Credit

Mastercard Worldwide’s MasterCard Advisors consulting arm has named Kevin Stanton president. Stanton previously was president of MasterCard’s Canada region.

New restrictions on card issuers raising interest on existing balances under the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act is far more important to consumers than the law’s other provisions that also went into effect last week, the results of a recent poll suggest.

Point-of-sale terminal maker Hypercom Corp. yesterday reported a $624,000 fourth quarter profit, marking the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company’s third consecutive profitable quarter. Hypercom reported a $74.8 million loss for the fourth quarter of 2008.

Barclays Group PLC is increasing the transaction-size limit for its consumer contactless payment cards to 15 pounds (US$22.50 or 16.60 euros), the company announced this week. The previous limit was 10 pounds.

Dynamic Card Solutions, a provider of instant card issuance and PIN selection solutions for credit unions, banks and retailers that issue magnetic stripe, EMV and contactless cards, last week said Team One Credit Union has implemented DCS' instant issue software and hardware.

The Supreme Court of India has upheld its earlier ruling that overturned a National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission decision restraining banks from charging excessive interest rates on credit cards, court filings reveal.

Noor Islamic Bank plans launch the United Arab Emirates’ first mobile Internet-banking service in Arabic, the Dubai-based bank announced on March 1.

Reserve Bank of India To Propose New Rules Regarding Settlements

Japan Net Bank Ltd. recently launched a service called “one-time debit” to combat growing online card fraud, the Tokyo-based Internet bank said recently.

No official movement is afoot to switch to EMV in the U.S., which is becoming increasingly Balkanized as the only major global region not moving to the more-secure chip-and-PIN technology. But a Visa Inc. executive is among experts suggesting that, though issuers, acquirers and merchants may be resisting the shift for a variety of reasons, EMV technology itself is not the biggest obstacle preventing the U.S. from adopting the standard.

First National Bank of Omaha plans to relinquish controlling interest in its First National Merchant Solutions merchant-acquiring arm to Total System Services Inc. in a joint venture the companies announced today.

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.