OKLAHOMA CITY – Communication FCU yesterday said it has signed with uMonitor to implement the company’s account opening and funding solution, uOpen and uFund.

SAN DIMAS, Calif. – Christian Community CU yesterday announced it signed an agreement to implement Acumen, Fiserv’s recently introduced accounting processing platform.

VeriFone Holdings Inc.’s Payware Mobile payment software for Apple Inc.’s iPhone is now available from Apple’s iTunes store, the San Jose, Calif.-based terminal maker says.

State Bank of India plans to issue 3 million biometric cards this year as it works to comply with an Indian government mandate to bring financial services to more unbanked consumers, an official from the alternate channels department at the Mumbai-based bank tells PaymentsSource.

Chip card maker Bartronics India Ltd. has won a contract to provide cards and card readers for a smart card-based project that includes fingerprint biometrics for India's vast unbanked rural population, an official from the India-based vendor tells PaymentsSource.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Truliant FCU will introduce a new online blog today which will combine with its presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and flickr for a comprehensive social media offering.

Diversified Collection Services, a Livermore, Calif. collection agency, earned $5.3 million from the state of Louisiana for working on a recent tax amnesty initiative that generated more than $460 million for the state.

The hardware works, and consumers worldwide think it's a cool idea. Still, near-field communication chips have made about zero progress morphing mobile phones into contactless payment tools.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Fairwinds CU said it has signed with eEminder to provide its members with the company’s patented solution and technology to deliver real-time interactive alerts.

U.S. card-industry players may be overestimating certain technical barriers perceived to be holding the U.S. back from adopting the EMV smart card payment standard used around the world, smart card industry executives say.

Five villages will become the first in the Indian state of Tripura to be covered under a biometric card initiative by Tripura State Cooperative Bank, an official from the Agartala-based bank tells PaymentsSource.

The city of Delhi in India soon may launch a smart card-based automated fare-collection system for its public bus service, an official from the service operator, Delhi Transport Corp., tells PaymentsSource.

This could be a big year for micropayments.

During the Cartes and IDentification trade show in Paris in November, France-based Oberthur Technologies displayed a chip card that contains two light-emitting diodes that poke through the surface. When consumers tap or wave the “Smart Lumiere” card at contactless-payment terminals, the LEDs light up, but they do not guarantee a transaction is approved.

Consumers who bank or initiate retail purchases online already can secure those transactions through a variety of means, including passwords used only for the Web, card readers that plug into personal computers or challenge-response procedures that can include images they preselect.

As issuers mail out contactless credit and debit cards by the millions, it is not clear how often they are being used.

Citizens of Dubai last year used the mPay mobile-payment service to make 8,380 payments worth 1.5 million dirham (US$408,386 or 289,894 euros), an official from Dubai government tells PaymentsSource. This represents a massive spike from 2008, when Dubai residents made only 298 mPay transactions worth 25,000 dirham, he says.

RegaloCard, a Miami-based mobile-payments company, has added two retailers–Universo Cellular in El Salvador and Cemaco in Guatemala–to its mobile funds-transfer network.

Users of China Mobile in Shanghai can now use their mobile phones to pay for their Metro transportation fares, according to a statement from the country’s largest telecom operator. The service will allow users to make payments at the turnstiles using mobile phones equipped to support contactless technology.

Florida's faltering real estate market - hurt by the highest residential foreclosure rate in the U.S. - has left some of the nation's largest banks holding billions of dollars in questionable loans.