Cards

Sino Payments Inc., a U.S.-based payments processor that operates out of Hong Kong, says it has signed its first agreement with a European acquirer, Valitor. Under the deal, European merchants will be able to use Sino Payments to process online and card-present transactions.

Torrance (Calif.) Community Credit Union said it successfully accepted its first mobile phone deposit over an iPhone.

PayPal Inc. helped drive its parent eBay Inc. to its first profit increase in more than a year, reports Bloomberg News.

DES MOINES, Iowa – The Members Group, the newest entry to the market for credit union card portfolios, is financing increasing numbers of cards purchases by loans from credit unions it is calling its collateralized advanced program.

Citibank is enabling its 13 million ThankYou Network rewards members to donate points to the American Red Cross International Response Fund that is assisting in relief to Haiti following the earthquake on Jan. 12. Members can make donations of $50 and $100.

Ingenico SA this week added the chairman title to CEO Philippe Lazare’s role at the France-based point-of-sale terminal maker. Jacques Stern, who had been Ingenico’s chairman since 2007, remains a director of the company.

Serverside Group LLC this week announced it is providing the software that will enable United Kingdom consumers to purchase customizable, MasterCard-branded gift cards through Quantum Card Services’ Web site.

First Data Corp. recently announced a shakeup of its international division as part of an effort to unite the company into a single global organization designed to develop and deliver products faster.

Has "Tap and Go" come and gone?

Citigroup Inc. announced Thursday that it has integrated credit card account information into its downloadable Citi Mobile application for the Apple Inc. iPhone.

Consumers are eager to use contactless stickers for routine payments as a bridge before Near Field Communication-equipped mobile handsets are available on a mass scale, suggest the results of a recently completed Discover Financial Services pilot.

Vietcombank Co. Ltd. will cancel and reissue all of its Connect24-branded debit cards because of a State Bank of Viet Nam plan to standardize the country’s bank identification number system, an official at the Hanoi-based bank tells PaymentsSource. More than two dozen other banks similarly plan to reissue cards.

China’s Ministry of Public Security and the People’s Bank of China soon plan to launch a 10-month nationwide campaign to crack down on bankcard crimes, the ministry notes in a statement on its Web site.

Ingenico SA generated $976.3 million (691.4 million euros) in revenue in 2009, a 5% decrease from $1.03 billion the previous year, according to preliminary financial results the France-based point-of-sale terminal maker released yesterday. Ingenico’s preliminary results do not include net-income figures.

The $60 million settlement (see story) Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and Visa Inc. announced earlier this month regarding the large data breach the processor reported a year ago “has many weaknesses,” claims three law firms representing issuers of Visa cards.

Consumer-electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. is partnering with Tio Networks Inc. to deploy self-service bill-payment kiosks in stores in four cities as part of a pilot to determine whether they encourage more foot traffic.

The loss of large clients, price compression, negative currency-exchange rates and the difficult economy contributed to a difficult fourth quarter and 2009 overall for Total System Services Inc., known as TSYS. The same themes also likely will affect the Columbus, Ga.-based transaction processor this year, executives noted yesterday during a conference call with analysts.

Acculynk Inc. CEO Ashish Bahl last year spent much of his time introducing the company’s PaySecure Internet PIN-debit product to merchants, processors and electronic funds transfer networks. This year, Acculynk will concentrate on increasing merchant acceptance and making more debit cards compatible with the service, Bahl tells PaymentsSource.

Apriva says it will integrate Visa Inc.’s payWave contactless technology into its vending machine transaction-processing service.

The Federal Reserve banks have announced plans to conduct a comprehensive study this year of check and electronic payments in the U.S.