October bankruptcies and chargeoffs both continued to slide, showing consumers are still paying close attention to their credit performance. October U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings totaled 106,255 nationwide, down 19.6% from the 132,173 total consumer filings recorded in the year ago period, while retail card chargeoffs broke the 6% threshold to 5.55% for a 45-month low.…
Discover announced its “ShopDiscover” online shopping portal now rewards cardmembers 5% to 20% Cashback Bonus year-round on purchases at Dell, Lowe’s, BestBuy.com and Macy’s. These rewards are in addition to the up to 1% Cashback Bonus Discover cardmembers automatically receive on every purchase. Discover cardmembers now can search for and use merchant coupons, taking advantage of additional savings on top of their Cashback Bonus rewards earned through ShopDiscover. The new “ShopDiscover” has grown to more than 200 participating merchant retailers, offering an easy way for Discover cardmembers to accelerate the rewards they earn on their purchases.
USA Technologies wireless, cashless payment and M2M telemetry solutions for self-serve, small-ticket retailing industries had entered into a new exclusive three year agreement with AMI Entertainment Network (“AMI”) touch screen entertainment products and electronic jukeboxes. This new agreement broadens the relationship, making USA Technologies the exclusive provider of transaction processing services for all of AMI’s credit- and debit card-enabled Megatouch game machines in addition to all of the Rowe Jukebox game machines. With this, USA Technologies’ ePort SDK cashless payments software is installed into the machines and shipped by AMI to customer locations, ready to accept credit and debit cards for payment, as well as provide remote machine and sales data through USA Technologies’ ePort Connect Service.
Merchant Data Systems payment processing company and Internet Marketing Company Karma Snack forged a joint venture to help merchant and re-seller clients of Merchant Data Systems increase their sales. The partnership will provide both traditional and e-commerce businesses with products and services including business-enhancing search engine optimization (SEO) to complement wholesale merchant processing. This will offer merchants a diverse suite of Financial Services products including working capital, merchant cash advances, equipment financing as well as Gift & Loyalty programs, Payroll Services and merchant-friendly PCI-DSS solutions.
Yodlee online personal financial management (PFM) and payments solutions forged a new partnership with Open Solutions financial service technology provider. Open Solutions will be the first channel partner to launch the Yodlee Platform with the FinApp Center to its community bank and credit union customers. Yodlee’s FinApp Center is a consumer-driven marketplace for personalized financial applications, or Yodlee FinApps, which will be integrated and available from Open Solutions in early 2012. Yodlee certifies each FinApp so that financial institutions can select and offer their customers secure and personalized functionality, via FinApps, through their own institution websites.
Postal Credit Union in Minnesota is giving away $1,000 a week in cash prizes through the end of 2011 for members who use their debit cards. During its $1,000 a Week Debit Card Giveaway, each time members use their PCU Cash & Check (Debit) Card for purchases beginning November 13 through December 31, 2011, they’ll earn a chance to win one of PCU’s weekly $1,000 random drawings. Members can earn 100 BONUS entries when they make 25 or more purchases a week using their PCU Cash & Check (Debit) Card.
DocuSign eSignature launched its “DocuSign Ink” personal electronic signature. Allowing users to finish personal business faster by eliminating hassles and costs of printing, faxing, scanning, and overnighting signed documents, “DocuSign Ink” offers secure drag and drop legally binding signature and initials into documents, place text and check boxes to complete forms, and then return via email. DocuSign Ink is designed to work with Microsoft Office (like .doc, .ppt, and .xls,), Adobe PDF with form field recognition, all scanned and faxed documents, and all text and image files (like .tif, .jpg, .png, and .eps).
Discover Card unveiled its float design for the 2012 Tournament of Roses Parade to be held on Jan 2. As the 2011 Grand Marshal award-winner for excellence in creative concept and design, Discover hopes to wow audiences once again with a visually stunning float. In keeping with this year’s Rose Parade theme -“Just Imagine…”- Discover is working with Fiesta Parade Floats to design and construct a float entitled “The Dream Believers,” which celebrates the powerful belief that if you can dream it, you can achieve it. The float depicts children peacefully sleeping and dreaming about various professions they aspire to be when they grow up, including a teacher, artist, rock star, doctor, astronaut and firefighter.
JCB International (JCBI) international operations subsidiary of global payment brand JCB announced the JCB Gourmet Campaign in cooperation with Mr. Chua Lam, a gourmet famed in Hong Kong and throughout Asia. JCB Gourmet Campaign will give JCB cardmembers special offers at approximately 40 restaurants in Hong Kong and Macau area recommended by Mr. Chua Lam. Hong Kong is well-known as a gourmet city, and is one of the core cities within Asia with 7 million residents and nearly 40 million visitors from overseas each year. JCBI expects to enhance JCB brand value not only targeting its cardmembers in Hong Kong, but to all JCB brand cardmembers through the gourmet campaign.
Bank Standard has signed an agreement with TSYS to license its “Prime 4 card” and merchant management solution and will deploy the solution to support its expanding card portfolio of Visa and MasterCard credit, debit and prepaid cards, in addition to managing its merchant acquiring business. The locally incorporated bank selected TSYS as a partner in the region based on “PRIME 4’s” suitability as a cost-effective single platform solution for issuing and acquiring with strong product performance. With this, PRIME will provide the bank fraud and risk management and to increase speed to market.
Gemalto implemented “Fime” GlobalPlatform testing service provider to validate its UICC NFC 2.0 product. Allowing it to achieve GlobalPlatform qualification status, “FIME” has been entrusted by Gemalto to provide the expertise required to independently evaluate its product. Gemalto is the first smart card player to successfully align its product with the functional requirements outlined by GlobalPlatform to manage applications on UICC technology. GlobalPlatform, the international organisation which standardises the management of applications on secure chip technology, launched its compliance programme earlier this year.
Retail Council of Canada (RCC) has renewed its exclusive agreement with Chase Paymentech as its provider of payment processing solutions to RCC’s membership of more than 45,000 store fronts. RCC members can access new preferred credit and debit card processing rates, emerging products and industry expertise from Chase Paymentech. Advantages to RCC members processing with Chase Paymentech offer exclusive Interac, VISA and MasterCard rates; consultation with a Chase Paymentech merchant services provider that understands unique retail-specific payment needs; and simplified payments with one provider and one statement for Visa, MasterCard and Interac transactions.