Credit

As MasterCard Worldwide’s website remains inaccessible, its SecureCode payment-verification system seems also to have gone offline.

PARIS–Amid the steady drumbeat of recent mobile-payments announcements, interoperability has emerged as the watchword for developers as they bring their new innovations to market.

PARIS–As contactless payment catches on in certain pockets of Europe, key facts are emerging about what slows and accelerates adoption of the payment method, according to Mark Austin, head of contactless at Visa Europe.

PARIS–The official unveiling this week of the Open Standard Public Transport Alliance, which is developing an open security standard for mass-transit fare-collection systems, illustrates the type of broad collaboration needed to advance the payments industry, its participants suggest.

PARIS–The security of smart cards has as much to do with the financial payoff that hackers stand to gain from unraveling the data inside them as it does protecting the technology.

MasterCard Worldwide and a Swiss bank that attempted to cut ties with Wikileaks apparently are feeling the wrath of Operation Payback, a group of hackers claiming to have shut down both company’s websites.

The Federal Trade Commission announced Monday it has banned a deceptive advertising operation from the debt-relief business under a $28.2 million judgment settlement.

MasterCard Worldwide has added two services to its existing fraud-detection system, enabling card issuers in the United States and parts of Europe, including Ireland and the United Kingdom, to protect cardholders and reduce fraud-related costs, MasterCard announced on Dec. 7.

MasterCard Worldwide is in the process of suspending payments to WikiLeaks, according to a spokesperson for the card brand.

A newly announced mobile phone running Google Inc.’s Android software contains the hardware groundwork for mobile payments.

Hypercom Corp. says its M5000 next-generation mobile point-of-sale terminal will be available next year following merchant tests in the spring and summer.

Co-Op Financial Services announced it has teamed with mFoundry to offer mobile deposits, allowing members to “snap and deposit” checks from anywhere using their mobile phones.

Vivotech Inc. and Monitise PLC have formed a partnership to bring mobile-payment services to banks within the United States, London-based Monitise announced Dec. 7.

PARIS–Vendors will ship 6.02 billion smart cards next year, up 13.2% from 5.32 billion this year, fueled by growth in emerging markets, vendor trade group Eurosmart announced here Dec. 7 at the Cartes & IDentification conference.

PARIS–This year’s Sesame awards presented during a ceremony here Dec. 6 included a broad variety of technologies among the various winners.

PARIS–Visa Inc. is making mobile payments a standard feature offering for its partner banks by moving into commercialization with a system it has been testing with four of the largest U.S. issuers.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson claims in a lawsuit that Discover Bank telemarketers selling identity-theft and credit-score monitoring services fail to tell consumers when they are agreeing to purchase those products, according to Bloomberg News.

As regulation spurs banks to cut operating costs, FIS has developed a purely electronic account that dispenses with paper statements and checks and does not even require a debit card.

FICO's quarterly survey of bank risk professionals indicate a credit gap that has hindered U.S. consumer spending is likely to continue well into 2011. Also, lenders are unlikely to meet the credit demands of small businesses in the near term.

Financial institutions looking to make up for revenue lost should debit card interchange rates dramatically drop next year could target what increasingly has become a thorn in their side: third party automated clearinghouse debits from their customers’ checking accounts, new research suggests.