Credit

Many small banks have never accepted that an exemption from the Durbin amendment will protect them from the measure's roughly 50% cut in debit interchange rates.

President Obama's January 4th recess appointment of Richard Cordray as head of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has threatened to set-off a contentious legal challenge in an already polarized Congress.

As of Feb. 8, customers in China no longer may top up their Alipay accounts using credit cards, according to a notice Alipay distributed to its customers.

China UnionPay cardholders beginning in March may use their cards with online retailers based in Taiwan under an agreement the card organization reached on Feb. 8 with Taiwan’s National Credit Card Center, which is responsible for the interbank settlements of credit card transactions between card-issuing banks and retail merchants’ banks.

Several billion consumers and 35 million merchants worldwide take the enormous convenience and security of branded payment cards for granted.

Even two years ago, when the first U.S. financial institution committed to issuing secure chip cards, vendors said no one was lined up to follow. But times have quickly changed.

Bank of America customers in upstate New York were issued new debit and credit cards after a third-party breach possibly compromised their information.

Bankcard charge-offs rates are still riding near their lowest levels ever, but the wind is shifting slightly for private-label retail credit cards.

Visa Inc. may be seeing a slowdown in U.S. debit card sales-volume growth, but outside North America it is a different story.

Propelled by the completion of two international acquisitions and a major processing contract with Royal Dutch Shell’s European unit, fleet card provider Fleetcor Technologies Inc. on Feb. 8 reported sizable gains in fourth quarter revenue and income. The company also anticipates a boost in U.S. revenue this year from a deal with a provider of GPS tracking services.

India’s widespread highway network soon could see the installation of an electronic toll-collection system that would use radio frequency identification technology for accepting payments.

To improve merchant and consumer comfort with online spending, MasterCard Worldwide has formed a partnership with Silver Tail Systems Inc. to distribute Silver Tail's fraud-fighting analytics to merchants.

Visa Inc. has launched a mobile-banking product with Monitise PLC, pitting the card network against major technology vendors.

Healthy global transaction-volume growth pushed Visa Inc.’s net income for final quarter of 2011 to more than $1 billion, the card brand announced Feb. 8.

Consumer revolving debt is on the rise again, but it is still too early for lenders that earn profits on outstanding debt to exhale.

Continued growth in Wright Express Corp.’s fleet and payroll card businesses and in its operations in North America and Australia helped fuel double-digit fourth-quarter growth for the fleet card company.

Bankcard customers that earn a free TV through Fiserv Inc.’s UChoose Rewards program no longer have to wait days for delivery. Now they can drive to a local Best Buy Co. Inc. store and pick it up minutes after redeeming the award.

This story has been revised from its original version.

Being late on paying one’s mobile-phone bill could affect a consumer’s chances of being approved for a credit card under a new initiative by Credit Information Bureau of India Ltd., India’s first and largest consumer credit bureau.

Coordinated cyberattacks against financial institutions are not likely to disappear anytime soon, but a recent surge unfolding in Brazil should heighten payments industry security awareness in light of the country’s growing electronic-payments market.