Credit

Maintaining a focus on its customer service, Discover Financial Serviceshas launched a television ad with its popular spokesperson “Peggy” appearing with ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit, a former Ohio State University quarterback.

Fees this year will surpass interest as the payment card industry’s largest income component for the first time, representing 52.7% of total revenue, according to R.K. Hammer, a Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based consultancy.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s crackdown on spending announced last month after an audit revealed improper expenditures by city employees will result in a dramatic reduction in card payments and a shift back to paper-based processes that likely will be costlier and more time-consuming, observers say.

Many bank risk-management executives worry that credit card delinquency rates, which have been declining for more than two years, may begin to rise again soon if the economy does not improve, according to new FICO survey data.

Europe’s lingering debt crisis likely will cause some European banks to be wary of adhering to a pending deadline to accept euros as a common currency for electronic cross-border payments as part of the Single Euro Payments Area for eurozone countries, new research indicates.

As part of its overhaul plan for the assets it acquired of the United Arab Emirates subsidiary of Royal Bank of Scotland PLC, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Ltd. says it soon will start issuing new credit cards to former Royal Bank of Scotland cardholders.

U.S. credit card charge-offs would continue their downward trajectory even if the economy slips into another recession, according to a new report Moody’s Investors Service released Sept. 29.

Selling off a profitable card business and bank branches is painful. So is figuring out how to grow without them.

Cybercrooks may find hacking into the payment network of a small business relatively simple, but they can hit the mother lode if they find a way into a corporation’s bank account.

A federal court has blocked enforcement of a new rule affecting subprime credit card issuers that the Federal Reserve Board established as a result of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act.

A transit open-loop fare collection pilot in New Jersey that uses a Visa-branded prepaid debit card could help change the traditional notions about how to distribute a general-purpose reloadable product to financially underserved consumers, notes an industry observer.

Patients who may avoid paying medical bills because of confusion over what they owe and what the insurance company will pay may benefit from a new online payment tool.

India’s card issuers are bracing for a change in telecommunication rules that, while fighting mobile spam, prohibits them from sending text message solicitations to some prospective credit card customers.

What better place to open up an airport lounge than … in the middle of a train station?

TMG Financial Services’ acquisition this month of the $16 million credit card portfolio of Warren, Mich.-based Extra Credit Union provides further evidence that a slow resurgence in card-portfolio sales is under way, one observer suggests.

Payment-technology provider Fuze Network Inc. believes it has an answer for consumers who would prefer to use cash to pay their credit card bills: use the credit card.

When battling data breaches, banks might want to start thinking small.

PHILADELPHIA–The presentations here were academic to say the least, complete with formulas, equations, Greek letters, footnotes and oddly sterile language. One economist referred to consumers facing foreclosure and bankruptcy as “agents.”

CHICAGO—Last week, the PCI Security Standards Council pushed advanced encryption as a way to protect consumers’ card data. But one point-of-sale vendor executive contends authentication at every step of the payments process would work better to combat fraud.

Customer credit card data was not endangered during last week’s security breach of a small portion of websites hosted by GoDaddy.com Inc., a company executive says.