Credit

American Express Co. once again is branding its expertise. Earlier this month, the card company announced a new line of business called LoyaltyEdge that will work with strategic business partners to develop or enhance customer loyalty programs.

Planet Payment Inc. will provide its Pay in Your Currency service to merchants in the United Arab Emirates under an agreement with Network International LLC, an acquirer in the Middle East and North Africa and a card-services provider in the United Arab Emirates, according to Long Beach, N.Y.-based payment processor Planet Payment.

Five villages will become the first in the Indian state of Tripura to be covered under a biometric card initiative by Tripura State Cooperative Bank, an official from the Agartala-based bank tells PaymentsSource.

Independent sales organizations should ensure the legal names and Internal Revenue Service taxpayer identification numbers of their merchant customers match the IRS files, Jill M. Miller, attorney at Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, P.C., advised attendees at the Northeast Acquirers Conference in Dover, Vt., this week.

The city of Delhi in India soon may launch a smart card-based automated fare-collection system for its public bus service, an official from the service operator, Delhi Transport Corp., tells PaymentsSource.

Visa Europe said Wednesday that it plans to go to Hungary's Constitutional Court to appeal a bill passed in December by the Hungarian parliament that restricts bank card transaction commissions, reports Dow Jones.

Consumers who bank or initiate retail purchases online already can secure those transactions through a variety of means, including passwords used only for the Web, card readers that plug into personal computers or challenge-response procedures that can include images they preselect.

The debate over credit and debit card interchange this week went local when California State Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, chairman of the state’s Banking and Finance Committee, conducted a hearing on credit card interchange rates.

Citizens of Dubai last year used the mPay mobile-payment service to make 8,380 payments worth 1.5 million dirham (US$408,386 or 289,894 euros), an official from Dubai government tells PaymentsSource. This represents a massive spike from 2008, when Dubai residents made only 298 mPay transactions worth 25,000 dirham, he says.

U.S. credit card delinquencies fell in December to the lowest level since September as five of the six biggest card lenders posted declines, Moody's Investors Service said.

RegaloCard, a Miami-based mobile-payments company, has added two retailers–Universo Cellular in El Salvador and Cemaco in Guatemala–to its mobile funds-transfer network.

Users of China Mobile in Shanghai can now use their mobile phones to pay for their Metro transportation fares, according to a statement from the country’s largest telecom operator. The service will allow users to make payments at the turnstiles using mobile phones equipped to support contactless technology.

South Korea-based card company BC Card plans soon to begin expanding where its card are accepted overseas after inking a deal with Discover Financial Service to share credit card networks (see story) , according to a BC Card statement. The move will enable BC Card holders to use their domestic cards in other countries, including the United States, Japan and Singapore the statement notes.

Rooms To Go Inc., a furniture retailer, has made more room in its chain of 130 stores for TD Retail Card Services.

Store cards have dodged a bullet.

Remote capture services have become an important offering for business customers, and banks are now adapting the technology for mobile phones in an effort to reach the mainstream.

Card-fraud costs the U.S. payments industry, including issuers, merchants and acquirers, an estimated $8.6 billion per year, according to a recent report from Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm. However, fraud amounts to only 0.4% of the estimated $2.1 trillion in U.S. card volume annually, according to the report “Card Fraud in the United States: The Case for Encryption.” Aite interviewed more than 30 fraud-management professionals for the report.

Credit card issuers are scrambling to add new software-based consumer income-estimation tools to their account-approval processes following the Federal Reserve Board’s release last week of the final rules implementing the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act.

HSBC Holdings PLC’s rollout in the Asia-Pacific region of smart credit cards equipped with the EMV antifraud standard likely will help to increase the pace of EMV adoption this year in most markets, except the U.S., observers say .

U.S. Bancorp has hired Total System Services Inc. to provide card-processing services for its consumer-directed health care benefit cards.