Payment processing

Citing “shortcomings” with the technology, Australia’s ANZ Banking Group Ltd. has halted development of a microSD iPhone case designed to turn a smartphone into a payment device.

In an exclusive deal for MasterCard Worldwide, Indigo Books & Music Inc.’s plans to deploy terminals that accept the card brand’s PayPass contactless payments in all its stores marks the first such development for a retailer of its kind.

Fifth Third Bancorp is working with health care software company Emdeon Inc. to strengthen the bank’s RevLink Solutions platform, which health care providers use for handling payment transactions and remittance information.

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.

S1 Corp. and Fundtech Ltd. have not competed directly, but they sold to many of the same customers. As such, their announced merger would substantially boost the power of each company’s sales team as they pursue new markets and deepen existing customer relationships.

Another company has announced a mobile payments and marketing app in what some are calling the Wild West of mobile payments.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is making it easier for holders of its cobranded Amazon Visa credit card to redeem rewards points for purchases.

A San Francisco-based startup called Card.io is offering software that enables cell-phone cameras to scan credit card information, thus moving ecommerce from the Web to mobile phones and creating a new product for ISOs to sell to merchants.

Two payment transaction software and service providers, S1 and Fundtech, have agreed to a "merger of equals" today in a deal valued at $700 million. Upon closing of the transaction, S1 shareholders will own approximately 55 percent and Fundtech shareholders approximately 45 percent of the combined company. The combined company will be headquartered at S1's headquarters in Atlanta and will be called Fundtech.

A San Francisco-based startup called Card.io is offering software that enables cell-phone cameras to scan credit card information, thus moving ecommerce from the Web to mobile.

Although mobile-payments venture Isis has publicly disclosed that it wants to add larger payments networks than its initial partner, Discover Financial Services, Discover says it might now be better positioned in the mobile-payments market.

Discover Financial Services second-quarter profit more than doubled as declining delinquency and charge-off rates allowed the credit-card lender to tuck away a smaller amount of money to cover bad loans.

Fidelity National Information Services Inc., or FIS, has approached United Kingdom-based vendor Misys PLC regarding a possible acquisition, FIS announced June 23.

Yahoo Inc.’s issues with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. over the ownership of the Alipay online payments provider have yet to be resolved, though the companies are making progress, they announced June 22.

Public fallout from the data breaches that have affected Citigroup and other large enterprises in and out of finance in recent weeks has reached the political push back stage, with both Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) hoping the events will breathe new life into data protection legislation that’s failed in the past.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration's push to create a national standard for when and how banks and other companies must notify customers of a data breach appears to be gaining momentum.

Fiserv's upgrades to key processing software could remove another roadblock in the way of the many banks that want to speed up their ACH payments.

Harbor Community Bank has signed an agreement to receive credit card acceptance, check-guarantee and recurring-payments services for hundreds of business clients through US Merchant Services Inc., the companies announced June 16.

Joining the growing raft of processors rolling out advanced data-encryption services to help protect cardholders at the point of sale, Elavon Inc. on June 20 announced a portfolio of products and services dubbed Safe-T Suite.

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.