Payment cards

Preventing a damaged reputation, more so than cost, is what drives online merchants to improve their data security and comply with industry standards. And more merchants are starting to use third parties to store their payments data to improve security and protect their reputations, new research suggests.

The U.S. prepaid gift card market has reached a point where consumers have become comfortable giving merchant’s proprietary cards as gifts and even reloading them for long-term use, new survey findings suggest.

American Express Co. wants to get closer to its legion of 2 million friends on Facebook.

The final parameters of an antitrust settlement submitted to a federal court in New York Friday by the Department of Justice promises to give merchants and cardholders more choices when paying for goods and services by preventing Visa and MasterCard from enforcing anti-steering bylaws.

Still on the fence about EMV? High uptake from an early adopter, the United Nations Federal Credit Union, is allowing it to expand the card's availability, and provides evidence U.S. cardholders really like to use chip and PIN cards when traveling overseas.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau likely will focus on the mortgage industry when it officially opens its doors July 21, some observers believe. And while the agency has made it known it will examine the prepaid card market, its specific intentions remains unclear.

Demand is far outstripping supply these days in mobile remote deposit capture, new research suggests.

Cashiers now may activate entire packs of cards at once instead of swiping each card individually under a service First Data announced July 11.

In an unintended consequence of the newly revised federal rules on cybersecurity, banks are likely to fare much worse in lawsuits over fraud losses.

Retailers such as 7-Eleven Inc. pulled out the stops to get consumer support during the merchants’ lobbying campaign to win lower debit interchange fees.

Western Union Co. has struck a deal that will make it a competitor, but also a potential partner, for banks trying to capture a bigger chunk of the business payments market.

Mobile payments in India received a major boost on June 27 when Nokia India Pvt. Ltd., the Indian arm of the Finnish mobile handset maker, announced it would offer its Mobile Money service on all Nokia devices.

A major investor in Meta Financial Group has grown impatient with the company’s sagging stock price and is urging the Storm Lake, Iowa-based bank holding company to sell itself.

The announcement last week by several telecommunication companies of plans to create a joint venture to fast-track mobile-payments processing potentially has broad implications for the mobile-payments market in Europe. But the companies have worked together before with little resulting success.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nonbank that banks love to hate — and fear — is at it again.

Law enforcement agents believe hundreds of thousands of dollars being withdrawn from ATMs in California are related to the data breach announced recently by Michaels Stores.

Verification using India’s national biometric-identification system could provide a second level of authorization needed to secure card-present transactions initiated with magnetic stripe cards under a proposal outlined in a central bank working group report released June 2. It also may serve as an alternative to moving to EMV chip-and-PIN cards.

WASHINGTON — Although banks failed in their attempt to convince Congress to delay an interchange fee cap for debit cards, the financial services industry is not giving up, just changing venues.

Think Computer Corp. has added a contactless-payment capability to its FaceCash mobile wallet.

NEW ORLEANS — Banks intent on bringing mobile payments to a wide swath of customers will soon have to make difficult decisions about devices, partnerships, vendor management and employee training.