Cardline articles from January 2009

Cardline archives from January 2009

RBS WORLDPAY BREACH MAY HAVE COMPROMISED DATA OF 1.5 MILLION PREPAID ACCOUNTS.
January 2, 2009... A breach of RBS WorldPay's computer system by hackers potentially has compromised the personal information of 1.5 million prepaid cardholders and the social security numbers of 1.1 million individuals, according to processor RBS WorldPay. The...

MACY'S DEBIT CARD GLITCH CORRECTED.
January 2, 2009... A computer glitch Dec. 20 at Macy's Inc. department stores causing multiple debits to some customers' checking accounts has been "identified and corrected," according to a Macy's spokesperson. The glitch occurred between 1 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. on...

CARDPARTNER ADDS MORE AFFINITY CARD PARTNERS.
January 2, 2009... CardPartner Inc. announced 12 new Visa-branded affinity credit card programs last week, adding to the more than 100 affinity programs it has launched in the past nine months with small nonprofits. The financial services marketing company...

TECHNOLOGY IMPROVEMENTS HELPED MOBILE BANKING ADOPTION.
January 2, 2009... An unsophisticated data network, low adoption of mobile-data services and clunky voice-oriented handsets led to mobile banking's failure between 2000 and 2002, concludes a report from Boston-based consulting firm Aite Group. Now, the firm says...

ANCILLARY MOBILE-PAYMENT APPLICATIONS A POTENTIAL REVENUE SOURCE FOR ISOS.
January 2, 2009... Independent sales organizations interested in creating additional revenue streams around mobile payments may consider selling mobile applications that complement mobile-payment technology, such as electronic coupons and rewards programs,...

MERCHANTS TO PROTECT CASH FLOW IN AILING ECONOMY.
January 2, 2009... As merchants react to an ailing U.S. economy, expect independent sales organizations to offer merchants more than credit and debit card processing services, industry observers say. "During economic slowdowns, all businesses are looking for ways...

UK CONSUMERS PREPARE TO MOVE CREDIT CARD BALANCES IN 2009.
January 2, 2009... Consumers in the United Kingdom seeking lower interest rates will transfer some 7 billion UK pounds (US$10.1 billion or 7.2 billion euros) to other credit cards in the first quarter of 2009, suggest survey data from UK-based bank Abbey....

BRIEF.
January 2, 2009... Yamaha Motor Corp. U.S.A. and HSBC Finance Corp.'s card and retail services business today announced they have signed a new seven-year agreement to provide revolving financing through the Yamaha Card.

MORE CREDIT CARD ISSUER LETTERS ARE BAD NEWS, NOT SOLICITATIONS.
January 2, 2009... Mintel Comperemedia, best known for its quarterly reports about U.S. credit card issuers' direct mail solicitations for new accounts, has noticed an increasing number of issuers using direct mail to communicate bad news to existing cardholders....

P. DIDDY USING DEBIT CARDS TO GET PARTYGOERS HOME SAFE.
January 2, 2009... Entertainment personality Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission have teamed up to give away thousands of debit cards tonight to New Year's Eve partygoers. Ciroc Vodka, which is affiliated with Combs, is paying...

DIEBOLD RAMPS UP OUTSOURCING BUSINESS WITH E-BOOK.
January 2, 2009... Diebold Inc., which is emphasizing its management services over selling ATM products, has issued an e-book to financial institutions, explaining the advantages of outsourcing. Canton, Ohio-based Diebold emailed its Outsourcing eBook to...

CUTTING CREDIT LINES COULD COME BACK TO HAUNT CARD ISSUERS.(Brief article)
January 2, 2009... Credit line reductions, account repricing, and other steps that card issuers are taking to control risk could soon start causing their customers to do something many homeowners did this year: walk away from their obligations, reports American...

SHAREHOLDER APPROVAL BRINGS WELLS ATMS COAST-TO-COAST.
January 2, 2009... Wachovia Corp. shareholders recently approved a merger agreement with Wells Fargo&Co., which will double the size of Wells Fargo's ATM network (CardLine, 12/26). Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia and San Francisco-based Wells Fargo expect to...

WYNDHAM HOTELS PAYMENT SERVER HACKED.
January 2, 2009... Wyndham Worldwide Corp., a Parsippany, N.J.-based lodging company, says hackers gained access to one of its computer servers and an undisclosed amount of sensitive cardholder data. A letter the hotel company sent to notify customers stated that...

