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Visa Inc. has joined forces with Starbucks Corp. in what may be one of the emerging mobile-payment industry’s first national promotions designed to improve a payment brand’s status within a mobile wallet.

VeriFone Systems Inc. has turned its PayWare Mobile point-of-sale service into the equivalent of a multipurpose Swiss Army knife for payment acceptance, a necessary step to introduce the device to a global audience, according to the San Jose, Calif.-based payment-terminal maker.

SecureKey Technologies Inc. has received an investment from Intel Capital of Santa Clara, Calif., Intel Corp.’s global investment unit announced Feb. 14.

Long satisfied with offering merchants a purpose-built wireless point-of-sale terminal, Matt Freedman, chief operating officer at Total Merchant Services Inc., realized last year his independent sales organization needed to offer more to meet the needs of a broader mobile-merchant audience.

Quarterly and yearly profits at Encore Capital Group Inc. beat market expectations, helped by a huge jump in gross collections, the debt buyer and collection agency reported Feb. 14.

The state of Kerala in India will be the first to test the Common Mobility Card, an endeavor of the National Urban Transport Policy of India designed to provide a single means to access all types of public-transport systems throughout the country.

Garanti Bank is using VeriFone Systems Inc.’s Near Field Communication/contactless PIN-pad system in its nationwide rollout of an NFC mobile-payment initiative in Turkey, the payment-terminal maker announced Feb. 14.

MetroBank S.A. and Accertify, a leading provider of software, tools and strategies for preventing fraud, have formed a partnership to help merchants, banks and payment processors across Latin America to combat credit card fraud, the companies announced Feb. 15.

Jewelry retailer Bailey Banks & Biddle has joined TD Retail Card Services’ LJC (Luxury, Jewelry, Class) private-label credit card program, the Mahwah, N.J.-based division of TD Bank NA announced Feb. 15.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is teaming up with the image-capture vendor Mitek Systems Inc. to develop new applications for smartphones.

Datacard Group has released a new version of its Datacard CardWizard program.

Some Bank of America Corp. customers saw other people's transaction details through online banking, a report said, but the company insisted that no fraudulent activity resulted.

Hypercom Corp., which is being sold to VeriFone Systems Inc., said in a regulatory filing Monday that the combined companies should generate nearly $2 billion in revenue next year.

Debt buyer Asta Funding Inc. Feb. 9 reported a decline in revenue due to a sharp drop in cash collections for its fiscal year first quarter ended Dec. 31.

Merchant surcharges for debit and credit card purchases in the United Kingdom are unfair, and merchants should be upfront regarding any additional fees they might charge, contends Which?, a UK-based consumer-protection advocacy group.

Monitise PLC more than tripled its revenue during the six months ended Dec. 31 compared with the same period a year earlier as the mobile-payments company worked to expand its customer base.

VeriFone Systems Inc. is taking its PayWare Mobile point-of-sale service outside the United States for the first time and is adding acceptance for EMV chip-and-PIN cards and Near Field Communication-enabled devices, the company announced Feb. 14 at Mobile World Congress in Spain.

As European and Chinese payment card issuers steadily move to support EMV-only cards that lack a magnetic stripe to conduct transactions, global competitive pressure may force the U.S. to adopt EMV chip-and-PIN technology, a top exec from a major international card manufacturer contends.

A goodwill impairment stemming from acquisitions Diebold Inc. made in Europe a decade ago helped generate a fourth-quarter loss, though the ATM maker is having some success in the U.S. with smaller banks, company officials noted during a Feb. 14 earnings call with analysts.

Consumers interested in contactless payment say they find the process easy and fast to use, according to research from Javelin Strategy & Research.