Cards

Citing the first quarter as a good time for consumers to focus on organizing finances, MasterCard Worldwide has begun re-running a “Priceless” television advertisement launched a year ago to promote the card brand’s bill-pay services, Steve Carnevale, MasterCard vice president of U.S. commerce development, tells PaymentsSource.

Live Oak, Texas-based Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union will distribute $4.2 million to members who used their debit cards to make purchases last year, the $3.7 billion credit union announced.

U.S. banks may be dropping their resistance to one of the world's fastest-growing payment card security formats, despite the prospect of increased costs.

Despite a fourth quarter net loss Heartland Payment Systems Inc. attributes largely to breach-related expenses, the Princeton, N.J.-based payment processor sees “encouraging progress” in small and midsize merchant transaction-processing volume and same-store sales, Robert Carr, Heartland chairman and CEO, told analysts during a conference call this morning.

MIAMI–Large crowds attending the ATM Industry Association show here Wednesday crowded around an ATM some believe could revitalize independent sales organizations that sell ATMs and are suffering from shrinking margins and a lack of new ideas to generate revenue.

Fraudsters on the prowl for payment card data last year increasingly turned to the hospitality industry as a source for the valuable data, according to the Trustwave Global Security Report 2010 released yesterday.

FSV Payment Systems Inc., a transaction processor and program manager for payroll, government-benefit and general-purpose reloadable prepaid cards, on Monday renewed its agreement with Cardtronics Inc.’s Allpoint surcharge-free ATM network.

Ukash, a United Kingdom-based firm that sells prepaid vouchers for online shopping, announced today it has introduced its products at more than 600 locations in Norway. Ukash launched of online issuing of vouchers in Norway in December.

Visa Inc. and Travelex Central Services Ltd. last week announced the launch of the Visa Money Transfer service in Australia.

Mocapay Inc. said last week that Micros Retail Systems Inc. would use the Boulder, Colo., vendor's technology to add mobile access to Micros loyalty programs.

By 2015, consumers worldwide will spend about $119 billion on goods and services using their mobile phones, representing about 8% of the total e-commerce market, predicts ABIresearch. In the United States, mobile shopping rose 203% last year, to $1.2 billion from $396 million in 2008, the New York-based research firm says.

MTN Group is launching a mobile financial-services product for its more than 100 million telecommunication subscribers in Africa and the Middle East that uses Gemalto NV’s SIM-based security module, according to the France-based card vendor. The product will enable subscribers to check account balances and conduct such mobile services as funds transfers and payments.

Last Friday’s opening event for the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, garnered $5.2 million in total spending on Visa credit, debit and prepaid cards, a 46% increase from $3.57 million the same day a year earlier, event sponsor Visa Inc. says.

Processors, not ISOs, likely will handle many provisions of a law that takes effect next January requiring acquirers to report merchant credit and debit card transactions to the Internal Revenue Service, says Henry Helgeson, co-CEO of Merchant Warehouse Inc., a Boston-based ISO.

Banks and online payment companies are moving more functions to their main Web pages and limiting the amount of navigation needed to access bill presentment, information and payment features.

BETHESDA, Md. – Allpoint Network, operator of a surcharge-free ATM network, yesterday said it has renewed its agreement with FSV Payment Systems to provide surcharge-free access for prepaid debit cards issued by the company.

MasterCard Worldwide says chip-and-PIN card issuers have countermeasures available to help prevent an attack that could authenticate a card with a false PIN. MasterCard would not say what the countermeasures include.

Hoping to differentiate its product from others in the marketplace, Whitebox Partners LLC has developed a reloadable prepaid debit card with a rewards program usually associated with credit and debit cards.

Woodforest Financial Group has renewed an agreement with the Pulse electronic funds transfer network in which Pulse will provide the privately held bank holding company ATM and PIN-based point-of-sale debit services, both companies announced recently.

Some of the nation’s largest banks are offering cash incentives to encourage customers to activate and use their debit cards as the financial institutions seek to recover revenue from expected declines in overdraft-fee revenue.