Payments

The Indian Ministry of Finance is considering reducing the interest rates banks can charge on consumers’ outstanding card debts to make owning credit cards more affordable and to encourage mobile payments.

Seamless Distribution AB believes it has developed a mobile-payment method that replaces the need to shop with credit and debit cards, thus saving money for merchants who no longer would have to pay card-related fees, the payments software company announced Nov. 29.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Park Community FCU is partnering with two local charities to offer a co-branded debit card and will donate $5 to each charity for the issuance of each card.

CINCINNATI – Vantiv, which processed card transactions for more than 800 credit unions, yesterday introduced its first prepaid program, offering general purpose reloadable cards.

TUCSON, Ariz. – Tucson Old Pueblo CU has signed a credit card processing deal with PSCU Financial Services to facilitate its re-entry into the cards market, one of dozens of credit unions reversing recent exits from the cards business.

Consumer use of credit cards online is making a comeback, new research suggests.

Starbucks Corp. plans to ride the U.S. success of its in-store mobile-payment method by introducing the application to customers in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Jan. 5, the Seattle-based company announced Nov. 24.

London’s O2 arena has begun accepting contactless payments via card or mobile phone in conjunction with card issuer BarclayCard and Visa Europe..

Mark Jamison, who joined Capital One Financial Corp. in January as a managing vice president to help start up and lead the institution’s new Digital Innovation lab, has spent the past year building a staff of about 10 workers, many of whom have a combination of technology and startup expertise.

The nature of security threats against banks continues to change as fraudsters quickly refresh their efforts against digital and mobile banking.

Consumer credit card originations rose 32% during the first eight months of this year, though the amount of total new credit issued still lags behind pre-recession levels by a full 45%, recently released data show.

Google next year plans to expand its application program interfaces to make it easier for third parties such as Groupon, merchants and banks to interact with the Google Wallet, according to Rob von Behren, co-founding engineer for Google Wallet.

PITTSBURGH-Dynamics Inc. has introduced a new credit card it contends lowers fraud costs.

PITTSBURGH-One company has developed what it believes is the next wave of magnetic stripe payments technology, allowing consumers to link to multiple accounts off the same card.

Two years after launching its first version of mobile banking, U.S. Bancorp has upgraded the service by integrating it with online banking and expanding its remote deposit check capture offering to include more devices.

South Korea’s telecommunication regulator is partnering with mobile-phone operators and card networks in a pilot to test a Near Field Communication-based mobile-payment system on the country’s busiest shopping street.

Retail shoppers who download a Shopkick Inc. mobile application on their smartphones to earn rewards points, or “kicks,” by walking into a store now may earn extra points by paying for purchases with a Visa-branded credit or debit card, Visa announced Nov. 21.

International funds-transfer providers have begun to acknowledge that most consumers in their remittance-heavy target markets use mobile phones as a primary tool. As such, services that require visits to a physical location or access to a personal computer are unlikely to catch on, some insiders say.

The U.S. is in a balance-sheet slowdown: overleveraged households are tightening their belts and holding back on consumption, thereby choking off the economy's main engine.

Isis has had a big week, as 45 partners of the GSM Association mobile operator trade group agreed to support the joint venture’s preferred payments model: Near Field Communication that uses SIM cards used in many mobile phones.