Credit quality for VISA and MasterCards (V/M) issued by the top four U.S. bank credit card issuers continues to improve. The 30+ day delinquency rate in the first quarter declined 16 basis points from the prior quarter and 52 basis points from one-year ago. According to CardData, the average 30+ delinquency rate among the top U.S. issuers for the first quarter stood at 2.64%, compared to 3.16% for Q1/2013 and 2.80% for the final quarter of 2013.
CHARGE Anywhere mPOS solutions have been approved by the Visa Ready Program. The Visa Ready Partner Program for mPOS is designed to help device manufacturers, application developers, merchants and acquirers to build and implement a reliable, convenient, and secure mobile point of sale experience. CHARGE Anywhere’s mobile payment application with Chip & PIN and magnetic stripe transaction capture meet Visa’s requirements. CHARGE Anywhere’s mobile solutions feature a PCI-validated secure mobile payment application, point-to-point encryption, and payment gateway services.
EVERTEC posted 1Q/14 total revenue of $87.2 million with an adjusted net income up 16% to $32.0 million from the year ago period. Revenue was flat compared with the year ago period of $87.3 million. Merchant Acquiring net revenue was $19.3 million, an increase of 10% compared with $17.5 million in the prior year. Revenue growth in the quarter was predominantly driven by an increase in transaction volumes.
i2c payment processing announced that Scott Salmon has joined the company as General Manager, International to lead i2c’s continued growth in Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (APCEMEA). Salmon brings over 25 years of business experience to this strategic role, including more than 20 years in payments and prepaid. He was Head of the Visa Prepaid Products division for the past five years. Prior to that he oversaw Visa’s San Francisco-based Global Prepaid Market Development team. Before Visa, Mr. Salmon was engaged in a variety of consulting and product management roles in the retail banking sector.
The only payment card brand based in Japan is bringing a new middle market credit card to Vietnam. The new JCB Dreamcard is geared towards moderate income customers of Ho Chi Minh City-based Vietnam Techcombank. The co-branded credit card is being offered to customers with an average monthly income from 4 million VND (Vietnamese Dong) or US$188. Techcombank Dreamcard cardholders will receive a credit limit of up to 2 months salary with this card. The minimum repayment amount starts from 10% of outstanding balance.
BPC Banking Open System payment solutions for the global financial industry signed a new agreement with HP. BPC has been selected by HP as one of its strategic high performance payments solution worldwide and under the terms of the agreement, BPC’s SmartVista payments solution will be offered by HP on an outsourced basis to its customers worldwide. SmartVista is a scalable, secure and integrated suite of sophisticated applications covering every aspect of electronic payments processing. Using a visionary design to deliver unrivalled flexibility SmartVista also provides high performance authorization switching and routing, full ATM and POS management, comprehensive card management, advanced fraud prevention, loyalty program definition and management, card personalization and production. SmartVista also provides flexible billing and merchant management, integrated internet and mobile banking.
Cardlytics Card-Linked Marketing will be speaking at Big Data Week Atlanta. Marketing Research is facing both a challenge and an opportunity as Big Data technologies have entered the field, bringing new approaches to gaining customer insights and understanding consumer behavior. This informative roundtable discussion ” which brings together thought leaders and industry experts from technology companies, research firms, and academia ” will discuss trends, challenges, and opportunities in the research field. Big Data Week global platforms brings together a global community of data scientists, data technologies, data visionaries, and data businesses spanning six major commercial, financial, social, and technological sectors.
USA Technologies wireless, cashless payment and M2M telemetry solutions has been awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2014 North American Customer Value Leadership Award in Financial Services and Retail M2M Communications. Based on Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practice Research findings, each year Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers with a focus on improving the return on the investment that customers make in its services or products. The award recognizes USA Technologies’ inordinate focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and, ultimately, customer base expansion.
Boku carrier billing-based mobile payments signed an agreement with Deutsche Telekom Group mobile network operators. This expands on a previous agreement between the two in Germany, Deutsche Telekom’s primary market, to cover the MNO’s entire user base in Europe of over 140 million subscribers across 14 different markets. The agreement establishes Boku as a strategic partner powering Deutsche Telekom’s payments offerings, provides the company with an advanced mobile payments API, and gives customers the ability to pay for digital goods and services simply using their existing mobile phone account. Merchants offering carrier billing-based mobile payments will generate incremental revenue from consumers who find mobile the easiest way to pay, and attract new consumers who previously were unable or unlikely to pay via other payment options, such as credit and debit cards.
MasterCard partnered KDDI mobile operator to launch “au WALLET” prepaid card program for 34 million au-brand mobile network subscribers beginning May 21. The au WALLET card will enable KDDI’s “au” mobile network subscribers to enjoy safer, easier, and more rewarding payment options at any merchant that accepts MasterCard payment cards, either offline or online, in more than 210 countries. In particular, cardholders will be able to shop with ease, assured that their expenditure will remain within the pre-loaded amounts. The au WALLET card will be easily obtainable without any credit evaluation and can be reloaded at au shops or online. Cardholders will receive au WALLET Points for every purchase made with the card, redeemed when paying au phone bills or making other shopping payments.