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Business Editors/Financial Editors

Palmeston North, a city in New Zealand, will install 189 parking meters this year that enable drivers to use credit cards and text messages to pay for parking, a city official tells CardLine Global. The meters, supplied by New Zealand-based Cash Handling Solutions, enable parkers to enter credit card information into the machines. A parker also can send a text message to a number displayed on the meter, with the parking fee charged to a mobile-phone bill, Sandi Morris, a transportation planner for Palmeston, tells CardLine Global. The city hopes to establish a system that will enable parkers to pay with funds transfers. The city decided to upgrade its meters after the vendor of Palmeston's coin-operated machines folded. Some larger cities in New Zealand already use similar meters.

Merchant acquirers would have to report their retailers' credit and debit card transactions to the Internal Revenue Service as part of a provision of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. The Senate on Saturday passed the bill, which the House passed last week. The bill awaits President Bush's signature to become law. "Acquirers will need to give the IRS a complete record of retailers' credit card and debit card activity so the IRS can learn more about unreported sales," says Paul Martaus, president of Mountain Home, Ark.-based consulting firm Martaus & Associates. Acquirers and the independent sales organizations with which they work would need to collect and securely store merchants' information, adds Martaus. Under the provision, a merchant acquirer annually would have to submit the name, address, taxpayer identification number, and the gross amount of credit and debit card transactions for each of its merchant customers. The reporting would begin after Dec. 31, 2010, according to the legislation. The provision could create "serious problems" for the acquiring industry, says Carla Balakgie, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Transactions Association.

Metavante Technologies Inc., a Milwaukee-based payments and banking-services company, today reported net income of $36.9 million for the second quarter ended June 30, down 13.9% from $42.9 million for the same period year. Revenues rose 7.4%, to $424.8 million from $395.7 million. Revenue from its Payment Solutions Group grew by 8.4%, to $260.6 million from $240.4 million, while revenue from Metavante's Financial Solutions Group serving banks grew by 5.7%, to $164.2 million from $155.4 million. The Payment Solutions Group includes credit, debit and prepaid debit card management services, and the NYCE electronic funds transfer network and the Financial Solutions Group provides technology and business services to banks. Metavante contends that comparisons with last year's quarterly results are not meaningful because the company adopted a different capital structure after its spin-off from Marshall & Ilsley Corp. in November. During a conference call with analysts, Frank R. Martire, Metavante president and CEO, said the company expects to experience continued growth during the second half of the year, barring major changes in the economic environment and in consumer confidence. "We are carefully monitoring banks' capital-budget plans with critical projects and those spending decisions in this difficult environment," he said.

Americans' household finances are eroding fast, a result of rising debt and falling home prices, and consumers increasingly are turning to their credit cards as a short-term fix, according to new research from Moody's Economy.com, a division of Moody's Analytics. Consumers are behind schedule in payments or have walked away from nearly $800 billion in household debt of all types, including credit cards, mortgages and car loans, says Mark Zandi, Moody's Economy.com chief economist and one of the nation's chief analysts of economic trends. Zandi contends household-credit quality arguably never has been worse. Sinking credit quality ripples far beyond consumers, affecting credit card companies and other financial firms that consequently see more accounts become delinquent, he says. Moody's Investor Service reported that the credit card charge-off rate, which measures credit card accounts that are considered uncollectible as an annual percentage of all outstanding loans, reached 6.27% in April, the highest level since December 2005. The Federal Reserve's latest monthly Consumer Credit Survey, the G.19 report, shows consumer credit outstanding, which includes revolving and nonrevolving credit, rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.6% in May to $2.57 trillion. Credit card borrowing rebounded in May after dropping in April for the first time since May 2005, according to that report, which states that revolving credit (98% of which involves credit card debt) rose to $961.8 billion in May, up slightly from $956.2 billion the previous month.

Independent sales organizations interested in hiring merchant-level salespeople should create a single, straightforward plan to present all candidates, Matt Clyne, senior vice president of McLean, Va.-based Sage Payment Solutions, said last week during the Midwest Acquirers Association Conference in St. Louis. "ISOs have to be able to sell comp plans to merchant-level salespeople because there are lots of ISOs looking for agents," he said. Smaller organizations creating their first compensation plans should partner with a consultant to develop the plans, added Curt Hensley, president and CEO of Phoenix-based CSH Consulting Inc. "Spending money upfront to define a plan is good for a young ISO," he said.

Dover Corp. expects to sell financially troubled off-premise ATM manufacturer Triton Systems of Delaware Inc. before the end of the year, Paul Goldberg, Dover treasurer and director of investor relations, tells ATM&Debit News, a CardLine sister publication. Dover, a New York-based $7.4 billion company with a large manufacturing portfolio, said Wednesday it is close to selling Triton to an undisclosed buyer. Robert Livingston, Dover president and chief operating officer, says the company has "a viable buyer currently in place that [will] allow us to move the process forward." Goldberg said, "There are several interested parties." When ATM&Debit News pointed out the discrepancy between his statement and Livingston's, Goldberg declined to say more. Dover is selling Triton because it is not a core product to Dover's business, and Triton does not control the market share Dover expects from its companies. "If you know our company, they are either No.1 or No 2 in their markets," Goldberg says. "We did not feel we could become one of the bigger players in the [ATM] market." Triton is one of the nation's largest off-premise manufacturers. In 2006, the Long Beach, Miss.-based company shipped 12,300 ATMs, placing it fourth behind NCR Corp., Diebold Inc. and Tranax Technologies Inc. Triton's 2006 shipments, however, were down 16.4% from 14,782 shipments in 2005. Triton has not disclosed how many ATMs it shipped last year.

Small-business owners' confidence in the economy rebounded in July after sinking to its lowest level in June, as concerns about cash flow eased, according to a monthly survey by Discover Financial Services. In July, 33% of 1,000 small-business owners surveyed said they had experienced cash-flow issues during the previous 90 days, down from 42% who said so in June, according to the Discover Small Business Watch. The Watch is a monthly index measuring the relative economic confidence of U.S. small-business owners, which is calculated by assigning values to responses to six consistent questions. The base value was established at 100 based on surveys conducted in August 2006 when the Watch began. In July the Watch jumped to 84.6, up 12.8 points from 71.8 in June, the lowest level since its inception. The Watch hit its highest level in March 2007 at 117.7. Among the survey respondents in July, 17% said they believe the U.S. economy is getting better, an increase from 9% who thought so in June, while 17% rated the economy as good or excellent, an increase of 12% from June. Moreover, 42% of small-business owners surveyed said the real-estate downturn has had a negative effect on their business, while 47% say it has not negatively affected them. Looking ahead, 43% of small-business owners said that if obtaining credit becomes more difficult, it will have a negative effect on their business, up from 35% who said so in August. Rasmussen Reports LLC conducted the survey.

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The government of South Australia, a state in Australia, says it will test a chip card scheme that would enable gamblers to limit their spending at poker machines. The test will "formally commence" in mid-August, the government ministry in charge of gambling said in a statement. Australia-based Worldsmart Technology will conduct the test, which involves the company's J Card, or Jackpot Club card, according to the statement. The Jackpot Club is a rewards scheme that uses chip cards. Worldsmart declined comment to CardLine Global, as did government officials. The test will enable gamblers to set a daily limit on how much they can spend, with alerts informing them when that limit is reached. Officials already have installed technology for the test in four venues. At least 75 venues in South Australia take part in the Jackpot Club reward scheme, Worldsmart says on its Web site.

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