Credit

It's shopping season in the payments industry. Just last month, Ingenico, ACI Worldwide and Fidelity National Information Services announced separate acquisitions. Many other companies have bought their peers in recent months.

Visa Inc. has featured the San Francisco 49ers all season in a humorous TV commercial based on a fanatic 49ers fan somehow making his way into the team locker room to deliver a fiery pep talk.

Fifth Third Bancorp has agreed to buy a credit card portfolio from Quad City Bank & Trust.

Data security provider iovation Inc. has released two-factor phone authentication software it says will provide extra protection for consumers making online purchases.

MasterCard continues to ride the plastic wave in worldwide payments. The Purchase, N.Y., company on Jan. 31 reported fourth-quarter net income of $605 million, driven in large part by growing use of its credit and debit cards outside of the United States.

Numerous merchants don't realize their systems accept Discover, prompting the network to visit their stores in person to ask that the retailers stop turning down its cards.

ACI Worldwide and Fidelity National Information Services each announced acquisitions of companies that provide payments technology.

MasterCard Inc., the second-biggest U.S. payments network, posted fourth-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates as customers made more purchases.

Boston-based independent sales organization Merchant Warehouse is launching its Genius payment acceptance product for general availability. The system has been in testing since June 2012.

The council announced Jan. 31 its guidelines for e-commerce data safety. The information is a result of research completed by the council's e-commerce security special interest group.

InterContinental Hotels Group announced a multi-year agreement with MasterCard to be the exclusive payment network for its hotel loyalty rewards consumer credit card portfolio in the U.S.

Visa shareholders rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have required the nation’s largest card network to disclose publicly more information about its lobbying activities, according to the activist shareholder group behind the measure.

American Express Co. finds itself swirling in the middle of anti-trust litigation and proposed settlements that the company isn't directly a party to.

Visa Inc.’s board of directors named Robert W. Matschullat as independent, non-executive chairman of the world’s largest payments network.

Last year, KeyBank saw an important gap in its credit card strategy – not owning its card portfolio meant it did not have the control it needed to properly manage its relationships with its customers. This week KeyBank announced the next step in its credit card strategy.

Fraud losses on U.S. credit and debit cards, after years of decline, now appear to be on the rise again. And one key culprit, according to experts, is this country's slow adoption of technology that will improve security.

Visa and Citigroup, working with the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion, plan to connect governments, NGOs, the private sector and others to advance global financial access by the end of this decade. Their Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign aims to do this by increasing access to credit, savings, payment tools and insurance for people all over the world.

Jan. 27 marked the first day merchants nationwide could hit consumers with a checkout fee for using a credit card. Nothing has changed overnight, but some merchants are likely to test the waters sooner than others.

KeyBank, a unit of KeyCorp, announced plans to offer new consumer, business and commercial credit cards this year. The cards will all operate on MasterCard's network, extending a 15-year partnership that also covered debit and ATM.

Canada's right next door and has lots of English speakers, so it might seem the ideal place for American independent sales organizations to expand. But the two countries' business and cultural practices differ in ways that Americans may not expect.