Credit

Residents of the Bangladesh city of Dhaka soon may use contactless prepaid cards to pay bus fares, an official at private operator Suchana Associates Bus Co., tells PaymentsSource.

Cool. Hip. Fresh. These words are rarely used to describe traditional retail banking.

Fidelity National Information Services yesterday reported that first quarter net income almost tripled to $93.6 million after last year’s combination with Metavante Technologies.

MasterCard Worldwide absorbed a sharp downturn in U.S. consumer credit card purchase volume and total consumer credit card accounts in 2009 as the recession drove consumers to cut spending. But the company turned a healthy profit anyway, thanks to its success in other areas, including relatively strong international purchase volume.

American Express Co. began 2009 on a negative note but ended the year positively with cardmember spending rising 8% from the previous year. But the year overall proved challenging.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is resurrecting discussion about credit card interchange regulation with a hearing scheduled for April 28 on Capitol Hill. The hearing before the full committee will focus on the “Credit Card Fair Fee Act,” which committee member John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced in 2008 and 2009.

A Vermont House committee passed a bill April 27 that would prohibit card networks from fining merchants that set minimum amounts for accepting credit and debit cards from customers.

A directive Visa issued last week should make it clear to online merchants that they are not allowed to offer consumers third-party offers without asking for their card information a second time, the card brand noted in an April 27 statement.

Indian consumers in February initiated 18.3 million credit card transactions, down 6.6% from 19.6 million during the same month last year. Credit card sales volume, however, increased by 6%, to 49.4 billion rupees (US$1.1 billion or 819.2 million euros) from 46.6 billion rupees, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India.

Debt-ridden Taiwanese credit cardholders now are subject to new regulations designed to lighten their financial burdens, an official from the Financial Supervisory Commission, the country’s financial regulator, tells PaymentsSource.

WorldNet TPS last week announced an open-ended agreement with Ingenico SA that France-based Ingenico contends will enable its Northern European customers to lower their payment-gateway costs.

Fidelity National Information Services Inc. said that even though consumers are willing to use online person-to-person payments, banks have to be proactive in making the service visible.

Toronto-Dominion Bank's mobile banking application has been downloaded more than 100,000 times in the first 10 days since its release.

SEATTLE — Nacha is pushing forward with a program aimed at making online bill presentment less costly for banks to offer their customers.

The loyalty-rewards program provider Vesdia Corp. is teaming with the technology developer Cardlytics to target merchant offers to cardholders based on their spending histories.

The activist shareholder Evelyn Y. Davis made her presence felt at American Express Co.'s annual meeting Monday, complaining about not receiving paper statements, among other things.

Competition is intensifying among global commercial card providers, especially for several large U.S.-based issuers seeking growth in markets abroad.

Visa Inc. felt the effects of the global economic recession in 2009, as U.S. consumers transacted less on credit. But strong gains in Visa’s U.S. debit card volume during the year helped to offset the slowdown in credit card use, and the company’s overall profits soared.

Fiserv Inc. plans to offer a same-day bill-payment service to banks by the second half of the year through a partnership with the Minneapolis-based funds-transfer company MoneyGram International Inc.

Small-business owners’ confidence rose in April, and a growing number are reporting improving business conditions, according to new data Discover Financial Services released April 26.