More than a decade after merchants brought a class-action suit against Mastercard , Visa and card-issuing banks in 2005, a settlement between the parties is reportedly in the works. While it is not known how the payment would be split, the card networks and a number of banks may pay merchants a total of approximately $6.5 The case centers around the fees that merchants pay when accepting card payments: merchants contend that the banks and networks worked to inflate those fees. MORE

Corporate travel payments firm AirPlus International is rolling out a new commercial card solutions designed for businesses with employees that travel throughout Europe. The company announced its European Corporate Card, according to Tuesday (June 19) reports in TravelDailyNews. The European Corporate Card provides businesses and their employees with a way to manage and analyze business travel-related expenses. MORE

billion payment chip cards were shipped worldwide in 2017. While shipment volumes in China and the United States “continue to normalize,” contactless payment cards are more than 70 percent of shipments in “a growing number of territories,” the association said in an announcement. In terms of geographies, India saw “sustained growth” in card shipments as a transition to EMV takes place. MORE

Card processor TSYS is looking to heighten the security of mobile corporate payments. The company announced Tuesday (May 30) that it is enabling tokenization across its North American commercial card program, allowing businesses to let their own cardholders pay with a mobile device. To do so, TSYS is linking its Enterprise Tokenization solution to commercial card issuers that support mobile payments made via Apple Pay, Android Pay or Samsung Pay. “We MORE

Kroger might expand on a ban on Visa credit cards imposed by its unit in California — proof that retailers are ready to fight back against the $90 billion they pay in swipe fees every year. a subsidiary of grocery giant Kroger , has announced that 21 of its grocery stores and five of its gas stations in Central and Northern California are officially through with Visa branded credit cards as a form of payment, effective August 14, 2018. MORE

N26 , the FinTech bank startup, is upgrading its N26 Metal card, with a launch happening Wednesday (June 13). According to a report in TechCrunch , the card was first announced at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin in December of 2017 and was available for early access by N26 Black customers. The original card was made largely of a sheet of tungsten, with the metal part surrounded by plastic. TechCrunch noted the name of the customer will be on the back of the card. MORE

A new survey has found that 45 percent of Americans are confused about their credit cards rewards, especially those involving travel. While consumers are definitely out of the loop when it comes to their rewards credit cards, they aren’t the only ones to blame,” NextAdvisor wrote in the blog post. Since credit card issuers are in control of their cards’ rewards and redemption opportunities, it’s clear that some issuers are also failing to educate their cardholders.”. MORE

PayPal Founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin have participated in a funding round for Brex , a startup that designed a commercial card for startups. According to its press release, Brex wants to enable startups to access credit card products. These businesses are often limited in their choice of cards due to financial and regulatory hurdles, the company said. Brex offers a card product that does not require a personal guarantee. MORE

A new study has found that the number of payment cards issued globally reached 14 billion last year and is predicted to rise to 17 billion by 2022, boosted by an increase in overall debit card issuance. RBR , a strategic research and consulting firm, recently published its “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2022” report. In China, for example, many consumers hold multiple cards for different purposes. MORE

Meanwhile, commercial cards, while they can help digitize B2B payments, remain pretty low on the totem pole of accounts payable payment rails. Research from NACHA found accounts receivable professionals expect cards to account for 12.5 percent of total payment volume by 2020, a small increase from the 11 percent for which credit and debit cards currently account. But virtual cards, Conduah explained, can help address some of these issues. MORE

Payability, a company focused on linking sellers on eCommerce platforms to financing options, is adding a corporate card product to its range of solutions. 13) that its Payability Seller Visa Card is now available to eCommerce sellers. Its corporate card solution links businesses to their payouts more quickly, enabling them to perform necessary growth tasks like inventory restocking to advertising faster than if they had to wait for their payouts. MORE

Dynamics, a unit of telecommunications firms SoftBank and Sprint, announced what it is calling the first battery-powered payment card on Monday (Jan. T he offering, dubbed Wallet Card, was unveiled during the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) technology conference. According to a press release highlighting the new product , Dynamics said the payment card will boast fast data breach response and replacement times. MORE

According to the report, citing a senior bank official, the hackers used a malware attack to clone thousands of the bank’s debit cards over the course of two days. The cloned cards were Visa and RuPay debit cards of bank account holders that used the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) system, noted the report. MORE

In its earnings statement, FLEETCOR said that on April 26, it “identified suspicious activity primarily on systems involving the company’s Stored Value Solutions gift card business.” The payment services provider did not detail the scope of the breach but said that a “significant number” of gift cards that were six months or older, along with PINs, were accessed. Among the bright spots for FLEETCOR in the first quarter was the company’s new universal trucking card. MORE

