Retailers

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday suggested raising the debit interchange fee cap to 21 cents per transaction, but it gave banks a little bit of leeway to charge even more if they meet certain fraud prevention standards.

VeriFone Systems Inc. continues to gain momentum in the contactless-terminal market for taxis is the Asia-Pacific region, signing a contract to supply 15,600 contactless payment terminals to the largest taxi fleet in Singapore.

Yet another mobile-commerce venture is being formed, and this one could have some staying power, according to an analyst familiar with the deal.

Mobile-payments startup Square Inc.’s $100 million venture-capital avalanche announced June 29 could mean that the company’s transaction volume is gaining significant momentum despite its lack of profits, one analyst contends.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday suggested raising the debit interchange fee cap to 26 cents per transaction – more than double its initial proposal of 12 cents.

Hypercom Corp. announced Tuesday it will be marketing Global Blue's OneInterface software, which combines payment systems with value-added services such as tax free shopping and currency choice at the point of sale.

In a move that could help stave off defection among its multinational customers seeking global commercial card capabilities, U.S. Bancorp on June 28 said its subsidiary Elavon Financial Services Ltd. soon will begin issuing commercial cards in Europe through a new processing agreement it inked with Total System Services Inc., or TSYS.

Citing “shortcomings” with the technology, Australia’s ANZ Banking Group Ltd. has halted development of a microSD iPhone case designed to turn a smartphone into a payment device.

In an exclusive deal for MasterCard Worldwide, Indigo Books & Music Inc.’s plans to deploy terminals that accept the card brand’s PayPass contactless payments in all its stores marks the first such development for a retailer of its kind.

The Secure POS Vendor Alliance, an organization founded by payment-terminal makers Hypercom Corp., Ingenico S.A. and VeriFone Systems Inc., has released standards requiring the terminal industry to handle payment devices properly from the moment they are produced to when they are loaded with customer encryption keys.

Mobile payments in India received a major boost on June 27 when Nokia India Pvt. Ltd., the Indian arm of the Finnish mobile handset maker, announced it would offer its Mobile Money service on all Nokia devices.

Another company has announced a mobile payments and marketing app in what some are calling the Wild West of mobile payments.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is making it easier for holders of its cobranded Amazon Visa credit card to redeem rewards points for purchases.

A San Francisco-based startup called Card.io is offering software that enables cell-phone cameras to scan credit card information, thus moving ecommerce from the Web to mobile phones and creating a new product for ISOs to sell to merchants.

Although mobile-payments venture Isis has publicly disclosed that it wants to add larger payments networks than its initial partner, Discover Financial Services, Discover says it might now be better positioned in the mobile-payments market.

In a significant development that will extend where both Japanese and Chinese credit cardholders may use their cards abroad, Japan-based card organization JCB has signed a memorandum of understanding with China UnionPay to expand the scope of their merchant-acceptance relationship.

Discover Financial Services second-quarter profit more than doubled as declining delinquency and charge-off rates allowed the credit-card lender to tuck away a smaller amount of money to cover bad loans.

Signaling to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide that they no longer are the lone payment card networks in India, the National Payments Corp. of India has joined with Bank of India to launch RuPay-branded debit cards.

Public fallout from the data breaches that have affected Citigroup and other large enterprises in and out of finance in recent weeks has reached the political push back stage, with both Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) hoping the events will breathe new life into data protection legislation that’s failed in the past.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration's push to create a national standard for when and how banks and other companies must notify customers of a data breach appears to be gaining momentum.