Credit

Fiserv has launched a bill payment widget that enables consumers to pay bills from within their online banking homepage.

Small-business owners’ confidence in March fell to its lowest level in more than a year, according to new data Discover Financial Services released March 29.

Retailer The Wet Seal Inc. acknowledged March 29 it was one of several retailers targeted by a card data-theft ring involving Albert Gonzalez, the hacker a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts sentenced last week for his role in stealing consumer card and financial information from a string of companies.

Limits on issuers’ ability to manage risk represent the most substantial impact from a recent credit card regulation affecting United Kingdom card issuers and cardholders, Auriemma Consulting Group UK Ltd. concludes in a recent report. The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills enacted the regulation to provide consumers with more control over their credit cards.

Malaysian issuers last year approved 2.3 million, or 48%, of all applicants who applied for credit cards in 2009, an official from Bank Negara Malaysia tells PaymentsSource.

ACH Payments is expanding its payment-processing services to Canada to satisfy its U.S. merchants that have Canadian customers, marking the company’s initial foray into Canada.

The Obama administration reportedly is weighing complaints from U.S. payments companies that China is violating trade rules by shutting them out of its $723 billion payment-processing market, trade representative Ron Kirk said Friday.

Stratus Rewards, a division of Stratus Media Group, this summer plans to launch the Stratus Rewards Visa White Card in Europe. The card, to be issued by an undisclosed European bank, will be available through invite only and will cater to the European elite.

The charge-off rate on U.S. credit cards declined last month, along with the rate of card accounts past due, according to a March 26 report from Fitch Group’s Fitch Ratings Inc.

About 20% of approximately 15,000 merchants in the Solveras Payment Solutions portfolio thus far have been notified as part of a program designed to bring them into compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, the Arlington, Va.-based independent sales organization says. The initiative began in late February.

South Korean credit card issuers have begun lowering or waiving the fees they charge for cash advances, an official from the Credit Finance Association of Korea tells PaymentsSource.

Oita Prefecture, a jurisdiction located on Kyushu Island of southern Japan, plans to roll out a contactless payment card for its bus transport service in the cities of Beppu and Oita.

BOSTON – A 28-year-old college dropout who became the world’s biggest credit card hacker on Thursday was sentenced to 20 years in prison for stealing millions of credit union and bank account records from TJX Cos., BJ’s Wholesale Club, Office Max, Dave & Busters, Barnes & Noble and a string of other companies – even as he was working as a $75,000-a-year undercover informant for the U.S. government in identity theft cases.

In 2007, Discover Financial Services began monitoring social-networking Web sites. By early 2008, the brand had built an in-house listening platform to follow blogs and postings about financial services in general and Discover in particular by “crawling” such sites as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube using key words and phrases.

American Express Co. is adding white to a rainbow of credit and charge cards that already includes green, gold, platinum, blue, black, plum and clear. The new color graces the Zync card, a charge card AmEx is marketing to 20- and 30-somethings with customized rewards, variable annual fees and a social network called the Zync Tank.

Verizon Wireless customers soon will be able to charge purchases of digital goods, such a games, to their monthly phone bills, bypassing cards and other payment channels. Verizon had not previously sold its customers any products other than its own offerings, such as ringtones, a Verizon spokesperson says.

WorldNet TPS plans to use First Atlantic Commerce’s fraud-prevention services to further protect its online merchants from card-not-present fraud in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Europe, the companies announced this week. First Atlantic Commerce, a payment gateway and risk-management services provider, offers 3-D Secure and other customized consumer risk services in Europe and in the Asia Pacific and Latin American regions.

LIC Cards, a subsidiary of Life Insurance Corp. of India, plans to issue at least 500,000 credit cards in the next financial year, which ends March 31, 2011, an official from the card issuer tells PaymentsSource.

Dhanlaxmi Bank is countering recent moves in India by launching, not dropping, a credit card business by introducing platinum and gold cards on March 22, an official from the Thrissur-based bank tells PaymentsSource.

Visa Inc. will move to chip-and-PIN technology for all of its cards in New Zealand over the next four years, the card company announced March 24.