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY 'MISSING PIECE' OF CONTACTLESS PAYMENTS, EXEC SAYS.
January 2, 2009... Consumer interest in contactless payments may increase with mobile-payment technology, which enables consumers to pay for purchases using their mobile devices, says Lisa Stanton, CEO of Monitise Americas LLC. Part of the challenge of...

UK BUSINESS GROUP CALLS FOR CAP ON CARD INTEREST RATES.
January 2, 2009... A United Kingdom small-business organization has called on the British government to cap credit card interest rates. "We know that entrepreneurs use both personal and company credit cards to finance their businesses," John Wright, national...

BRIEF.
January 2, 2009... The Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland has named ATM manufacturer WRG Services Inc. one of Northeast Ohio's fastest-growing companies. Willoughby, Ohio-based WRG Services makes ATMs for the...

TARGET'S NOVEMBER CHARGE-OFF RATE INCREASES.
January 2, 2009... Target Corp., the Minneapolis-based retailer, last week reported its November net charge-off rate was 11% of credit card receivables, up from 10.2% in October. Total delinquencies for accounts at least 60 days past due totaled $752.7 million in...

BANKING BRANDS FACE INCREASED ONLINE FRAUD ATTEMPTS.
January 2, 2009... Banks drew the increased attention of fraudsters in November, according to the RSA Online Fraud Report issued by security company RSA Security Inc. In November, fraudsters targeted 207 global bank brands in online phishing attempts, in which...

DISCOVER: SMALL BUSINESS SLIGHTLY LESS PESSIMISTIC IN DECEMBER.
January 2, 2009... Small-business owners' economic confidence rose slightly in December, according to a monthly survey sponsored by Discover Financial Services. Twenty-one percent of small-business owners surveyed by telephone Dec. 5 through Dec. 10 said economic...

ISOS SHOULD EDUCATE MERCHANTS ABOUT MOBILE PAYMENTS.(independent sales organizations)(Brief article)
January 2, 2009... Independent sales organizations should be educating their merchant clients about mobile payments to speed contactless-terminal adoption and prepare merchants for eventual mobile-payment introduction, according to industry observers. The ISO...

SINGAPORE NFC TRIAL SHOWS STRONG INTEREST IN MOBILE TRANSIT PAYMENT.(near field communication)
January 2, 2009... Nearly seven in 10 of surveyed participants in a large trial of Near Field Communication-enabled mobile payment in Singapore held earlier this year said they likely would adopt the technology, especially for paying transit fares. Participants...

BRIEF.
January 2, 2009... American Express Co. said last week that it expects to receive about $3.4 billion through the Treasury Department's Capital Purchase Program.

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE SINKS TO ALL-TIME LOW.
January 2, 2009... The Consumer Confidence Index fell to an all-time low in December after a moderate increase the previous month, The Conference Board, a research organization, announced today. The December index stands at 38, down from 44.7 in November. The...

BOFA'S ACQUISITION OF MERRILL GOOD FOR FUTURE GROWTH: FITCH.
January 9, 2009... Fitch Ratings today affirmed Bank of America Corp.'s long- and short-term issuer default ratings as AA-/F1+ with a stable outlook. BofA's acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., completed yesterday, "enhances the bank's already global...

MASTERCARD ACQUIRES SOFTWARE MAKER ORBISCOM.
January 9, 2009... MasterCard Inc. today announced the acquisition of Dublin, Ireland-based software developer Orbiscom Ltd., which collaborates with MasterCard on software to control consumer credit, debit and commercial card products. MasterCard began working...

EXCHANGE ISSUES NONCOMPLIANCE NOTICE TO HYPERCOM.
January 9, 2009... Hypercom Corp. received a notice of noncompliance on Dec. 31 from the New York Stock Exchange because the payment-terminal maker's average closing stock price fell below $1 per share during a consecutive 30-day trading period, the company...

BUSINESS CARD ISSUERS ADVISED NOT TO OVERREACT TO CREDIT FEARS.
January 9, 2009... Commercial card issuers are wise to manage credit risk carefully under any economic conditions. But many issuers have overreacted to risks in recent months, reducing or cutting off credit to businesses that still are reasonable credit risks,...