With fraud on the rise, credit card networks have realized that customer signatures are simply not a reliable way to authenticate someone’s identity — and some of the country’s largest retailers agree. According to The New York Times , four of the largest credit card networks — American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa — will no longer require signatures to complete transactions. Each card network is setting its own set of rules regarding signatures. MORE

Chase has decided to stop offering price protection as a perk on its Sapphire Reserve card. Last year, the company also announced that it was cutting the Sapphire Rewards card’s 100,000 points bonus in half. Much of the company’s faith in Sapphire Reserve rests on how many customers will spend $450 on the card’s hefty annual renewal fee. MORE

As chip cards become standard, counterfeit card fraud in the U.S. Here are five ways to fight fraud in the wake of the widespread deployment of EMV chip cards. Card-not-present fraud will likely rise, especially online. By Terry Dooley. MORE

Discover is adding to its suite of commercial card products. Its newest offering, the Discover It Business credit card, was announced in a press release Wednesday (Sept. Additional features of the new card include Social Security alerts, which notify cardholders if Discover finds their Social Security numbers on “risky websites,” as well as free access to their FICO Credit Scores. MORE

The wallets of small business (SMB) owners are bulging with plastic, thanks in large part to the difficulty of securing funding, which leads to those merchants using their personal credit cards to meet expenses. To arrive at its findings, Nav “analyzed anonymized personal credit card usage data from 143,004 of its small business customers and 128,281 of its consumer customers. Business credit cards were excluded from the data.”. personal credit cards, which compares to 2.32 MORE

In recent years, payroll cards have run into controversy as lawsuits and lawmakers scrutinize fees that often come with the tool. Employees hit with costs to make purchases with their payroll cards, withdraw cash at ATMs, check balances and other everyday banking needs are fighting back against those fees, and introducing new conversations about the legal language of “lawful money,” employee protections and beyond. MORE

Users of the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) American Express (Amex) card aren’t happy with the changes coming to their cards, which give them one-third fewer reward points for almost every dollar they spend. The SPG Amex card had paid one Starpoint for each dollar spent on everyday items. And though users previously had to spend $20,000 on the card to get 25,000 airline miles, they’ll now need to spend $30,000 to get the same miles. MORE

Since the migration to EMV in the largest card market in the world (the U.S. in October of 2015), the incidences of counterfeit card fraud at chip-enabled merchants have fallen sharply — some 76 percent, as reported by card networks. Once cards became significantly harder to clone, fraudsters took their bag of bad tricks online. In reality, he said, the idea that counterfeit card fraud is 2014’s security problem lacks a fair amount of nuance. MORE

Wells Fargo announced Monday (June 25) an overhaul of its Propel Card, its no-annual-fee rewards cards. In a press release , Wells Fargo said the rewards card has a $0 annual fee and gives credit cardholders three times the rewards on eating out and ordering in, travel and transit, and streaming services, as well as one times the rewards on other purchases. The card will be accepting applications in July, Wells Fargo said. MORE

American Express (Amex) and Amazon have teamed up to release a new commercial card product designed for small businesses (SMBs) buying on the Amazon platform. Announced today (Tuesday, June 26), the co-branded card for SMBs in the U.S. The card solution will include integrated spend management features, enabling small firms to gain insight into purchasing activity. The collaboration with American Express is Amazon’s first step into small business commercial cards. MORE

QR, or Quick Response if you prefer the longer form, is a code that originated in Japan in the 1990s, and has … The post Will QR codes wipe out cash and cards? There’s been an interesting but hidden trend taking place. It started in China with Tencent and Alipay and has now gone global. MORE

Bank of America is adding mobile wallet functionality to its suite of commercial card products, the bank said Wednesday (Sept. In a press release , Bank of America said its corporate cards are now compatible with mobile wallets including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, citing business travelers’ mobile payment needs as a stop motivation behind the initiative. That virtual card number is not stored and can only be used for that transaction. MORE

ALDI , the grocery store operator, is being targeted by scammers who are installing credit card skimmers on top of point-of-sale terminals in plain sight. They’ve been installing camouflaged skimmers on ALDI credit card terminals right in front of surveillance cameras. Because the skimmers look exactly like legitimate credit card terminals, employees and customers alike have been tricked. MORE

merchants by 75 percent from September 2015 to March 2018 as more storefronts started accepting chip cards. To that end, Visa said that, as of its latest “Visa Chip Card Update,” as many as 67 percent of storefronts in the United States now accept chip cards. Looking at the Visa chip card count out in the field, June’s number stood at 499.7 The 214 percent increase comes as 69 percent of cards, including debit and credit, have chips. MORE

