Credit

Citigroup became the first Western bank to issue credit cards in China without co-branding from a local financial institution as the government relaxes restrictions in the world's second-largest economy.

As Wright Express explores ways to incorporate mobile-payment initiatives, it is beginning to test products outside the U.S. first before launching them here, according to a top executive at the fleet card provider.

U.S. Bank is offering a new charge card designed for small businesses.

Fifth Third Bank is launching a commercial card that has an EMV chip to allow the bank's business customers to make payments overseas.

CreditCall and ChipCap separately announced new readers that handle chip-and-PIN payments from cards that use the EMV standard.

Improved market conditions likely sparked Target's announcement last week that it is in talks with "several well-qualified partners" interested in buying its credit card portfolio.

The rumor mill is catching fire as Apple nears its next product launch. Changes to the iPhone, iPad and other systems could affect initiatives at many payments companies.

In a week's time, the mobile payments world was turned upside down as Square announced a major partnership with Starbucks and a radically different pricing option for merchants. Now payments providers are beginning to piece together how they can ride this wave instead of getting crushed underneath it.

Discover Financial Services now allows consumers to link Discover cards to Google's mobile wallet from Discover's website.

Square is taking a bigger bite at the small-business market by offering flat-fee processing to small merchants, furthering the company's efforts to present itself as a more full-featured option for card acceptance.

Target Corp., which earlier this year took its credit card portfolio off the market because of a lack of suitable offers, appears to be getting closer to securing a deal.

Discover Financial Services is facing a new lawsuit over the marketing of its payment protection and other fee-based credit card products — this time from one of its own shareholders.

ID Tech, a supplier of point-of-sale devices, has agreed to begin outfitting its SecureMag readers with TransArmor data encryption and tokenization from First Data.

It didn't take long for Jumio to release a new version of its Netswipe mobile software-development kit.

Norwegian banking group SpareBank 1 Gruppen will license Total System Services Inc.'s Prime 4 card-management system to support its issuance and issuer-processing activities under a deal the two companies announced.

Hackers seeking cardholder data most often find openings in a small merchant's payments network because of something a third-party vendor did or did not do when installing payment applications.

With newcomers like Square gaining momentum in mobile payments, processors are more aggressively offering customers reasons to stick with them as merchants accept more payments outside their retail stores.

When crunching the numbers, it appears Square can't possibly make a profit in its new deal to process transactions for Starbucks.

Bank of America announced the nationwide launch of its online rewards system, BankAmeriDeals. The system allows consumers to select deals online or through a mobile app and then redeem those offers by spending with a credit or debit card.

First Data has reached an agreement to provide credit card processing and related services to First Niagara Bank in Buffalo, N.Y.