Credit Cards

Funding for small businesses has been an increasingly important source of revenue for independent sales organizations and other merchant acquirers, but they’re not the only parties that have noticed the market’s lucrative potential. Now, banking-technology vendors and even large merchants are getting into the game. Jack Henry & Associates Inc., …

American Express Co. on Thursday disclosed that it will not renew its merchant-acceptance and cobranded credit card agreements with Costco Wholesale Corp. The card accounted for about $82 billion of AmEx’s worldwide charge volume last year. The possible loss of the warehouse club’s 16-year AmEx card program had been rumored …

Leading payment processor First Data Corp. late Tuesday reported its first quarterly profit since being taken private in a $29 billion leveraged buyout by investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in 2007. Net income wasn’t big, $11.8 million, but it beat the $123.1 million loss Atlanta-based First Data reported …

Consumers are weary of dealing with the fallout from data breaches and want a better way to minimize their risk. The backers of Final, a new credit card with online-management tools that can set spending caps and produce virtual card numbers tied to specific merchants, hope to alleviate some of …

Boosted by higher transaction volumes both in the United States and abroad, MasterCard Inc. on Friday reported a 21% increase, adjusted for foreign-currency effects, in net income for 2014’s fourth quarter. The No. 2 payment network posted an $801 million profit versus $684 million a year earlier on net revenues …

In the wake of an important Supreme Court decision early last week, Visa Inc.’s chief executive Thursday afternoon sounded a conciliatory note on the company’s often fraught relations with merchants and touted Visa’s digital-payments initiatives as a way of bringing more value to retailers in return for the fees they …

American Express Co. reported $182.5 billion in U.S. card-billed business in the fourth quarter, up 7.9% from $169.1 billion a year earlier, and discount-fee revenues increased 1.8% to $4.99 billion from $4.90 billion. The average worldwide discount rate, however, decreased three basis points to 2.45% of the sale. American Express …

By Jim Daly U.S. credit and debit card issuers will be mailing hundreds of millions of Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to their customers this year and next now that the payment card networks’ EMV liability shift looms just eight months away. Estimates about chip card issuance vary, but all involve …

CKE Restaurants Inc., parent of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. fast-food chains, and TGI Fridays Inc. are using Microsoft Corp. technology to speed up the ordering and purchase process in their restaurants, the Redmond, Wash.-based computing giant announced on Monday. Carrollton, Texas-based TGI Fridays is putting 8-inch tablets into the …

In the wake of a barrage of data thefts affecting tens of millions of U.S. citizens, President Barack Obama on Monday proposed national legislation to regulate breach notification. Other legislation proposed by Obama would ban companies from selling student data to other organizations for non-educational uses and from using information …