Credit

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Friday a South Dakota bank will pay more than $10 million to credit card holders who federal regulators said were unfairly charged fees, reports Dow Jones.

The Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode online card-security protocols are relatively weak compared with other available options. And as fraud continues rising among card-not-present transactions, more-robust authentication methods will be needed to prevent online fraud from skyrocketing, two United Kingdom-based researchers contend in new research released this week.

China UnionPay customers last year initiated 6.94 billion debit and credit card transactions in China in 2009, up by 21.8% from 5.7 billion in 2008, according to China UnionPay. The value of the transactions grew by 66.8%, to 7.7 trillion yuan (US$5.4 trillion or 3.9 trillion euros) in 2009 from 4.61 trillion yuan in 2008.

Viva Macau Airlines has begun to accept credit cards for purchases made onboard flights, an official from the Macau-based low-fare passenger airline tells PaymentsSource. The airline conducts 24 flights each day.

Consumers spent NZ$2.95 billion (US$1.5 billion of 1.05 billion euros) using credit cards in New Zealand in December, down 0.3% from NZ$2.96 billion during same month in 2008, according to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand revealed.

American Express Co.’s small-business division, called Open, has launched a cobranded credit card for small-business owners with home-improvement store operator Lowe’s Cos. Inc.

The hardware works, and consumers worldwide think it's a cool idea. Still, near-field communication chips have made about zero progress morphing mobile phones into contactless payment tools.

Fiserv Inc. said Thursday that Mutual of Omaha Bank has implemented 11 Fiserv systems, including online banking and bill pay.

Fifth Third Processing Solutions LLC said Thursday that five banks have agreed to use its processing services.

The Center for Financial Services Innovation, an affiliate of the ailing ShoreBank Corp., says it is not only insulated from the bank's troubles but thriving.

U.S. card-industry players may be overestimating certain technical barriers perceived to be holding the U.S. back from adopting the EMV smart card payment standard used around the world, smart card industry executives say.

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.