Cards

Visa Europe said Wednesday that it plans to go to Hungary's Constitutional Court to appeal a bill passed in December by the Hungarian parliament that restricts bank card transaction commissions, reports Dow Jones.

Consumers who bank or initiate retail purchases online already can secure those transactions through a variety of means, including passwords used only for the Web, card readers that plug into personal computers or challenge-response procedures that can include images they preselect.

The debate over credit and debit card interchange this week went local when California State Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, chairman of the state’s Banking and Finance Committee, conducted a hearing on credit card interchange rates.

Cardtronics Inc.’s agreement to deploy ATMs aboard five Carnival Cruise Line ships signals Carnival wants more control of the lucrative shipboard ATM business in which cardholders pay surcharge fees as high as $5 per cash withdrawal, says a Cardtronics rival.

Westpac New Zealand has awarded a nine-year contract to ATM vendor NCR Corp. to replace most of the bank’s existing ATMs, according to a statement from the Auckland-based bank. Terms were not disclosed.

Citizens of Dubai last year used the mPay mobile-payment service to make 8,380 payments worth 1.5 million dirham (US$408,386 or 289,894 euros), an official from Dubai government tells PaymentsSource. This represents a massive spike from 2008, when Dubai residents made only 298 mPay transactions worth 25,000 dirham, he says.

RegaloCard, a Miami-based mobile-payments company, has added two retailers–Universo Cellular in El Salvador and Cemaco in Guatemala–to its mobile funds-transfer network.

Users of China Mobile in Shanghai can now use their mobile phones to pay for their Metro transportation fares, according to a statement from the country’s largest telecom operator. The service will allow users to make payments at the turnstiles using mobile phones equipped to support contactless technology.

South Korea-based card company BC Card plans soon to begin expanding where its card are accepted overseas after inking a deal with Discover Financial Service to share credit card networks (see story) , according to a BC Card statement. The move will enable BC Card holders to use their domestic cards in other countries, including the United States, Japan and Singapore the statement notes.

Remote capture services have become an important offering for business customers, and banks are now adapting the technology for mobile phones in an effort to reach the mainstream.

In one of the most recent signs of the spread of so-called micropayments, U.S.-based start-up Boku Inc. late last year began enabling consumers in Estonia and Venezuela to pay for digital goods using mobile-phone accounts. A consumer who wants to buy virtual currency to acquire extra “lives” or goods useful in online video games, for example, would, after registering, make the purchase through the game provider’s Web site. The consumer would confirm the purchase through a text message, and the charge would appear on the consumer’s mobile phone bill, eliminating the need to use a payment card.

Card-fraud costs the U.S. payments industry, including issuers, merchants and acquirers, an estimated $8.6 billion per year, according to a recent report from Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm. However, fraud amounts to only 0.4% of the estimated $2.1 trillion in U.S. card volume annually, according to the report “Card Fraud in the United States: The Case for Encryption.” Aite interviewed more than 30 fraud-management professionals for the report.

HSBC Holdings PLC’s rollout in the Asia-Pacific region of smart credit cards equipped with the EMV antifraud standard likely will help to increase the pace of EMV adoption this year in most markets, except the U.S., observers say .

U.S. Bancorp has hired Total System Services Inc. to provide card-processing services for its consumer-directed health care benefit cards.

India’s plans to have a domestic card-payment system will take another three years to roll out, an official from the National Payments Corp. of India tells PaymentsSource.

Banks in India will have to pay National Financial Switch 1 rupee (2 U.S. cents or 1.5 euro cents) for every ATM transaction they route through the network, an official at the Reserve Bank of India tells PaymentsSource. The Institute of Development and Research in Banking Technology, a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India, had waived the previous 2 rupee switch fee in 2007 to reduce ATM charges.

ATM manufacturer Wincor Nixdorf AG Monday reported a lower profit and reduced net sales for its fiscal 2010 first quarter ended Dec. 31. Eckard Heidloff, the company’s president and CEO, warned in a statement the slowed global economy will cause further declines for the entire fiscal year.

Under an agreement with Korean payments network BC Card, Discover Financial Service is enabling BC Card holders to use the Discover, Diners Club International and Pulse networks for international purchases and cash access outside of Korea, Discover announced yesterday.

The 5,000 merchant locations and more than 50 independent sales organizations Payment Alliance International acquired from Comdata Processing Systems already have transitioned to using Payment Alliance’s products and services, says Donna Embry, senior vice president of Louisville, Ky.-based Payment Alliance.

Visa Inc. earlier this month launched an online advertising campaign to promote debit card use among young adults in Latin America. The “I Go with Visa Debit” campaign, which ends April 12, is designed to educate young adults on why using debit cards for payment is faster, more convenient and more secure than using cash, Visa says.