'NEW AGE OF FRUGALITY' GOOD FOR DEBIT: ANALYST.
January 9, 2009... Though credit card issuance and use likely will continue to tighten in the coming year, the debit and prepaid card markets will hold their own and even benefit in some ways from a bad economy, Paul Tomasofky, president of U.S.-based Two...

PAYVISION ADDS ONLINE AUTHENTICATION TO MERCHANT TRANSACTIONS.
January 9, 2009... Payvision, an Amsterdam, Netherlands-based payment-processing company, announced Friday it will begin offering payment-authentication services from CardinalCommerce Corp., a Cleveland-based payment-security company, to its merchants....

GLOBAL PAYMENTS JOINT VENTURE EXPANDS TO THE PHILIPPINES.
January 9, 2009... Global Payments Inc. says its Asia-Pacific joint venture payment-processing partnership is expanding into the Philippines. The Atlanta-based transaction processor is partnering with HSBC in the joint venture, which will expand its coverage...

BRIEF.
January 9, 2009... Merchant acquirer U.S. Merchant Services will contribute 5 cents to Kanab, Utah-based Best Friends Animal Sanctuary for every transaction made at veterinary practices and pet-related merchants that process with U.S. Merchant Services.

MASTERCARD EXEC SHUFFLE ALIGNS REGIONS, NEW PRODUCTS.
January 9, 2009... MasterCard Inc. today announced a corporate reorganization designed to help develop new products and to decentralize global customer operations to improve the focus on key international regions. The company named Chris McWilton president of the...

DECEMBER CREDIT MANAGER'S INDEX HITS NEW LOW.
January 9, 2009... The seasonally adjusted Credit Manager's Index for December fell 2.1 points from November to 40.1, marking the fourth consecutive record low for the index, according to a report by the National Association of Credit Management. The index, a...

WACHOVIA PURCHASE BOOSTS WELLS FARGO DEBIT PORTFOLIO.
January 9, 2009... With the finalization of its Wachovia Corp. acquisition (1/2), Wells Fargo & Co. remains the nation's second-largest debit card issuer with approximately 28 million mostly Visa-branded cards. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo issued 17.5 million...

AMAZON CUTS RIVAL'S PAYMENT METHOD.
January 9, 2009... Amazon.com Inc. has stopped accepting eBay Inc.'s Bill Me Later as a payment method for its e-commerce site, reports American Banker, a CardLine sister publication. Amazon bought a small stake in Bill Me Later in 2007 and promoted the payment...

ANALYST: HYPERCOM, VERIFONE UNDER PRESSURE.
January 9, 2009... Payment-terminal makers Hypercom Corp. and VeriFone Holdings Inc. will face increased earnings pressure this year as the global economy slows and a French rival, Ingenico SA, tries to expand in the United States, Gil Luria, an analyst with...

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL ROLLS OUT ACH CARD.
January 9, 2009... Royal Dutch Shell PLC is rolling out its Shell Saver Card at more than 14,000 Shell-branded gasoline stations nationwide, reports American Banker, a CardLine sister publication. Shell processes the card's transactions through the automated...

CARD ACTIVATION TECHNOLOGIES SETTLES SUIT AGAINST SEARS.
January 9, 2009... Card Activation Technologies Inc., a Chicago-based company that holds a patent on point-of-sale technology for activating and processing stored-value transactions, announced today that it has settled its lawsuit against Sears Holding Corp.,...

U.S. NOT YET A MAJOR TARGET FOR CARD-DATA FRAUD, VENDOR SAYS.
January 9, 2009... The United States is not a haven for card-data attackers because opportunities for fraud exist in many other countries that also rely on magnetic stripe card technology. However, fraudsters increasingly will attack U.S. businesses as more...

BRIEFS.
January 9, 2009... Carlos Pittier has joined Redwood City, Calif.-based prepaid card processor i2c Inc. as director of client account relationship management. Carlos previously led prepaid product development as business leader for Visa Inc.'s Latin American and...

GLOBAL PAYMENTS Q2 INCOME, REVENUE INCREASE ...(Financial report)
January 9, 2009... Global Payments Inc., an Atlanta-based transaction processor, is reporting net income of $48.9 million for the second quarter ended Nov. 30, up 27.7% from $38.3 million during the same period in 2007. Second-quarter revenue was $401.1 million,...

... AS GROWTH IN CARD PAYMENTS OFFSET LARGER ECONOMIC ISSUES.(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... Independent sales organizations in the United States and international markets bolstered Global Payments Inc.'s revenue for the second quarter ended Nov. 30, the company announced late Tuesday, despite a U.S. recession and global economic...

