Payment processing

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.

Larger financial institutions are beginning to engage in broader product and service agreements, and that is opening the door to more outsourcing opportunities, the chief financial officer at Fidelity National Information Services Inc. said Sept. 7 during the Citi Global Technology Conference.

Card-not-present fraud in the United Kingdom is on track to decline 9% this year compared with last year as merchants and consumers adopt more strategies to thwart fraud, Retail Decisions PLC, a London-based payment fraud prevention firm, announced Sept. 6.

VeriFone Systems Inc. on Sept. 9 announced the acquisition of encryption-services provider Semtek Innovative Solutions Corp., a company in which it previously provided equity funding.

If the U.S. government could mandate the switch to digital TV, why can't it mandate that credit and debit card issuers switch from magnetic stripe cards to the EMV Integrated Circuit Card Specifications to improve security?

Australia’s taxation authority in September announced plans to seek contacts with various third-party providers to support its e-commerce payments.

Transaction processor First Data Corp. expects to sign up more than 100,000 merchants by the end of this year for its new TransArmor payment card security product. TransArmor uses a combination of tokenization and encryption to secure transaction data as it passes through merchants’ systems.

Payments-software provider ACI Worldwide Inc. on Sept. 8 announced an extension and a broadening of its contract agreement with First Data Corp. The new agreement will enable the Atlanta-based transaction processor to more cost effectively develop products and drive infrastructure efficiencies in its global operations, ACI notes in a news release.

BancVue Ltd., an Austin, Texas-based product-development and marketing company focused on community banks and credit unions, on Sept. 7 announced a strategic partnership in which it will provide Total System Services Inc.’s electronic payments services to community financial institutions.

Only acquiring banks and the largest ISOs have to file formal written plans with the card brands to explain how they intend to bring the nation’s 5 million small retailers, restaurateurs and other mom-and-pop businesses into compliance with Payment Card Industry data security standards. But everybody in the credit and debit card “food chain” feels the sometimes-unpleasant effects of those plans.

VeriFone Systems Inc.’s $9 million deal this week to buy mobile point-of-sale terminal maker Way Systems Inc. is not surprising to analysts who follow the POS device industry (see story).

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. on Sept. 1 announced it has entered a $5 million agreement with Discover Financial Services to settle claims stemming from the 2008 security breach of the Princeton, N.J.-based company’s processing systems.