Credit

Banks in Pakistan may begin to send their credit card statements electronically, according to a decree the State Bank of Pakistan issued on March 25.

Citigroup Inc.’s deal to join Syncada could boost momentum for the receivables processing network, which has announced only one other third-party bank participant.

Certain effects of the economic downturn have begun to ease, but one recession-hatched trend persists: Cash-strapped consumers continue to show a preference for paying their credit card bills over their mortgages, according to new data TransUnion LLC released March 29.

WorldPay UK Ltd., formerly RBS WorldPay, has extended its payment-processing agreement with McDonald’s UK, which operates 1,200 restaurants in the United Kingdom, WorldPay announced on March 24. Terms were not disclosed.

Tap Group subsidiary Tap e-Payment Services (HK) Ltd. will provide electronic funds transfer processing integration services to A.S. Watson stores in Hong Kong and China under a service agreement reached with Sino Payments Inc., the companies announced March 28. Tap Group is a venture partner of Sino Payments.

BMO Financial Group and nuTravel Technology Solutions plan to pair BMO’s travel-and-entertainment payment card offerings with nuTravel’s online-booking and expense management tools under an agreement they announced March 28.

The Smurfs may have an important security lesson for banks and credit card networks getting into mobile payments.

Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. has joined the interbank funds-transfer service National Payments Corp. of India launched last fall. The Mumbai-based bank launched the service on March 24 for the bank’s customers across the country, an official at the institution tells PaymentsSource.

First National Bank of Omaha, one of three banks that can issue cards on all four major networks, announced Monday the official launch of its Discover Financial Services card.

MasterCard Worldwide on March 28 announced a five-year “roadmap” for electronic payments in Australia that will require issuers and card-accepting merchants there to adopt its PayPass contactless-payment service beginning next year.

Visa said March 28 it is converting another $400 million of its Class B shares owned by credit unions and banks to replenish to its litigation fund that is expected to be used to pay a settlement in a pending antitrust suit.

Many consumers are not happy with retail loyalty card programs, including those tied to cobranded credit cards, new research suggests.

Many consumers are not happy with retail loyalty card programs, including those tied to cobranded credit cards, new research suggests.

American Express Co., going against its image as a brand for the elite, is launching a digital wallet that would make it the payment choice for the masses — in person, online and in mobile.

Mobile-payments company Monitise PLC is testing a service targeted at unbanked consumers in Nigeria that enables users to transfer funds with their cell phones.

Despite the heightened activity around mobile payments, there are still too many unresolved questions for the payment form to have mainstream success this year, one analyst contends.

Though Google Inc. has yet to deliver on a true near-field communication payment phone, it is rumored to be working with key players on the acceptance side.

Barclays PLC continues to dominate the United Kingdom’s contactless-payment market, claiming 88% of the UK’s total base of 12.9 million contactless debit and credit cardholders as of the beginning of the year, according to data the company released March 24.

LexisNexis has launched Retail Fraud Manager, a platform designed to help online merchants detect and combat card-not-present fraud by automating and analyzing the transaction-review process, the company announced March 23.

PT Bank Central Asia reportedly is set to lose more 300,000 of credit card accounts. The Jakarta-based bank will lose customers who hold BCA Carrefour credit cards because the ownership of supermarket chain PT Carrefour Indonesia has changed hands, according to a March 23 report in the Jakarta Post.