Payment processing

New York lottery players could be losing more than just the price of a ticket on their weekly purchases.

The Obama administration filed two trade cases Wednesday against China, covering electronic payments and steel duties, reports Bloomberg News.

The need to diversify a merchant portfolio with small and midsize merchants that typically afford better profit margins than large merchants likely drove Fifth Third Processing Solutions LLC’s acquisition of National Processing Co., observers say.

With interest in mobile payments growing, First Data Corp. and South Korea-based SK C&C Co. Ltd. reportedly plan to collaborate to enable consumers in the United States, Canada and Mexico to use their mobile phones in place of physical wallets to initiate payment.

College Of The Holy Cross’ recently announced deal with a unit of Heartland Payments Systems Inc. not only will enable students to shop on or off campus using their school identification cards, but they also may use their cards to give back to the community through the processor’s Give Something Back program.

An online payments system that could help banks compete against alternative service providers like PayPal Inc. is getting the green light from NACHA.

Fifth Third Processing Solutions, a joint venture between private-equity firm Advent and Fifth Third Bank, said Wednesday that it has agreed to buy National Processing.

Payment processor Global Payments Inc. will sell VeriFone Systems Inc.’s PayWare Mobile service in Canada, VeriFone announced Wednesday.

Wright Express Corp. has completed its acquisition of the Australian prepaid and fleet card operations of Retail Decisions Ltd., the South Portland, Maine-based fleet card company announced on Sept. 15.

MasterCard Worldwide’s Sept. 14 announcement of its agreement to enter into a payments business-development deal with China UnionPay, along with news that Global Payments Inc. has gained permission to process card payments in China, suggests U.S.-based card players may be moving closer to cracking open the potentially lucrative Chinese market, analysts say.

Card-manufacturing startup Dynamics Inc. this week is unveiling details of Card 2.0, a computing platform usable in payment cards that changes the information on magnetic stripes and erases the stripe data when turned off.

Interbank FX LLC’s recent partnership with GlobalCollect will enable the Salt Lake City-based company to process credit card transactions for its international clients, Netherlands-based GlobalCollect reported on Sept. 13.

The Bank of Namibia late last month authorized Mobicash Payment Solutions Pvt. Ltd. to offer a new mobile-payment service in the country, according to a Mobicash spokesperson. The service, which is scheduled to launch in October, will enable the institution’s customers to use their mobile phones to pay for goods and person-to-person funds transfers.

State-owned telecommunication operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. on Sept. 13 launched a service that enables customers who have credit cards to pay their telco bills using their mobile phones, according to a spokesperson for the India-based company.

Domestic spending on Visa-branded cards in the U.S. continued to grow during the second three months of this year, while the economy and market effects took their toll on MasterCard Worldwide.

In a move one analyst says might be tied to poor results following a change in company sales strategy, Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has reassigned its chief sales officer to a regional director position, the Princeton, N.J.-based payment processor announced Friday in an 8-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Commuter-benefits provider TransitCenter Inc. has begun participating in the six-month contactless-payment trial MasterCard Worldwide is leading along with three New York-area transit agencies.

Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.-based Co-op Financial Services will add credit card processing to its debit card transaction processing business line.

The analytics provider CoreLogic Inc. has two new products it says will help online lenders more accurately assess the risk associated with nontraditional credit applicants.

Consumers have mixed feelings on differential pricing for cash and card purchases, and their views similarly are mixed on whether merchants might reduce product prices if caps are set on interchange rates, new research suggests.