Credit

After eroding amid ballooning job losses, the credit profiles of customer rosters at major card lenders generally have recovered and in some instances have become stronger than at the beginning of the recession as issuers cull the ranks of their customers.

Revolving consumer debt, mostly comprising credit card loans, fell $110 billion, or 12.7%, from an all-time peak in September 2008, to $866 billion in December 2009, according to seasonally adjusted data from the Federal Reserve.

Capital One Financial Corp. today reported lower-than-expected charge-off and delinquency rates on its U.S. credit cards for February, prompting at least one securities firm to suggest credit card charge-offs as a whole may begin to decline during the second quarter.

More than 300 T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants plan to use a payment card security method that masks sensitive transaction data with a numerical token, says Merchant Link, the company providing the TransactionVault service.

International expansion will not benefit every company, and merchant-service providers that want to expand outside the United States should carefully evaluate their business models to determine whether such a strategy is feasible, some observers note.

MasterCard Worldwide today launched an ATM-finder application for Blackberry smartphones, nearly a year after the card brand rolled out the same free downloadable, customizable application for the Apple iPhone.

Capital One Financial Corp. on March 15 introduced a travel card is says offers its richest and most flexible rewards yet, although customers must pay an annual fee to earn maximum rewards.

Visa Inc. soon plans to introduce an online shopping platform providing consumers with one location to manage and store their e-commerce activity. The product, called Rightcliq, will enable consumers to shop online using stored card information, the card brand says.

Will Detterman, the chief executive of Leap Payments Inc., admits he's taking a big chance in adopting a payment card acceptance pricing model that bucks the traditional formula.

Barclaycard reportedly plans to deploy mobile phones enabled with Near Field Communication payment technology in conjunction with France-based mobile-network operator Orange during the second half of this year. The report did not specify where the phone would be available, and both companies operate in multiple countries.

Discover Financial Services this week signaled to analysts it expects to report lower-than-expected earnings for its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 31. Discover plans to report the quarter’s earnings on March 16.

Magento Inc. and PayPal Inc. this week announced an expansion of an earlier partnership that will enable online retailers to accept PayPal payments through Magento’s open-source shopping platform.

India’s ICICI Bank Ltd. no longer is issuing lifetime, annual fee-free credit cards to any new card customers, an official from the bank tells PaymentsSource, requesting anonymity.

Mumbai passengers on the western line of the Indian city’s suburban railway network now may use the Mumbai Go contactless smart card for fare payments. The agency officially made the service available at midnight March 10, completing the implementation of smart card acceptance across the city’s public transport facilities, an official from the railway operator tells PaymentsSource.

Visa Inc. said Thursday that payments volume on its U.S. cards picked up 12% in February from a year earlier, driven by a surge in debit use.

First Data Corp. executives say the company has no plans for an initial public offering — but its choice of a chief executive seems to say otherwise.

A mobile payments business model Citigroup Inc. tested in India has proven a hit among all the key players, even wireless carriers.

Michael Capellas, chairman and CEO of First Data Corp., is leaving the Atlanta-based payment processor to work as a senior advisor at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., the investment group that bought the transaction processor in 2007.

Visa Inc. is looking outside the U.S. for growth and hopes to derive more than half of its revenues from international markets within the next five years, executives from the card company today told investors gathered in San Francisco for its annual Investor Day presentation.

Tio Networks, which today announced the planned launch of a mobile bill-payment platform, estimates it will generate 20% of its revenue from the service by 2011, according to the Burnaby, British Columbia-based expedited bill-payment processor.