Visa Notes 326 Million U.S. Chip Cards and other Digital Transactions News briefs

• American Express Co. reported $2 billion in net income for the second quarter, including a $1.1 billion pre-tax gain from the sale of its Costco Wholesale Corp. cobranded portfolio to Citigroup Inc., which is now issuing a cobranded Costco Visa credit card. AmEx’s U.S. card-billed business grew 2% year over year to $185.1 billion but the average worldwide discount rate slipped to 2.43% of the sale from 2.49% a year earlier. The loss of the big Costco portfolio contributed to a 15% decline in AmEx’s U.S. cards in force, to 47 million from 55.3 million a year earlier.

• Visa Inc. said there are more than 326 million Visa chip cards in issue in the United States, with 165.3 million debit cards and 161.5 million credit cards. The tally means the U.S. is the largest global chip market. More than 100,000 merchant locations became chip-enabled in June, bringing the total to 1.3 million. More than 75% of them are small and mid-size businesses.

• “Six years after the signing of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Durbin Amendment continues to harm customers, small businesses, credit unions, and community banks,” said Molly Wilkinson, executive director of the Electronic Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for payments providers, in a statement issued on the anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act.

• Mobile-payments technology provider Net Element Inc. has entered into a binding letter of intent to acquire a majority interest in PayStar Inc., a remittance and digital-wallet platform for emerging markets, and Nexcharge Inc., a payment-processing and fraud-management platform.

• VeriFone Systems Inc. announced it launched Curb, a taxi-hailing app, in New York, Philadelphia, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, San Jose, Calif., and Washington, D.C., and expanded the number of Curb-participating taxis in Chicago and Los Angeles. Curb is now live in 65 cities in more than 50,000 taxis, VeriFone said.

• Sezzle Inc., a payments platform, named Scott Guilfoyle, a former PayPal Holdings Inc. executive, as an advisor to the company. Sezzle also named Annick Fuchs, a former PayPal legal executive, as a legal advisor.

• The California Bankers Association endorsed processor Vantiv Inc. as its sole EFT processing partner, Vantiv said.