Credit

Mocapay Inc., a Denver-based mobile loyalty and gift card technology company, last week unveiled a platform enabling merchants to give customers a one-time authorization code to conduct point-of-sale payments from prepaid accounts using mobile handsets.

First Data Corp. hopes to raise the stakes among payment-terminal makers and processors vying to encrypt cardholder data with a new product it contends goes further than other market offerings.

Though a few large merchants fail to achieve compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, many rely on alternative compensating controls to comply, according to a report released today by Thales Group and the Ponemon Institute. Many large merchants also are paying an average of $225,000 per year for PCI audits, according to the report.

Credit card complaints in India shot up by as much as 74% between April 2008 and March of last year compared with the previous 12-month period, according to the annual report of the Banking Ombudsman, which the Reserve Bank formed to look into customer complaints against banks.

Visa Inc. last month must have had payments executives scratching their heads. It started on Feb. 9, when the card brand announced the expansion of its “No Signature Required” policy for magnetic stripe card transactions less than $25 to 98% of all merchant types. Industry reaction immediately after the announcement was that Visa’s move may undermine its contactless-payment initiative, which similarly is designed to speed up the check-out process.

Five years ago, biometric payments seemed ready for the American mainstream. Backers predicted that financial institutions and retailers soon would use fingerprint, palm, vein, iris or facial scans to verify consumers’ identities for ATM and point-of-sale transactions.

The Korean government has withdrawn a plan to cap the fees credit card companies charge small and midsize retailers, an official from the Credit Finance Association of Korea tells PaymentsSource. The government and the National Assembly of Korea had planned to limit the interchange rates under a revision of the Credit-Specialized Financial Business Law.

Many consumers are switching back to cash from paying with plastic, a survey says, as unhappiness with bank bailouts continues to sour Americans on the financial industry — and its products.

Credit card portfolio sales, which dwindled sharply last year as the economy retracted, will remain stagnant for at least another year, one analyst says.

The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority this week awarded a $15 million transit smart card contract to Cubic Transportation Systems Inc. San Diego-based Cubic will design and install the system that will be compatible with the contactless Easy Card launched in October in Miami-Dade County.

About 29% of New Zealanders expect to use credit cards to pay for otherwise unaffordable expenses in the coming months, a survey from credit-reporting agency Dun & Bradstreet reveals.

Guangshen Railway Co. Ltd. is partnering with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and card issuer China Unionpay to jointly issue a dual-currency contactless credit card in Hong Kong, the companies announced in recent joint statement.

Barclaycard next month plans to launch Barclaycard Freedom, a cash-based credit card rewards and loyalty program, through partnerships with more than 30,000 local and international retailers, the London-based card-issuing unit of Barclays Group PLC announced recently.

Bottomline Technologies said Wednesday that it has agreed to purchase Bank of America Corp.'s travel commission payments service.

The House Financial Services Committee does not plan to pursue interchange legislation this year, according to committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Wright Express Corp., a payment-processing company for commercial and government vehicle fleets, recently reported a 3.6% rise in revenue for last year’s fourth quarter, to $83.8 million from $80.9 million during the same period a year earlier.

Thai Airways International on Feb. 15 began accepting credit cards for ticket payments in Australia, an official from the airline’s ticketing department tells PaymentsSource. The card brands accepted include American Express, Diners Club, Master Card and Visa.

China Unicom will officially launch its Near Field Communication service later this year in Shanghai, confirms a Shanghai-based official from the nation's second-largest mobile network carrier.

Small-business owners do not expect any major improvement in the economy in the next few months, according to data from Discover Financial Services.

Two companies that support online payments are getting involved with Facebook Inc. to streamline micropayments for virtual goods users purchase on the popular social networking Web site.