As biometrics have begun to represent the next generation in securing payments, Mastercard has unveiled a technological advancement for its own biometric cards. Cardholders can now register their fingerprints onto a biometric card at home through the new technology, the company said in an announcement. People love the security our biometric card delivers because we put their needs first. MORE

According to Brad Fauss, president and CEO of the Network Branded Prepaid Card Association, the recently released regulations on prepaid cards from the Consumer Finance Protection Board could be another instance of good intentions gone wrong. MORE

First National Bank of Omaha announced that it is not renewing a contract with the National Rifle Association (NRA) to offer customers an NRA-branded Visa card. First National Bank of Omaha offered two NRA cards with a $40 bonus and promoted it as “enough to reimburse your one-year NRA membership!” VISA branded cards First National Bank gun control National Rifle Association News NRA NRA Card NRA Credit Card Shooting Visa Card What's Hot MORE

The winner will score a McGold Card that gives two free meals a week over a 50-year period, USA Today reported. Retail MacCoin McDonald's McDonalds Promotion McGold Card mobile apps News QSR Restaurants What's HotTo help drive customers to its online ordering system, McDonald’s is rolling out a free food “for life” promotion. According to the contest’s website , the prize is worth $52,350. The contest kicks off on Friday (August 10) and concludes later in the month. MORE

Commercial card adoption can face an array of barriers, and one of the largest is a lack of supplier acceptance due to interchange fee costs. But, Graeme Descoteaux, head of corporate travel at LateRooms.com Business, says the cost of commercial cards — and virtual cards in particular — can also be a barrier to business payers’ adoption. MORE

Payments company Stripe is rolling out a new solution that lets businesses create and issue their own credit and debit cards, the company announced on Thursday (July 26). In a press release, Stripe announced the launch of Stripe Issuing, its service that enables companies to create their own cards, both physical and virtual, via an API call. The solution is certified with all major card networks, Stripe noted, and issued cards can be used in the Apple Pay and Google Pay platforms. MORE

Payroll cards are an important vehicle to ensure that employees — particularly those who are underbanked and unbanked — are able to efficiently receive their wages. Yet, the tool has also earned a controversial reputation, thanks to legal disputes and regulatory concerns over high fees that can come with certain payroll card products. To explore how payroll cards are changing their perception, the CFSI surveyed 684 payroll card users about how and why they use the tool. MORE

Employers are increasingly moving away from depositing paychecks into employees’ bank accounts, offering instead to add them to payroll cards. Payroll cards work like debit cards, allowing employees to purchase goods and services or make cash withdrawals from ATMs. MORE

million in a Series A to fund its platform for “business gift cards,” a way for local businesses to drive customer engagement by providing gift cards to their consumers. Boston-based startup Nift has raised $16.5 MORE

area grocery story chain is only allowing customers to purchase reloadable or prepaid gift cards with cash or bank PIN-based debit due to a significant increase in credit card fraud. Because new credit card rules have put them on the hook for fraud. A Washington, D.C.-area MORE

Lately, service providers have been turning to the virtual card to address needs for electronic payment. There are barriers to accessing a virtual card payment program, however — particularly for businesses that aren’t using a Travel Management Company. Graeme Descoteaux, head of corporate travel at LateRooms.com Business, explained that, while virtual card adoption is on the rise, not all firms are able to handle the added costs that can sometimes arise. MORE

China’s UnionPay , the payment card issuer, is gearing up to roll out branded cards in the U.K. company as soon as October to begin issuing a virtual prepaid card for corporate clients in the U.K. In early December UnionPay plans to issue branded credit cards in other parts of Europe as well. “In In Asia UnionPay’s card are accepted by more than 41 million merchants and 2 million ATMs throughout 170 countries, noted the Financial Times. MORE

Commercial cards make up just a fraction of the supplier payments space, but the rise in virtual card technology – and the efficiency and security that come along with it – could help card issuers grab a larger slice of the B2B payments market. Today, Noventis and Comdata, a FleetCor company, are teaming up to combine their respective capabilities in the virtual card segment. But Jeffery said that virtual cards offer a few key benefits over even ACH transactions. MORE

What does the future hold for the plastic payment card? Or will cards with cutting-edge technology win more loyalty from shoppers? The payment card has “a long life ahead of it,” he told Karen Webster. Even if you consider technologies like mobile, you can see that the consumer is still paying with payment cards.”. Indeed, new payment regulations seem to be pushing payment cards toward the future. MORE

Bank is mobilizing Mastercard commercial card products, the financial institution (FI) announced on Wednesday (April 11). Bank Corporate Travel Card said it will now support mobile payments for corporate customers using business travel cards that run on the Mastercard network. Consumers expect to have multiple ways to pay, including cards, phones and other mobile devices,” added Mastercard EVP of North America Account Management Ed Glassman in another statement. “It MORE