Payment processing

Strong revenue performance in North America helped boost Global Payments Inc.’s fiscal fourth-quarter revenue by 22.3%, to $519.8 million from $425.1 million during the same period last year, the Atlanta-based merchant processor announced July 21.

As the hype for widespread Near Field Communication-enabled mobile payments continues to heat up, eBay Inc.’s CEO doused some cold water on the concept, suggesting instead that large merchants will resist the unproven technology.

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.

Merchants selling digital content likely grimace at the thought of a consumer making a 99-cent purchase using a credit card because of the fees involved with that transaction.

Buoyed by a reduction in loan-loss reserves and a modest increase in credit and debit card purchase volume, U.S. Bancorp on July 20 said second-quarter net income for its payments services unit doubled from the same period last year.

Giftango Corp. wants to give merchants a head start on the mobile-wallet age by placing two-dimensional barcodes on the back of their proprietary, closed-loop gift cards to enable consumers to convert the plastic to a digital format via a smartphone camera, among other capabilities.

Banks are still digesting a full plate of mortgage and other economic woes, but that is not stopping them from adding ambitious technology projects to their diet, if the first of the vendor earnings reports is an indication.

The biggest trend in merchant acquiring this year is a concentration on developing and selling mobile card acceptance to micromerchants, a new report suggests.

Isis, the wireless carrier-led mobile-payments venture, just crossed off a relatively small but integral item on its to-do list in signing Visa Inc., American Express Co. and MasterCard Worldwide to its system.

Electronic invoicing companies Transactis Inc. and Data Impact have merged their operations to better serve billers and banks, the companies announced July 19.

Isis, the mobile carrier-led mobile payments venture that initially planned to compete against incumbent payment networks, now has formed relationships with them, it announced July 19.

Citigroup Inc. plans to issue chip-based credit cards that adhere to the EMV Integrated Circuit Card Specifications later this year.

Union Bank of India Ltd. has signed an agreement with electronic payment services provider ElectraCard Services Pvt. Ltd. to set up an online payment gateway to help strengthen its presence in electronic payments.

Software vendor Aptys Solutions LLC has upgraded a program to make it easier for banks to use the Federal Reserve’s same-day settlement service for automated clearinghouse payments.

Continuing efforts to get its Serve digital wallet into consumers’ hands, American Express Co. has signed a deal with Sprint Nextel to put the payments application on the Sprint Zone website, where Sprint customers go to manage their mobile-phone accounts, Amex announced July 18.

Trying a new approach to prod consumer interest in contactless payment, U.S. Bancorp is testing a wrist gadget that combines tap-and-pay technology with an emergency medical notification device, the bank announced July 18.

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.

Germany's Federal Office for Information Security warned last week about a vulnerability in the way Apple's iOS devices such as the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch deal with PDF files.

As the first Irish bank to promote contactless payments, The Bank of Ireland plans to use one-on-one communications with cardholders to promote the benefits of contactless payment technology when it rolls out Visa payWave cards later this year.

Responding to consumer demand for multiple alternative online-payment options, Retail Decisions Ltd. has added six payment types to its fraud-prevention and payment-processing offerings, the company announced July 7.