Credit

Fledging mobile-payments company RegaloCard LLC announced May 26 a distribution agreement with IDT Corp. to place its card-based funds-transfer service in more than 150,000 retailers across the United States.

Deutsche Card Services GmbH this week signed an agreement to become the acquirer and service provider supporting Media-Saturn Holdings GmbH’s online commerce. The Germany-based electronics retailer says the deal will enable it to accept transactions online more securely.

The Indian Ministry of Agriculture as of the end of February had issued 90.6 million Kisan credit cards to eligible farmers in the country, an official from the ministry tells PaymentsSource.

Chinese lawmakers have approved new regulations to help stem the rise in credit card defaults in that country.

Looking for stable, short-term investments, banks are starting to purchase corporate accounts receivable from small businesses through an online auction site called the Receivables Exchange.

U.S. credit card charge-off rates that began rising in the fall of 2008 likely hit their peak during the first quarter of this year and are beginning a march back to lower levels, Moody’s Investors Service announced today.

Mirroring what others are saying about the future of Near Field Communication-enabled mobile payments in the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reveals in a May 23 report that widespread adoption of the technology will not occur for at least another five years.

VeriFone Systems Inc.’s new PIN-entry device authentication service adds another element of security by periodically monitoring PIN pads to ensure they are legitimate, the terminal maker announced May 25.

Some Thailand credit card issuers reportedly plan to waive penalty fees for late payments because the two-month-long antigovernment protests that engulfed the country through mid-May made it difficult for many customers to make their payments.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has dropped its antitrust probe of the local subsidiary of eBay Inc. after the online auction site said it would remove a requirement that sellers offer PayPal as a payment option, the regulator announced recently. PayPal is eBay’s online-payment unit.

Visa Inc. and Monitise PLC plan to form a joint venture to provide mobile financial services in India, the companies announced May 26. They expect the joint-venture deal to close in June.

Credit Union National Association on Tuesday said it has terminated talks aimed at minimizing the onerous interchange provisions in the bank reform bill and has changed focus to knocking the provision out of the bill when Senate and House leaders meet to reconcile different versions of the legislation.

Though legislation that would permit merchants to set minimum and maximum limits on card transactions remains pending in Congress, it is gaining a lot of attention among merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations.

First Data Corp.’s new chief Joe Forehand is wasting no time in shaking things up within the debt-laden processing company, as indicated by the company’s May 25 announcement of the unexpected departure of three top executives, including its recently hired chief financial officer, W. Patrick Shannon.

MasterCard Worldwide is planning to open up its software format, enabling third-party programmers to develop payments applications for its network. The company on May 25 said it would release open application programming interfaces for developers later this year.

Credit Union National Association lobbyists broke off negotiations congressional leaders last Thursday and are instead firing up the CU grassroots to lobby for provisions they hope will minimize the impact of interchange amendments added to the bank reform bill passed by the Senate last week.

India’s Jet Airways Ltd. is partnering with SBI Cards & Payment Services Pvt. Ltd. to provide a new booking facility to the card company’s credit cardholders who purchase tickets with the airline.

Starting Jan. 1, Vermont merchants will be able to set spending minimums for debit and credit card payments under a bill that became law last week despite concerns from the state's governor.

The best thing about mobile payment apps is not the speed of transactions made with phones, but how the apps let people manage their accounts on their own instead of wasting time at the register, according to early results from retailers.

Widespread use of contactless payment in the U.S. remains three to five years away because merchants and issuers still lack compelling incentives to promote the technology, experts concluded recently at the Smart Card Alliance’s annual conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.