Payments

This story was updated from its original version.

Bill.com Inc. said Wednesday that it is improving its mobile offering for small and medium-sized businesses.

The new person-to-person payments company launched by three top banks may not be a PayPal-killer, but experts say the clearXchange venture is a clear threat to the dominant bank-focused payments services.

Pasadena, Calif.-based Wescom Central CU said May 25 its Wescom Resources Group has signed with PayPal to offer Person-to-Person payment services to credit unions.

Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. plan to debut a person-to-person payments service on Wednesday that lets customers send money to each other with an email address or mobile phone number, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Square Inc. faces a new cast of challengers in its plan to spark consumer adoption of mobile payments after muting many critics of its merchant technology.

The average U.S. consumer credit card charge-off rate fell again in April, underscoring a noteworthy decoupling of the unemployment rate and the number of credit card accounts lenders deem uncollectible, Moody’s Investors Service said in a May 23 report.

VSoft Corp., a provider of popular remote deposit capture technology, announced May 23 it is partnering with Mitek Systems Inc. to provide Mitek’s patented Mobile Deposit to financial institutions leveraging VSoft’s Agile Mobile Capture service.

As consumers become more comfortable with such technologies as unlocking a car from inside the house to recording movies remotely they are becoming more interested in using mobile phones for payments, survey data from MasterCard Worldwide suggest.

Square Inc. is expanding beyond mobile card acceptance with a new service that allows consumers to initiate payments through its application.

Bank skepticism of the Isis mobile payments joint venture was high when the wireless carriers leading the initiative announced its formation last fall, but Isis says it has calmed early suspicions and now is working closely with major banks and payments companies.

Barclaycard and wireless-network operator Everything Everywhere Ltd. on May 19 officially launched the United Kingdom’s first contactless mobile-payment system, which uses a pay-as-you-go handset from Samsung Group. But its success could hinge on merchant acceptance of the technology continuing to grow.

WASHINGTON-Responding to progress credit unions and banks have made in Congress to delay or derail new interchange caps that are included in the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd Frank Act, the National Retail Federation is rolling out a major, nationwide, 60-day lobbying, grassroots and media campaign aimed at ensuring that the law goes into effect as scheduled.

Danal Inc.'s BilltoMobile is launching a payment service for e-commerce sites to route payments through the phone bills of more than 200 mobile carriers across 60 countries.

In another sign that U.S. consumer credit card issuers are beginning to see some new-account growth following the recession, Equifax Inc. on May 20 reported new bankcard accounts in February were up 28% compared with a year earlier.

Dramatic reductions in credit card bad-debt and total expenses, plus gains in customer use of private-label cards within its stores driven by a 5% rewards discount launched in October, helped boost fiscal first quarter profitability within Target Corp.’s Credit Card segment.

PHOENIX – Desert Schools FCU is offering its members around-the-clock credit monitoring to thwart identity thieves.

CHICAGO–Evolving mobile technology is leading payment companies to develop new business models to capture revenue in a market many observers believe soon will offer enormous opportunities, executives said here May 20 during a panel discussion at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s annual conference.

Forming new partnerships with mobile-payments players is a top priority for Barclaycard, the new head of the issuer’s U.S. mobile business said May 19.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Jon Tester, leading the effort to delay the controversial debit interchange fee rule, has agreed to shorten his proposed delay to 15 months from 24 months, giving credit union and bank regulators time to study the impact of the rule on the institutions they supervise.