Credit

Target Corp. is not alone in testing the effect of various benefits associated with its private-label credit and debit cards and its co-branded Visa card (see story), one analyst says.

Visa Inc. this week launched a program called Visa Signature Luxury Hotel Collection that provides holders of its branded Signature cards more global travel benefits at various high-end hotels and resorts in Dubai and Thailand and at domestic destinations such as south Florida and New York.

Many organizations, such as banks, local business associations, Web-site designers and software developers, refer their customers to independent sales organizations and acquirers for merchant-processing services. The ISO or acquirer then shares with those organizations a percentage of its processing revenue. Or it may provide the referring organization a one-time finder’s fee when the merchant begins processing transactions.

VeriFone Holdings Inc. is supplying 130,000 payment products to Russian bank Sberbank in a multimillion-dollar deal announced today, according to the San Jose, Calif.-based payment-terminal manufacturer. Sberbank is Russia’s largest bank.

Chinese consumers spent more 56.9 billion yuan (US$8.3 billion or 6.1 billion euros) using their debit and credit cards during the week-long Chinese New Year, up 45% from 39.2 billion yuan during the same period last year, data from card company China Unionpay reveal. The holiday week started Feb. 14 and ended Feb. 19.

Fair Isaac Corp. said Tuesday the oft-noted trend of consumers' defaulting on mortgages while continuing to pay their credit cards has spread to the most creditworthy borrowers,reports Bloomberg News.

Merchant-portfolio sellers that harbored visions of selling their portfolios at 36 times their monthly residual revenue finally have acquiesced to buyers’ demand to pay less, say observers of the acquiring market. Residual revenue is the recurring transaction revenue acquirers collect from merchants.

Sales agents for independent sales organizations increasingly are seeking additional industry training to improve their abilities to better compete for scarce business during the difficult economy, observers note.

Some independent sales organizations are providing qualified leads to sales agents as incentives so they will work harder. The tactic tends to motivate the agents while enabling the ISO to spend less on incentives than they would through monetary bonuses, according to some observers.

MShift filed suit in federal court in San Francisco Friday claiming Digital Insight is infringing on its patent for the company’s pioneering mobile banking technology that Digital Insight is providing to hundreds of credit unions and banks.

Mopay Inc. has announced plans to expand its global presence. Under the initiative, the Germany-based mobile-payments company hopes to enable U.S. consumers to purchase virtual goods and other digital content using their mobile-phone accounts, the company notes in a recent press release. It also hopes to create a new revenue channel to U.S. gaming and social-network providers.

Citing lower overall expenses, Target Corp. today announced improved results for its credit card operations during its fiscal fourth quarter.

Discover Financial Services said compensation for its chief executive, David W. Nelms, fell 31% in fiscal 2009, reports Bloomberg News. Nelms received compensation totaling $5.69 million in the fiscal year ended Nov. 30, reports Bloomberg News.

Moody's Investors Service Inc. said Monday credit card charge-offs climbed sharply in January, though early-stage delinquencies declined for the third month in a row, reports Dow Jones.

Visa Inc.’s announced hiring today of Bill Gajda, a top global wireless carrier trade association executive, to lead its mobile-payments initiatives could help the network brand cut through some of industry-sector obstacles blocking mobile-payment development, observers say. Gajda is chief commercial officer at the GSM Association, an international telecommunication organization that develops worldwide wireless standards for mobile communications, and after joining Visa he will continue as president of the GSM Foundation.

A payment breach at an unnamed Helsinki, Finland, business has exposed transaction records from more than 100,000 payment cards to hackers, reports YLE, a news service of the Finnish Broadcasting Co.

Hana Card Co. and South Korea-based telecommunication operator SK Telecom Co. plan to launch a mobile credit card payment service in March under a new joint venture, an official from the credit card company tells PaymentsSource.

ABN Amro Bank NV slowly is shutting down its credit card business in India, an official from the Dutch lender’s India operations tells PaymentsSource on the condition of anonymity.

Today, after nine months of intense and sometimes-frantic preparation, credit card issuers must be in compliance with most provisions of a law that fundamentally changed some industry practices.

Recent research says when it comes to choosing between making a mortgage payment and paying a credit card bill, cash-strapped U.S. consumers are increasingly picking the latter, reports Dow Jones.