Credit

One week after American Express Co. announced that its fourth-quarter earnings fell sharply from a year earlier, the company filled in more details Thursday.

American Express Co., the lender that plans to cut 5,400 jobs this year, said profit at its U.S. card business declined 42 percent in the fourth quarter as the firm set aside more money to cover soured loans.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is all about money — but increasingly, the question is whether it's about protecting money or making money.

A week after it announced involvement in the first contactless payment program in Germany, French terminal maker Ingenico SA says it plans to do the same thing in Portugal.

PayPal experienced its fastest active account growth rate in years during the fourth quarter, according to parent company eBay Inc. This growth of 15%, to 122.7 million active accounts, came in part from the company's activity in mobile commerce.

Research in Motion Ltd. received a significant stamp of approval for its software from Visa Inc. Visa has approved Waterloo, Ontario-based RiM's secure element manager software for Near Field Communication mobile payments.

Square has built its reputation as a quick and simple way for micro-merchants to accept card payments, but the company says it has proven it can serve the more demanding needs of larger retailers.

Apple Inc. introduced installment payment plans for buyers of iPhones and MacBook laptops in China as it struggles to compete with low-cost devices in the world’s largest computer and mobile-phone market.

The mega-retailers' Merchant Customer Exchange venture argues that the mobile-payment system it is developing will appeal to retailers in a way no other mobile wallet can. That’s leaving some companies divided on which mobile approach is best—MCX's focus on gaining retailer acceptance or the emphasis on consumer adoption championed by Isis and others.

PayPal Inc., pushing ahead with its drive to become the payment option of choice at the point of sale, has entered an agreement with hardware maker NCR Corp.

Jumio Inc. has released an Android version of its Netswipe Mobile technology for accepting card payments with a phone's camera.

"We're open to partnering and playing with the existing networks, but not under the existing rule base," says Jamie Henry, senior payment director of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. "The existing rules that are in place for card-based payments are not going to be acceptable for mobile-based payments."

Fiserv, the third-largest provider of financial services technology on the FinTech 100 ranking, Monday announced it has acquired Open Solutions, a smaller provider of core banking software. The purchase price was $55 million, and Fiserv assumed approximately $960 million of debt.

VeriFone Systems announced Jan. 14 a suite of payment products, including an iPad mini version of its Payware Mobile card reader, a similar sleeve for the iPhone 5 and VeriFone HQ, a cloud-based system that allows retailers to monitor their terminals and manage their brands.

A German banking committee has approved an Ingenico SA payment terminal as the first to accept contactless payments in the country under a new contactless pay system called giorgo.

Some prominent mobile wallets today rely on NFC as the primary method of making payments. These include the mobile carriers’ Isis venture and Google’s mobile wallet. Others, such as PayPal, consider NFC optional. The mega-retailers’ Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) venture, which has yet to release a product, promises a software-based alternative to NFC, storing card data in the cloud and using bar codes to conduct transactions.

Retailers are looking to payments technologies to empower them to provide a more personalized shopping experience, one that improves consumer engagement at the point of sale and helps build customer loyalty, according to experts who spoke Sunday at the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York.

There's no turning back — prepaid cards have left a permanent mark on banks, card networks, alternative payment providers and more. Some might consider that mark to be a scarlet letter, but many now wear it as a badge of honor.

Ingenico SA agreed to offer Shift4 Corp.'s gateway offering as part of the French terminal maker's point-to-point encryption portfolio.

Groupon's push into the payments business continues with an update that brings its mobile card reader to Android phone users.