Credit Cards

ProPay Inc. this week announced a mobile-payments product that lets consumers communicate with as well as pay merchants from a smart phone whether they are in the store or just nearby. The application, which ProPay calls Zumogo, works with a handful of restaurants in the company’s home state of Utah, …

It’s bad for consumers and bad for the payments industry, but the Durbin Amendment that imminently will upend the U.S. debit card market still presents some opportunities for MasterCard Inc., according to the No. 2 payment network’s president and chief executive, Ajay Banga. Specifically, MasterCard could well pick up new …

With much of the country buried in snow and ice on Wednesday, Visa Inc. released transaction and charge-volume numbers that likely warmed the predilections of electronic-payments watchers. The leading card network reported U.S. credit and debit card payments volume of $493 billion for its first quarter of fiscal 2011 ended …

After about four years of testing, the New York City area’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is beginning the process of building a fare-payment system based on general-purpose contactless cards. MTA officials tell Digital Transactions News that they plan to publish a so-called Concept of Operations, a document outlining the agency’s broad …

Vancouver’s public-transportation authority has selected a $220 million fare-payment system from Cubic Transportation Systems Inc. that includes a transit-only reloadable contactless card but also the ability to accept general-purpose contactless cards. Replacing proprietary fare cards with systems that add transit capabilities to contactless credit and debit cards issued by banks …

Hackers continue to improve malware, third-party vendors continue to serve their clients poorly when it comes to data security, and the evidence points to Russia as the single biggest source of attacks on databases. Those are some of the highlights in the new Global Security Report 2011 from Trustwave Holdings …

Cash: It’s still everywhere electronic payments want to be. Despite decades of gains by credit and debit cards, electronic commerce, the automated clearing house, and now mobile payments, cash is hanging on and will do so for many years, according to new findings from Aite Group LLC. Consumers spent $1.20 …

United Bank Card Inc., a big independent sales organization that touched off the so-called free-terminal trend seven years ago, has begun offering merchants full-blown point-of-sale business-management hardware and software at no charge. It is also offering its outside sales representatives a $300 commission per terminal sold. Many merchant-acquiring industry observers …

At first glance, a review of the data-breach scene in 2010 shows signs of improvement, or at least stabilization, according to figures from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). Although the total number of reported breaches increased to 662 from 498 in 2009, the number of records known to have …

Consumers brought holiday cheer back to merchants and payment processors in the run-up to Christmas this year, spending 5.5% more during the period than they did last year and giving signs that they are opening wallets and purses again after a long recession and rocky recovery. Especially noteworthy were sharp …