Capital One (COF) reported a 7% year-on-year (Y/Y) rise in fourth quarter (Q4/14) after-tax U.S. bank credit card profits to $487 million, but sequentially declined 11.5%. However, Purchase Dollar Volume (PDV) rose 15.5% in the quarter to $58.2 billion.
Visa Europe reports there are more than 100 million contactless Visa cards, as are 1.8 million Visa terminals as of end-of-year 2014. Hundreds of big-name merchants are rolling-out contactless and annual transaction volumes exceeded 460 million which is 263% higher than the previous year and the value of those transactions is 283% higher than the previous year.
Synchrony Financial (f/k/a GE Capital Retail Finance) posted a 19.9% surge in fourth quarter (Q4/14) profits to $531 million, but slipped slightly from the prior quarter. Period-end loan receivables growth for the retail payment card giant remained strong at 7%, driven by purchase volume and average active account growth.
The first ever company in the world to manufacture and offer three kinds of product line up from Barcode and RFID reader devices, printer equipped payment terminals, and industrial tablets is gearing up to light up the payments arena.
The Supreme Court this week decided not to take up a merchant-filed appeal challenging the Federal Reserve’s 2011 rule-making on “reasonable and proportional” debit card fees.
San Francisco-based Xoom is incorporating Apple’s Touch ID technology into their mobile money transfers application. This gives customers the option to use their fingerprint data to sign in to the Xoom application on the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus.
A first-of-its-kind study on Western Union sheds new light on the positive impact of cross-border money transfer broadly and of its services in particular. For example, each Western Union Agent location in the Philippines handles transactions that infuse enough funds into the local economy to create 85 non-Western Union jobs.
Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed), the second largest credit union credit card issuer, has named a new executive vice president of business development and government and community affairs.
Emerging Greenlight Planet unveils the Sun King Eco Easy Buy, a pay-as-you-go platform that enables customers to purchase Sun King Eco solar lamps in staggered 10-week installments. Greenlight Planet has sold over 3 million Sun King solar lamps, has 11 offices globally, over 700 full-time employees and 6,000 Sun King micro-entrepreneurs.
The virtual assistant Siri has been enabled to provide your credit score. Credit Sesame has launched its iOS app update that includes the use of Touch ID verification and integration with Siri.
CardTrak.com reports Citi ThankYou Premier and Citi Prestige cardholders can now transfer an unlimited amount of their ThankYou Points to Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club.
CardWeb.com’s CardExecs database of payments industry movers and shakers today features Vicki Lawrence, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Linqto.