• On Track Innovations Ltd. launched its “My Chip Buddy” marketing effort to support the company’s newly introduced PayEnable platform, which allows manufacturers and designers to build payments capability into their products using near-field communication (NFC) technology.
• Grocer The Kroger Co. says chargebacks related to its EMV rollout contributed to a 23 basis-point increase in its fourth quarter operating costs. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Kroger, according to a transcript of its earnings call from SeekingAlpha.com, expects these costs to dissipate through 2016.
• In a recent update to its specifications for cloud-based payments, Visa Inc. is requiring issuers to move from so-called alternate PANs to full-scale tokenization, according to a report in NFC World. Alternate primary account numbers, which Visa calls a “bridging technology” to tokenization, are used by many issuers that rely on host card emulation, according to the report.
• NCR Corp.’s Digital Insight unit introduced a feature called Android Fingerprint ID on its mobile-banking app. The new feature allows bank customers to use fingerprint recognition to log in to mobile banking on Android devices.
• PayVisors, a payments-services company, has made a white-label version of its payment gateway available as a hosted service for credit card and ACH processing.
• Visa Canada said holders of Visa debit cards can use the cards to pay their taxes online with the Canada Revenue Agency. Visa debit was introduced in Canada in 2010.
• Payoneer Inc., a U.S. company whose service enables mass payments to freelancers and other contractors worldwide, is entering the Indian market.
• Payments processor Higher One announced it has achieved Oracle Validated Integration status for its CashNet Payments Solutions, version CN2015.3, with Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions version 9.2. CashNet is used for payments to universities and colleges.