Credit

Calling it a first-of-its-kind agreement, TMG Financial Services and Desjardins Bank of Florida, a subsidiary of Desjardins Group of Canada, have entered into an agreement to offer a consumer rewards credit card to bank clients in the United States.

Calling it a first-of-its-kind agreement, TMG Financial Services and Desjardins Bank of Florida, a subsidiary of Desjardins Group of Canada, have entered into an agreement to offer a consumer rewards credit card to bank clients in the United States.

Michigan State University FCU said yesterday it renewed its contract with Card Services for CUs to process its 86,000 credit and 116,000 signature debit accounts.

U.S. consumer credit card charge-off and delinquency rates fell once again in October as recession-related credit card losses continued to abate, according to new data Moody’s Investors Service released Nov. 22.

Omnego Inc. has launched a mobile wallet application that converts physical loyalty cards including stores’ coupons, rewards and other merchant updates into digital formats usable on mobile devices such as smart phones, the Toronto-based mobile technology company recently announced.

Consumers in the northern part of the state of Haryana in India soon may begin paying their electricity bills online, according to Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam, a state-owned power utility.

Two major retail chains in Australia recently announced deals to accept contactless cards by the end of this year.

Instant-redemption opportunities, such as receiving cash back at the register, are causing more consumers to choose one card-based loyalty program over another, while airline mileage-earning programs are less alluring, according to new research from Chicago-based Mintel Comperemedia.

With Black Friday later this week marking the official launch of the holiday shopping season, the National Retail Federation said its 2010 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions survey has found that 43% of holiday shoppers will rely on debit cards as a primary form of payment, up from 34.3% who said so in a similar survey in 2005.

Bank of America Corp. is building on its mobile payments strategy with plans to issue contactless stickers to its credit and debit card customers next year.

The man who developed the concept for what is now the most popular social-networking website has created a mobile-payments application that relies on facial recognition to confirm a user’s identity at the point of sale.

Holiday shoppers are turning away from using credit cards as their main payment option this season, according to an online survey Harris Interactive conducted for prepaid provider Green Dot Corp. Harris polled 2,288 U.S. adults 18 and older from Nov. 10 to 12.

Despite growth in Germany’s e-commerce market within the past year, Deutsche Card Services GmbH, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank Group AG, believes merchants should support multiple languages on their websites to attract international customers and enable Germany to compete better with other European e-commerce merchants.

Bank of America Corp. is planning to issue contactless payment stickers to at least some of its card customers, a source familiar with the plans said.

In 2009, banks and credit unions reported 41,548 suspicious activities related to card fraud, representing a 4.6% jump from 39,711 reports the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which maintains data on suspicious activity reports.

With sponsorship from Citigroup Inc., Billing Revolution Inc. is trying to help convert people who window-shop on their mobile phones into paying customers.

Electronic Payment Systems LLC, a Denver-based independent sales organization, says a federal judge has ruled that it owns a toll-free number now used by approximately 515,000 merchants processing with TSYS Acquiring Solutions.

American Express Co.’s latest efforts to enable cardholders to tailor their young adult-themed Zync card benefits follows a general trend toward customization to build loyalty, one observer says.

Blackboard Inc. and PE Systems LLC have formed a partnership to help colleges and universities seeks ways to reduce their costs to accept credit and debit card payments, Washington, D.C.-based Blackboard announced Nov. 15.

Several cases of credit card fraud in the United Arab Emirates have resulted in losses of more than 200,000 dirham (US$54,443 or 39,000 euros), a top police official in the country told a local newspaper recently.