Payment processing

FSV Payment Systems Inc., a transaction processor and program manager for payroll, government-benefit and general-purpose reloadable prepaid cards, on Monday renewed its agreement with Cardtronics Inc.’s Allpoint surcharge-free ATM network.

Visa Inc. and Travelex Central Services Ltd. last week announced the launch of the Visa Money Transfer service in Australia.

Ritz Interactive Inc. says it is using payment-processing technology from Merchant e-Solutions Inc. to support its more than 18 Web sites, which include RitzCamera.com and Wolf Camera.com. Ritz began using the service a few months ago but only recently made the deal public.

A sales agent presents a proposition to move a portfolio of merchants from one ISO to another. While it sounds like a good deal for the ISO that receives the portfolio, it might not be. The ISO that accepts the merchant portfolio could be sued, even if it has not signed a written contract agreeing not to move the merchants in question.

Merchants always are interested in the cost of payment card processing, but sales agents should evaluate the importance of price when listening to merchants about their needs, observers say.

Processors, not ISOs, likely will handle many provisions 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.

Woodforest Financial Group has renewed an agreement with the Pulse electronic funds transfer network in which Pulse will provide the privately held bank holding company ATM and PIN-based point-of-sale debit services, both companies announced recently.

Social-networking site Multiply has inked a deal for settling online payments with G-Xchange Inc., a statement from the telecom operator said. G-Xchange is a wholly owned subsidiary of Philippines-based Globe Telecom.

The Internal Revenue Service, in probing how $100 billion of credit card payments escape sales and income taxes each year, is looking at clients of processors including First Data Corp.

Cambridge University researchers looking into chip-and-PIN security say they successfully tricked a point-of-sale terminal into accepting a “dummy” PIN for a smart card using a “man-in-the-middle” attack.

Total Systems Solutions Inc., also known as TSYS, is entering the Italian market for the first time.

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.