Smart Cards

Mastercard Inc. saw strong growth in its core business in the second quarter, a time when the network continued its push for contactless cards and development of the new Secure Remote Commerce system for online payments. Mastercard said it switched 21.4 billion transactions globally in the three months ending June …

Discover Financial Services’ Payment Services unit reported its transaction volume grew 8% year-over-year to $61.8 billion, a result that included 7% growth for its Pulse electronic funds transfer network. Overall, total Discover revenue net of interest expense increased 10% to $2.85 billion, while net income jumped 13% to $753 million.In related …

Visa Inc.’s net income jumped by a third in the quarter ended June 30, a period when the leading payment card network’s global transaction volume rose nearly 12% and the company completed or announced several acquisitions to broaden its franchise. Visa chairman and chief executive Alfred F. Kelly Jr. told …

Add LG Pay to the multitude of U.S. mobile-payment options. LG Electronics USA announced Tuesday the mobile-payment service is available on select LG smart phones. The move comes a year later than LG initially said it would. LG Electronics Inc., the parent company of LG Electronics USA, introduced LG Pay …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported its merchant-acquiring subsidiary processed $371.6 billion in payments in the second quarter, a 12% increase from a year earlier. On the issuing side, the massive banking firm reported $281.5 billion in second-quarter credit and debit card sales volume, up 10%. Wells Fargo & Co. reported …

EMV chip card payments made substantial gains in the U.S. last year, but the nation still lags most other regions in EMV penetration, according to new figures from payment card standards body EMVCo. Some 53.5% of general-purpose U.S. card-present transactions in 2018 were so-called chip-on-chip, meaning both the point-of-sale terminal …

Target Corp. was hit by two point-of-sale glitches this past weekend. On Sunday afternoon the retailer was unable to process certain card transactions at some of its 1,800 stores for about 90 minutes due to an issue at a data center of its payment-services vendor, NCR Corp., Reuters reported. Sunday’s …

Online-payments provider Stripe Inc. made good on its promise to offer its processing software to in-store merchants with the release Wednesday of a slew of software and two pre-certified devices. Founded in 2011 as an online payments company, San Francisco-based Stripe announced in September it would add in-store payment acceptance. At …

With last week’s introduction of contactless card acceptance on New York City subway and bus systems, hopes are riding high on mass transit to at last stimulate contactless acceptance and usage in the United States. Now recent research indicates acceptance is picking up rapidly pretty much everywhere.  The number of …

Discover Financial Services chief financial officer R. Mark Graf will retire in early 2020, Discover announced. Graf joined Discover in 2011. The company has hired an executive-search team to find his successor. American Express Co. enhanced the rewards package on its Gold Card; cardholders will now get 4-times Membership Rewards …