Credit

As part of a slew of new credit card rewards deals targeting affluent consumers, Capital One Financial Corp. on Aug. 23 rolled out what one analyst calls a “very rich” offer with a couple of interesting new twists.

Fifth Third Bancorp is offering a payment card that enables users to pay from either a credit or debit account.

In a move it expects will boost e-commerce revenue in the country, Bank of Bangladesh plans to open an online payment facility for the country’s service exporters, the country’s central bank announced Aug. 7.

Visa Inc.’s announcement that it expects old, static PINs to eventually be “eliminated entirely” in favor of dynamic authentication is facing resistance–in particular because many are not convinced that the PIN is past its prime.

Remember that five-gigabyte hard drive that WikiLeaks allegedly had that contained damaging information about Bank of America? It appears that that data stash no longer exist, having been destroyed by a former associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after the two men got into a fight.

Shipments of smart cards in China will exceed 1 billion by 2016, helping China catch up to Europe, Japan and other countries that have begun to transition to smart cards to improve security, according to a recently released report by IMS Research Ltd.

In a significant boost to mobile payments in China, the country’s sole card processor China UnionPay Co. Ltd. has formed a partnership with handset maker HTC Corp. to launch a phone with a built-in mobile-payment facility.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is adding new dining and travel perks to its Sapphire credit card as it looks to bolster its base of affluent cardholders.

Bank of America Corp. has agreed to pay $5 million to settle a dispute with San Francisco’s city attorney over the card issuer’s former use of the National Arbitration Forum to settle cardholder disputes, the two sides announced Aug. 23.

A new point-of-sale terminal from Vivotech Inc. capable of accepting Near Field Communication mobile payments and chip-and-PIN transactions could help position U.S. merchants to embrace EMV smart card technology and perhaps save them money on security-standards compliance costs, the vendor believes.

A federal appeals court has sided with a United Kingdom-based payments processor in a long-running patent dispute with Visa Inc. subsidiary CyberSource Corp.

San Francisco's city attorney said Bank of America Corp. agreed to a $5 million settlement of a suit over its use of the National Arbitration Forum to handle credit-card disputes, according to Dow Jones.

American Express Co. has launched a new business credit card that places further emphasis on ad spending.

Underscoring upscale consumers’ continuing appeal to credit card issuers, American Express Co. and Mercedes-Benz USA have joined forces to offer a cobranded card with rewards tied to the luxury car brand’s products, the companies announced Aug. 22.

Independent sales organizations, which sell payment card acceptance to merchants, see a big opportunity in Visa Inc.’s decision to accelerate the switch to EMV chip-and-PIN cards in the United States.

Credit card charge-offs have been plunging since the middle of last year, moving against the tide of an anemic jobs environment but supported by slowing bankruptcies.

If only Bank of America's cuts were the end of it.

Bankcard originations hit a three-year high during the first five months of this year, with almost 15 million new cards issued during that period, new Equifax data show.

A relatively new strategy among India’s credit card issuers to target premium customers and shed risky accounts is working even as card spending has declined in the country month-on-month, data from the country’s central bank suggests.

The U.S. credit card charge-off rate rose slightly in July, but delinquencies fell again to an all-time low as consumers continued to demonstrate discipline in making on-time payments, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report released Aug. 19.