Credit

Consumers again are spending with their credit cards to purchase discounted goods early in the holiday season, suggests First Data Corp.’s November SpendTrend payment card transaction analysis of all store sales activity that First Data processes.

To help build and expand its service-fee revenues and its international footprint, American Express Co. plans to acquire Loyalty Partner, a leading European marketing-services company, the card company announced Dec. 16.

Discover Financial Services is banking on a mobile future. Executives at the Riverwoods, Ill.-based company said during a Dec. 16 conference call with analysts to discuss its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that its deal with wireless carriers AT&T Inc., T-Mobile USA Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. will play heavily in its future.

Improvement in the credit performance of the Discover card portfolio helped Discover Financial Services to generate net income of $349.6 million for the fiscal fourth quarter ended Nov. 30, down 0.8% from $352.5 million during the same period last year, the card company reported this morning. Net revenue rose 1.3%, to $1.6 billion from $1.58 billion.

Washington Trust Bank in Spokane is offering mobile banking services to its customers through text, mobile Web and dedicated applications using mFoundry Inc.'s software.

Google Inc. is collecting the pieces for a major mobile payments system — but it is a long way from assembling them.

FICO announced Dec. 15 it has been awarded eight new patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for advances in credit scoring, credit account management, credit fraud management, insurance fraud management and other areas, bringing its portfolio of U.S. patents to more than 100.

A mobile-commerce company in Berkeley, Calif., says it has devised a means to enable mobile phones to communicate with chips in attached stickers to support true Near Field Communication payments and two-way communications between NFC chips.

Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide impose restrictive and anticompetitive rules on merchants who accept their credit cards, the Competition Bureau is alleging in Canada in a Dec. 15 application with the country’s Competition Tribunal.

U.S. consumers’ average credit card debt fell by 7.4% through the first 11 months of the year, while the average November credit score dropped a point from October’s score, according to new data Credit Karma released Dec. 15.

EMC Corp. has launched a consulting service designed to help prepare merchants to manage their payment-security needs, the Hopkington, Mass.-based security-technology company announced Dec. 15.

An estimated 428 different collection agencies and creditors were sued under consumer statutes between Nov. 16-30, a drop from 497 in the first half of the month, according to data from U.S. District Courts. The tally likely dropped in part because of the Thanksgiving holiday.



Russian Standard Bank has become the first European bank to offer person-to-person funds transfers through MasterCard Worldwide’s MoneySend platform, the companies announced Dec. 6.

Voltage Security Inc. said that the online payment provider ClickandBuy International Ltd. would use its system to protect payment data.

Total System Services Inc., or TSYS, announced Dec. 14 several executive promotions.

Visa Inc. has launched a mobile shopping application for Apple Inc.’s iPhone to enable holders of Visa cards to access various merchant discounts using their mobile phones, the card company reported on Dec. 14.

PKO Bank Polski SA has selected Gemalto NA to support the transfer of the bank’s entire portfolio of Visa Inc. magnetic stripe debit cards to EMV smart cards that support Visa’s payWave contactless functionality, France-based chipmaker Gemalto announced earlier this month.

Giesecke & Devrient GmbH recently became the first company to receive MasterCard Worldwide’s certification for an M/Chip Advance-compliant card product, the Germany-based technology provider announced on Dec. 9.

Consumer shopping in November reversed a five-month decrease in the average transaction size, transaction processor First Data Corp. notes in its November SpendTrend report.

S1 Corp. has signed 10 clients to use the payment service it offers from PayPal Inc., the software provider announced Dec. 14.