Payments

Steve Jobs' resignation raises further uncertainty over Apple Inc.'s payment plan intentions, but Apple patents themselves provide some clues as to where the company may be going.

Despite increasing activity involving mobile payments, consumers still trust credit card companies more than companies such as Google Inc., eBay Inc. or Facebook Inc.

DAYTON, Ohio – Dayton Firefighters FCU has signed an agent card issuer deal with U.S. Bancorp’s Elan Financial Services under which it will sell its cards portfolio to Elan and Elan will manage the program.

Boku Inc. has inked an agreement with two French wireless phone carriers to offer its carrier-billing service, a deal which will extend Boku’s reach to 32 million customers in France.

A new mobile credit card reader to be offered in the United States by a European startup will accept magnetic stripe cards for payment, but the company is not concerned the U.S. move to EMV cards will affect merchant interest in the device.

Financial institutions that serve military personnel, including USAA and Navy Federal Credit Union, are pressured to provide a wide range of remote access beyond that of traditional branch-heavy banks because the Web and mobile phone are often the only access points that consumers who are stationed overseas have to their financial institution.

San Francisco's city attorney said Bank of America Corp. agreed to a $5 million settlement of a suit over its use of the National Arbitration Forum to handle credit-card disputes, according to Dow Jones.

SAN FRANCISCO – Visa Inc.’s attempt to phase out the old, static PIN in favor of dynamic authentication is facing resistance – in particular because many are not convinced the PIN is past its prime.

In a significant boost to mobile payments in China, the country’s sole card processor China UnionPay Co. Ltd. has formed a partnership with handset maker HTC Corp. to launch a phone with a built-in mobile-payment facility.

A new point-of-sale terminal from Vivotech Inc. capable of accepting Near Field Communication mobile payments and chip-and-PIN transactions could help position U.S. merchants to embrace EMV smart card technology and perhaps save them money on security-standards compliance costs, the vendor believes.

Not only are more banks offering mobile banking, more are also releasing multiple applications to try to appeal to as many types of banking customers as possible.

The U.S. credit card charge-off rate rose slightly in July, but delinquencies fell again to an all-time low as consumers continued to demonstrate discipline in making on-time payments, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report released Friday.

Rising interest in the emergence of mobile-payment technologies for smartphones appears to be spurring a gold-rush mentality among would-be developers looking to produce the next hit mobile-payment application.

SAN FRANCISCO – Wells Fargo & Co. is testing a monthly fee with some customers to offset revenue losses it expects on debit card payments.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A new study found despite declines in credit card delinquencies and the availability of cheap funds, most bank credit card issuers have not eased their underwriting standards.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. – Consumer satisfaction with credit cards increased for a second year in a row – after a considerable decline in 2009 – according to the J.D. Power and Associates’ 2011 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study.

NEW YORK – Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. yesterday reported they had closed some of their card customers’ accounts as the result of data breaches at unidentified retailers.

Citigroup Inc. has launched a mobile-rewards application with Best Buy Co. Inc. that enables its cardholders to redeem ThankYou rewards, Citi announced Aug. 18.

WASHINGTON – MasterCard reiterated its support for the two-tiered debit interchange system, its commitment to monitoring merchants, and shared how CUs can report card acceptance issues during a phone conference hosted by CUNA Wednesday.

It made headlines in Europe, but this week’s announcement that three major telecommunication companies in Germany have joined forces to bypass supporting banks in handling Mpass mobile-payment transactions is a concept not likely to quickly take hold in other countries, one industry observer says.