Cards

No official movement is afoot to switch to EMV in the U.S., which is becoming increasingly Balkanized as the only major global region not moving to the more-secure chip-and-PIN technology. But a Visa Inc. executive is among experts suggesting that, though issuers, acquirers and merchants may be resisting the shift for a variety of reasons, EMV technology itself is not the biggest obstacle preventing the U.S. from adopting the standard.

Members of Generation Y are more likely to have both debit cards and savings accounts than any other age group, according to a report released Monday by Fiserv Inc.

First National Bank of Omaha plans to relinquish controlling interest in its First National Merchant Solutions merchant-acquiring arm to Total System Services Inc. in a joint venture the companies announced today.

Mocapay Inc., a Denver-based mobile loyalty and gift card technology company, last week unveiled a platform enabling merchants to give customers a one-time authorization code to conduct point-of-sale payments from prepaid accounts using mobile handsets.

First Data Corp. hopes to raise the stakes among payment-terminal makers and processors vying to encrypt cardholder data with a new product it contends goes further than other market offerings.

Though a few large merchants fail to achieve compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, many rely on alternative compensating controls to comply, according to a report released today by Thales Group and the Ponemon Institute. Many large merchants also are paying an average of $225,000 per year for PCI audits, according to the report.

Wells Fargo & Co. is e-mailing participating cardholders ATM receipts to their online-banking accounts or to their personal e-mail accounts as part of paper-reduction pilot that began in January.

Wilson Farms last week launched the Red Hot Rewards PIN-debit card, a payments/loyalty product that settles transactions over the automated clearinghouse network and provides various incentive rewards to the food and gasoline store’s participating customers.

Five years ago, biometric payments seemed ready for the American mainstream. Backers predicted that financial institutions and retailers soon would use fingerprint, palm, vein, iris or facial scans to verify consumers’ identities for ATM and point-of-sale transactions.

Many consumers are switching back to cash from paying with plastic, a survey says, as unhappiness with bank bailouts continues to sour Americans on the financial industry — and its products.

Some prepaid industry executives speculated this week at the Prepaid Card Expo in Las Vegas that an established company soon would be in a position to announce an initial public offering. That happened sooner than expected, as Green Dot Corp. today announced plans to generate up to $150 million by selling company stock through an IPO.

The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority this week awarded a $15 million transit smart card contract to Cubic Transportation Systems Inc. San Diego-based Cubic will design and install the system that will be compatible with the contactless Easy Card launched in October in Miami-Dade County.

Prepaid financial-services company Green Dot Corp. announced plans to sell up to $150 million in stock through an initial public offering, reports Dow Jones.

Bottomline Technologies said Wednesday that it has agreed to purchase Bank of America Corp.'s travel commission payments service.

Morphis Inc., a Dallas-based payment-management software provider, has introduced a low-cost online ATM cash-forecasting tool for community banks and credit unions owning few machines.

Cardtronics USA Inc. announced Wednesday it has signed a long-term managed-services contract with Pacific Convenience & Fuels LLC, Cardtronics third such deal in less than a month.

Palmetto Bank in Greenville, S.C., has signed an integrated-services contract with Diebold Inc., a strategy the ATM manufacturer and more of its competitors have begun using to counter declining ATM sales to U.S.-based regional and small banks. The agreement’s terms were not disclosed.

Now that the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act makes it more difficult for consumers younger than 21 to secure a credit card, players in the prepaid card industry see an opportunity to market their products more heavily to that demographic.

In an effort to help the payments industry better understand its Internet-PIN debit product, PaySecure, Acculynk Inc. has formed an advisory council as the Atlanta-based company prepares to expand its presence in the marketplace.

Punjab National Bank has opened its first biometric ATM in the village of Ranikhera in Punjab, India, an official from the New Delhi-based bank tells PaymentsSource.