Payment processing

Fiserv reported a 17% rise in first quarter earnings Thursday, even as revenues slid by about 1%.

Smartphone-based transactions represent an opportunity to grow U.S. card acceptance, which largely has become commoditized because most brick-and-mortar merchants accept payment cards. However, the challenge for independent sales organizations and other resellers of smartphone-based point-of-sale products may be locating mobile-merchant clients, observers say.

Sterling Payment Technologies Inc. in November launched a merchant-security compliance program with the goal of ensuring Sterling’s merchants meet the criteria established by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

Four witnesses testifying April 28 before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on credit card interchange regulation agreed on one thing: A handful of the largest banks benefit most from interchange. And the potential effect of interchange-rate regulation on smaller community banks and credit unions, which struggle to compete against the giants, is murky.

RegaloCard LLC, a fledging mobile-payments company, announced April 28 it has inked agreements with several prepaid phone card distributors to place its card-based funds-transfer service in more than 100,000 retailers across the United States. The Miami-based company’s service is designed to enable consumers to receive funds from the U.S. to use to pay for products and services as participating store locations in Central America.

Restaurateurs may have another reason to use pay-at-the-table terminals from Ingenico S.A., which has added software to the devices to help lower the interchange rates for credit and debit card transactions.

A majority of qualified security professionals that assess compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard believe encryption is the most-effective means of protecting card data, according to a study released April 27 by Thales Group and the Ponemon Institute.

Fidelity National Information Services yesterday reported that first quarter net income almost tripled to $93.6 million after last year’s combination with Metavante Technologies.

A directive Visa issued last week should make it clear to online merchants that they are not allowed to offer consumers third-party offers without asking for their card information a second time, the card brand noted in an April 27 statement.

Fidelity National Information Services Inc. said that even though consumers are willing to use online person-to-person payments, banks have to be proactive in making the service visible.

Visa Inc. officials say they are displeased with a recent decision by Woolworths Ltd., Australia’s largest retailer, to process debit card transactions domestically and bypass the credit card network in a bid to save millions in fees, according to local news reports.

Fiserv Inc. plans to offer a same-day bill-payment service to banks by the second half of the year through a partnership with the Minneapolis-based funds-transfer company MoneyGram International Inc.

Small-business owners’ confidence rose in April, and a growing number are reporting improving business conditions, according to new data Discover Financial Services released April 26.

One payments company and four investor groups remain in the running for RBS WorldPay Inc., the merchant-services division of United Kingdom-based Royal Bank of Scotland, according to a source with knowledge of the process.

Card fraud has slowed to a crawl at Las Vegas-based Clark County Credit Union and CIO Roy Holmstrom is wondering whether he should thank his card-fraud prevention system for the good news.

Hoping to wring more electronic transactions from the shrinking pool of paper checks, Nacha is rethinking its stance on converting business checks into automated clearing house payments.

Increased revenue in several international markets contributed to positive first-quarter revenue growth for Ingenico SA, a France-based company. The company’s payment-terminal business experienced revenue growth after being “severely impacted” by the difficult economy in 2009, while its transaction-services business “performed in line with” company expectations, Ingenico noted April 21.

James G. Kelly, vice chairman and chief operating officer of Global Payments Inc., is leaving the Atlanta-based payment processor effective June 30, the company announced today.

Nagoya Railroad, the transportation bureau of the Japanese city of Nagoya, and four other public-transportation companies are planning to launch a contactless transit card called Manaca for use by riders of trains, buses and subways in Nagoya. The companies expect to complete the launch by next February.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council will update all three of its standards this year, and it eventually may place all on a three-year update cycle, says Bob Russo, the council’s general manager.