Payments

Merchants appear to like VeriFone Holdings Inc.’s PayWare mobile-phone payment service on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and their customers are completing big-ticket purchases using the devices.

Nokia Corp. plans to team up with Mumbai-based Yes Bank to plot Nokia Money, a mobile-commerce platform, in India, a Bangalore-based official at the Finnish Handset Maker tells PaymentsSource.

Credit card portfolio sales, which dwindled sharply last year as the economy retracted, will remain stagnant for at least another year, one analyst says.

Noor Islamic Bank plans launch the United Arab Emirates’ first mobile Internet-banking service in Arabic, the Dubai-based bank announced on March 1.

It sounds counterintuitive: USAA Federal Savings Bank's customers will soon access a more-secure mobile banking service by entering less information.

Mocapay Inc., a Denver-based mobile loyalty and gift card technology company, last week unveiled a platform enabling merchants to give customers a one-time authorization code to conduct point-of-sale payments from prepaid accounts using mobile handsets.

Citigroup Inc. is evaluating a new mobile service that monitors where people do their shopping, but has no actual banking functions.

Fair Isaac Corp. said this week that the trend of consumers' defaulting on mortgages while continuing to pay their credit cards has spread to the most creditworthy borrowers.

China Unicom will officially launch its Near Field Communication service later this year in Shanghai, confirms a Shanghai-based official from the nation's second-largest mobile network carrier.

Citing lower overall expenses, Target Corp. on Tuesday announced improved results for its credit card operations during its fiscal fourth quarter.

MShift filed suit in federal court in San Francisco Friday claiming Digital Insight is infringing on its patent for the company’s pioneering mobile banking technology that Digital Insight is providing to hundreds of credit unions and banks.

Mopay Inc. has announced plans to expand its global presence. Under the initiative, the Germany-based mobile-payments company hopes to enable U.S. consumers to purchase virtual goods and other digital content using their mobile-phone accounts, the company notes in a recent press release. It also hopes to create a new revenue channel to U.S. gaming and social-network providers.

Credit card chargeoffs climbed sharply in January, though early-stage delinquencies declined for the third month in a row, Moody's Investors Service Inc. said Monday. William Black, a senior vice president at the rating agency, noted such delinquencies often rise at the start of the year, and this January was the first since 2004 that they fell from the previous month.

Visa Inc.’s announced hiring today of Bill Gajda, a top global wireless carrier trade association executive, to lead its mobile-payments initiatives could help the network brand cut through some of industry-sector obstacles blocking mobile-payment development, observers say. Gajda is chief commercial officer at the GSM Association, an international telecommunication organization that develops worldwide wireless standards for mobile communications, and after joining Visa he will continue as president of the GSM Foundation.

Hana Card Co. and South Korea-based telecommunication operator SK Telecom Co. plan to launch a mobile credit card payment service in March under a new joint venture, an official from the credit card company tells PaymentsSource.

Several credit card issuers this month are taking more “positive, promotional” approaches to introducing new policies and billing-statement changes mandated by a federal law that goes into effect today, according to new research by Corporate Insight, a New York-based market-research firm.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.-Even with the CARD Act set to take effect. today, expect major credit card issuers to continue to seek to make consumers pay more this year.

Bank of America Corp. said this week that late payments on credit card loans fell to 7.35% in January, the lowest in a year.

Despite the dimming prospects for the creation of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Elizabeth Warren isn't ready to consider alternatives.

Mocapay Inc. said last week that Micros Retail Systems Inc. would use the Boulder, Colo., vendor's technology to add mobile access to Micros loyalty programs.