Cards

First Bank & Trust of Brookings, S.D., today announced it is issuing a decoupled, affinity debit card for In Defense of Animals, a nonprofit animal-rights group. Tempo Payments Inc. will process the card’s transactions on its payments platform.

Another member of New Orleans Firemen’s Federal Credit Union pleaded guilty this week to stealing cash from the credit union’s ATM after electric outages caused by the August 2005 Hurricane Katrina forced the credit union to go offline with its cash machines.

In today’s economy, merchants still want to know how much credit and debit card processing is going to cost, but independent sales organizations say price is only one part of the sales pitch. Listening to what the merchant says it needs can be equally as important in securing the deal.

Four defense credit unions and State Employees’ CU have joined to offer surcharge-free ATMs to North Carolina National Guard personnel worldwide.

Electronic-payment services provider Network for Electronic Transfers (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., known as NETS, has launched a mobile-payment option for its cashless-payment service iNETS, according to a company statement. The service will enable consumers in Singapore to pay bills, make purchases and book tickets using their mobile phones.

Citigroup Inc. is said to be switching its entire North American banking operations to a core processing application from Fidelity National Information Services Inc.

Heartland Payments Systems Inc. has developed a combined identification and prepaid debit card for students, faculty and staff at Hillsborough Community College, which has five campuses in the Tampa area.

Tri Tax of San Pedro, Calif., is offering a debit card for customers to receive tax refunds and paycheck deposits, which the tax-preparation franchisor called a draw for underbanked consumers.

From the January/February 2010 issue of ISO&Agent.

Bling Nation Ltd., which last year rolled out its first proprietary local debit card payment network (see story), this month plans to announce its third such network in partnership with a community bank in upstate New York.

Hypercom Corp. will provide more than 12,000 PIN pads with EMV contactless card readers to European retailer Carrefour, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based point-of-sale terminal maker announced Thursday.

The city of Jakarta soon plans to deploy a prepaid electronic-ticketing system called JakCard for its bus and train networks, an official from the Indonesian city’s transport authority tells PaymentsSource. The Jakarta Transportation Agency says it developed the contactless smart card system in collaboriation with Jakarta-based Bank DKI, bus operator BLU Transjakarta and PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek.

Automated clearinghouse transaction processor ACH Federal LLC, is introducing a merchant-referral partner program for independent sales organizations in the hopes of expanding its client base, according to the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based company.

A growing number of financial companies are trying to foster creativity with in-house innovation labs.

MoneyGram International Inc. said earnings fell in the fourth quarter despite increased transfer volume in several crucial regions.

Citing the continued clamp down on consumer spending caused by the recession, MasterCard today reported healthier global purchase volume for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, while U.S. credit card volume fell.

Buoyed by improving economic trends around the world, Visa Inc. on Wednesday reported purchase-volume growth in all categories except U.S. credit for the quarter ended Dec. 31. Visa also for the first time reported its operational performance data and financial results simultaneously for the same quarter. It previously reported operational data a quarter later than its earnings.

NCR Corp. today reported a fourth quarter net loss on lower revenues as demand for ATMs slumped in the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America.

North American Bancard’s decision to hire Deutsche Bank Securities is to “explore the opportunity to strategically align ourselves with financial partners to pursue any opportunities,” Marc Gardner, the independent sales organization’s president, tells PaymentsSource. North American Bancard earlier this week announced the Deutsche Bank hiring.

Six Pay S.A. plans to target merchant-processing opportunities in Eastern Europe as part of an effort to expand its operations, the Luxembourg-based payment-services company says.