Payment processing

A new regulation approved by the Financial Supervisory Service of Korea could slow domestic growth in mobile payments, an official from the regulator confirmed. Under the new policy, all transactions initiated with advanced handsets would be subject to the same security requirements that control online transactions initiated with personal computers.

With the economy showing signs of recovery, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday gave more clues as to how the central bank will return to normal and made clear that financial institutions are central to his plans.

News last week that North American Bancard has hired a financial advisor to help sort out its future and that Merchant Data Systems Inc. has purchased a 1,300-merchant ISO potentially is signalling a resurgence in mergersand acquisitions among portfolio buyers and sellers. It also signals further consolidation in the ISO and merchant-acquiring industry.

Automated clearinghouse transaction processor ACH Federal LLC is introducing a merchant-referral partner program for ISOs in the hopes of expanding its client base, according to the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based company.

Ebay Inc.’s PayPal unit no longer will process personal online payments to India, the third-party payments provider said in a blog post this week.

Visa Inc.’s announcement Monday that this summer it will expand its “No Signature Required” program for magnetic stripe card transactions less than $25 to the majority of merchants could create yet another setback for contactless-payment growth in the United States, some observers say.

The Secure POS Vendor Alliance, an Atlanta-based trade organization representing point-of-sale terminal makers, says it is forming the Lab Network, a collection of research labs that would work on shared security matters.

Outsourced third-party vendors managed the majority of compromised systems for businesses in 2009, and they often introduced the deficiencies fraudsters exploited to access the system, according to data from Trustwave, a Chicago-based payment-security firm.

Point-of-sale terminal maker XAC Automation Corp. will use advanced payment-data encryption technology from Voltage Security Inc. in its new devices, Voltage announced this week.

Big banks are starting to open the tech-spending spigot, but times are tight for their smaller peers.

Xerox Corp. said Monday it has completed its roughly $6.4 billion acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services Inc., an outsourcer that, among other things, processes credit card applications for issuers.

Processors, not independent sales organizations, likely will bear the brunt of a law that takes effect next January requiring acquirers to report merchant credit and debit card transactions to the Internal Revenue Service, says Henry Helgeson, co-CEO of Merchant Warehouse Inc., a Boston-based ISO.

Dozens of credit unions are walking away from the $60 million payment Visa issuers will get for the costs they incurred for the massive credit card breach at Heartland Payments System.

First Bank & Trust of Brookings, S.D., today announced it is issuing a decoupled, affinity debit card for In Defense of Animals, a nonprofit animal-rights group. Tempo Payments Inc. will process the card’s transactions on its payments platform.

In today’s economy, merchants still want to know how much credit and debit card processing is going to cost, but independent sales organizations say price is only one part of the sales pitch. Listening to what the merchant says it needs can be equally as important in securing the deal.

Citigroup Inc. is said to be switching its entire North American banking operations to a core processing application from Fidelity National Information Services Inc.

From the January/February 2010 issue of ISO&Agent.

From the January/February 2010 issue of ISO&Agent.

Hypercom Corp. will provide more than 12,000 PIN pads with EMV contactless card readers to European retailer Carrefour, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based point-of-sale terminal maker announced Thursday.

A growing number of financial companies are trying to foster creativity with in-house innovation labs.