introduced PayHub, a payment-processing system designed for community banks. The system supports multiple payment types, including automated clearinghouse transactions, mobile payments, wire funds transfers and check-image exchanges on a single platform.

Motorists in Dubai increasingly are using the Metro’s prepaid travel card to pay for parking even though they have no intention of using public transport, an official from Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority tells Payments Source.

MasterCard Inc. wants to get new payments tools out of the labs faster and into cardholders' wallets.

Consumers made 244.4 million cash withdrawals in 2009 from Cardtronics Inc. ATMs, up 7.1% from the previous year’s 228.3 million total, according to PaymentsSource research.