Payment processing

The online payment provider eLayaway Inc. said on Monday that it would join the Secure Vault Payments network and offer the service to its customers in the fourth quarter.

With membership expanding from 11 companies to 16 companies in the last 60 days, the North American Merchant Cash Advance Association is becoming the voice of the emerging industry, its leader says.

S1 Corp. has postponed the shareholder meeting it scheduled to vote on its planned merger with Fundtech Ltd.

The Indian government reportedly has approved plans to establish a single electronic-payments gateway to accommodate the processing of all state and central government services by the end of the fiscal year.

A new bulletin from Visa indicates that it is increasingly concerned about point of sale terminals being adapted to steal card data over Bluetooth connections.

In an effort to make the technical aspects of credit card security compliance easier for its small-business customers, Century Payments Inc. will put Trustwave fraud-protection programs in place within three months, the company said Sept. 7.

Andrews FCU on Wednesday announced it is rolling out a Globe Trek Visa Rewards credit card with both magnetic strip and the Europay, MasterCard and Visa EMV technology, also known as Chip and PIN.

Amid a resurgence of interest in issuing private-label credit cards and noteworthy behavioral shifts affecting consumer creditworthiness, First Data Corp. is adopting a new instant-credit decisioning and underwriting system from Zoot Enterprises Inc., the two companies announced Sept. 7.

Total System Services Inc., or TSYS, has signed a long-term agreement with Clearent LLC to extend their merchant services processing relationship, TSYS announced Sept. 7.

ACI Worldwide Inc. and Fundtech Ltd. are squaring off in a protracted and very public tug of war over a combination with S1 Corp., and the prize could go to either company.

Following recommendations from India’s central bank urging the country’s financial institutions to issue chip cards, ICICI Bank Ltd. has begun to issue its first EMV-compliant credit card, the issuer announced Sept. 5.

Growth in merchant accounts that translated into more credit card transaction-processing fees helped Canadian merchant processor VersaPay Corp. boost second-quarter revenue.

Zions Bancorp., in its attempt to spot fraud, was gathering much more data than its technology could handle. While searching for a needle in a haystack, it was just piling on more hay.

A directive earlier this month from Visa Inc. designed to motivate merchants to support the EMV chip card standard for U.S. cards and payment terminals may spark a cottage industry in EMV training seminars and consulting.

Electronic funds transfer networks such as First Data Corp.’s Star are hearing increased chatter from financial institutions about securing and authenticating purchases at point-of-sale retail locations and online.

Representatives of 13 corporate credit unions and Co-op Financial Services have abandoned efforts to buy the payments functions from U.S. Central Federal Credit Union, the latest corporate initiative to fail, the representatives announced Sept. 2.

EFT Canada Inc. has completed its acquisition of the credit card gateway of privately held Linterna Technologies Ltd., the companies announced Sept. 2.

Growing use of its mobile payment services for banks increased Monitise PLC revenue for fiscal 2011, but the expense of developing new markets in Europe and Nigeria resulted in a pretax loss, the mobile-payments company said Sept. 1.

Large banks such as Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. have been working for years to build global payment “hubs,” or online-banking platforms their corporate customers may use to send and accept payments of different types and in foreign currencies to their customers and partners around the world.

As Visa Inc. has been ramping up its promotion of one-time-use card data for security, Discover Financial Services is winding down its support of a similar technology.