JPMorgan Chase & Co. has begun issuing Visa-branded prepaid cards to participants of a New York transit trial for disabled passengers, city transit officials announced Dec. 16.

Discover Financial Services is banking on a mobile future. Executives at the Riverwoods, Ill.-based company said during a Dec. 16 conference call with analysts to discuss its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that its deal with wireless carriers AT&T Inc., T-Mobile USA Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. will play heavily in its future.

Maxamum Inc., a company launched to help consumers with thin credit histories establish credit, plans to provide a new business model combining non-traditional bill reporting services with a points-driven rewards model.

FICO announced Wednesday it has been awarded eight new patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for advances in credit scoring, credit account management, credit fraud management, insurance fraud management and other areas, bringing its portfolio of U.S. patents to more than 100.

Washington Trust Bank in Spokane is offering mobile banking services to its customers through text, mobile Web and dedicated applications using mFoundry Inc.'s software.

Google Inc. is collecting the pieces for a major mobile payments system — but it is a long way from assembling them.

MINNEAPOLIS – FICO announced yesterday it has been awarded eight new patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for advances in credit scoring, credit account management, credit fraud management, insurance fraud management and other areas, bringing its portfolio of U.S. patents to more than 100.

HOUSTON – JSC FCU is the latest credit union to move its item processing from a third party provider to an in-house environment.

HAGERSTOWN, Md. – Ongoing Operations, a business disaster CUSO, is partnering with Cloudworks, a provider of hosted applications, virtual desktop solutions and hosted exchange, to create a new suite of production grade IT offerings specifically for credit unions.

A mobile-commerce company in Berkeley, Calif., says it has devised a means to enable mobile phones to communicate with chips in attached stickers to support true Near Field Communication payments and two-way communications between NFC chips.

U.S. consumers’ average credit card debt fell by 7.4% through the first 11 months of the year, while the average November credit score dropped a point from October’s score, according to new data Credit Karma released Dec. 15.

An estimated 428 different collection agencies and creditors were sued under consumer statutes between Nov. 16-30, a drop from 497 in the first half of the month, according to data from U.S. District Courts. The tally likely dropped in part because of the Thanksgiving holiday.



Russian Standard Bank has become the first European bank to offer person-to-person funds transfers through MasterCard Worldwide’s MoneySend platform, the companies announced Dec. 6.

Visa Inc. has launched a mobile shopping application for Apple Inc.’s iPhone to enable holders of Visa cards to access various merchant discounts using their mobile phones, the card company reported on Dec. 14.

SAN FRANCISCO – Visa said it is making Christmas shopping easier and more convenient for budget-conscious consumers by offering the Visa Mobile application for the iPhone.

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Google said it has acquired Zetawire – a Canada-based startup which owns patents to implement NFC-based technology for mobile banking, advertising, and other uses.

MONETT, Mo. – Jack Henry & Associates said Experian’s QAS has joined its Vendor Integration Program, which will add the address verification software and services to Symitar’s Episys core processing system for credit unions.

ELGIN, Ill. – Corporate America Family CU is one of the first credit unions to offer person-to-person payments through S1 Corp. and its PM Systems subsidiary’s new deal with PayPal.

S1 Corp. has signed 10 clients to use the payment service it offers from PayPal Inc., the software provider announced Dec. 14.

Consumer borrowing rose in October by the largest amount in more than two years, a jump led by a recently enacted law that makes the government the primary lender to students, the Federal Reserve reported earlier this month.