Payment processing

WASHINGTON — A year after the credit card reform law was enacted, Elizabeth Warren, the administration's official in charge with setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the industry has improved its practices and warned against over regulation of the card market.

Independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers using Panoptic Security Inc.’s payment-security service now have another tool to view their merchants’ security-compliance efforts–MyPCIDashboard, a service Panoptic announced Feb. 22.

Independent sales organization Paperless Transaction Corp. has added remote deposit capture-services to its product offerings, Financial Transmission Network Inc., the company providing the service, announced Feb. 21.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is considering limiting the size of purchases allowed on its debit cards in response to the Federal Reserve Board's proposed cap on interchange fees.

Bank of America Corp. is adding another fee that may lead some of its customers to shut off paper statements.

The combination of Square Inc.’s popularity and forthcoming reduced debit card interchange fees is helping HomeATM ePayment Solutions to finally gain traction in the marketplace, according to the company’s president and CEO.

Intuit Inc. is furthering its strategy to become a go-to provider to small businesses for their payment needs.

A glance at fraud statistics would seem to yield an obvious answer: the United States needs to catch up with the rest of the world and upgrade old-school magnetic stripe cards to modern chip and PIN models.

Euronet Worldwide Inc.’s EFT Processing and epay segments reported strong fourth-quarter transaction growth. However, the gains did not translate into increased revenue for the units.

Revenues earned by credit unions from debit card interchange is far more than was previously thought – an estimated $2.6 billion for 2010 – according to CUNA, which is preparing testimony for tomorrow’s Congressional hearing on interchange legislation.

Mobile-network operators NTT Docomo Inc. of Japan and KT Corp. of South Korea have inked a deal to support Near Field Communication payments for smartphones in the two countries that use Google Inc.’s Android operating system.

The Australian capital territory of Canberra plans to roll out the MyWay smart card ticketing system on its Action bus service starting Feb. 21, a spokesperson at the bus operator tells PaymentsSource.

Financial institutions and consumers will be able to more quickly detect and respond to fraudulent transactions and suspicious bank-account activity using a mobile-based fraud-management service ClairMail Inc. has developed, the San Rafael, Calif.-based company announced Feb. 17.

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expressed doubt this morning on the workability of exemptions for credit unions and small banks from the debit interchange price controls required under the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act.

Skimming crimes — and their costs — are rising.

In a warm-up for tomorrow’s Capitol Hill hearing on the Federal Reserve Board’s proposed debit-interchange rules, merchants’ representatives during a press conference today said that unless the rules are left unchanged, merchants might be forced to lay off employees.

Better-than-expected merchant reaction to Intuit Inc.’s offer of free card readers and no monthly service fees to small merchants using its GoPayment mobile-payments service has prompted the company to extend the offer indefinitely, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced Feb. 16.

Economic improvements are helping Heartland Payment Systems Inc., which reported on Feb. 16 that higher spending led to a small jump in fourth-quarter net revenue.

As many as 1,000 credit union members around Maine are believed to have had their card accounts compromised and are now reporting unauthorized transactions on their accounts.

BB&T Corp. is launching a prepaid card that costs slightly more per month than some competing products — but lacks many back-end fees that have caught the ire of advocacy groups.