DISCOVER POLL: CONSUMERS SPENDING LESS, SAVING MORE.
January 9, 2009... Consumers are putting the brakes on post-holiday spending as confidence sinks lower, suggests a new report Discover Financial Services released today. The Riverwoods, Ill.-based company's monthly U.S. Spending Monitor fell in December for the...

CONSUMER BANKRUPTCY FILINGS WERE UP 32% IN 2008.
January 9, 2009... U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings last year increased 32.2%, to 1.06 million from 801,840 consumer filings in 2007, according to data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center. "Consumers are under great financial stress, with no immediate...

ISO PARTNERSHIPS MAY LEAD TO MOBILE-PAYMENTS REVENUE.
January 9, 2009... Independent sales organizations interested in gaining additional revenue from mobile payments should begin exploring business partnerships with mobile-banking and mobile-payments product and service providers, according to Awele Ndili, CEO of...

ISO TOLD TO STOP PROCESSING ONLINE TOBACCO SALES.
January 9, 2009... Electronic Clearing House Inc., a Los Angeles-based independent sales organization, has agreed to stop processing unlawful online tobacco sales following requests from the Idaho, New York and California state attorneys general offices to do so,...

ISOS FIND SELF-DISCIPLINE TOP ATTRIBUTE FOR SALES SUCCESS.(independent sales organizations)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... Merchant account sales agents must be self motivated and maintain a self discipline to be successful as independents sales reps, observers tell ISO&Agent Weekly, a CardLine sister publication. Independent sales organizations sell merchant...

VASCO LOWERS 2008 REVENUE EXPECTATIONS.
January 9, 2009... Poor fourth-quarter sales have prompted vendor Vasco Data Security International Inc. to lower its 2008 revenue projections. Vasco, with headquarters in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., and Zurich, Switzerland, sells card readers that enable consumers...

BRIEFS.
January 9, 2009... Bling Nation, a payments-network provider for community banks, has hired Daniel Rogers as chief financial officer. Rogers previously was CFO and vice president of Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank Processing Solutions. RDM Corp., which...

HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT RATE MAY AFFECT DEBIT CARD SPENDING.
January 9, 2009... The value of debit card purchases may decrease "significantly" as the unemployment rate is this country creeps toward 7%, William H. McCracken, CEO of Atlanta-based Synergistics Research, tells CardLine sister publication ATM&Debit News....

MANY CONSUMERS BELIEVE MEDIA ADDING TO ECONOMIC FEARS.
January 9, 2009... More than three-fourths of U.S. consumers feel the media are exacerbating the country's woes through its coverage of the economy, and 77% of Americans overall believe the media are making the economic situation worse by projecting fear into...

PREPAID CARDS OFFER CREDIT AND DEBIT ISSUERS OPPORTUNITIES.
January 9, 2009... Prepaid cards offer revenue-growth opportunities to credit and debit card issuers and program managers adversely affected by lower card spending and credit limits during a bad economy, suggest the results of a recent Javelin Strategy and...

FITCH AND MOODY'S REPORT SPIKE IN CHARGE-OFFS.
January 9, 2009... Credit card charge-off rates in November rose and cardholder payment rates slowed dramatically as the economic crisis worsened, according to Fitch Ratings' latest credit card industry report released this week. Moody's Investor Service reported...

U.S. BANCORP WINS AIRPORT ATM CONTRACT.
January 9, 2009... Mineta San Jose (Calif.) International Airport awarded U.S. Bancorp a seven-year contract in December to deploy eight ATMs, including an undisclosed number that will be located after the security checkpoint, David Vossbrink, an airport...

HYPERCOM DATA EFFORT LAUNCHED.
January 9, 2009... Hypercom Corp., a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, is offering the HyperSafe Remote Key System, a service that enables remote terminal authentication software to be downloaded to a Hypercom payment device. The service will...

INGENICO OFFERING ENCRYPTION SERVICE.
January 9, 2009... Ingenico S.A., a France-based point-of-sale terminal maker, says it now offers the Ingenico On-Guard service that encrypts cardholder data from the transaction terminal to the merchant host. Ingenico software on the merchant host's computer...

VERIFONE PLANS TO DELAY ANNUAL REPORT.(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... VeriFone Holdings Inc. has requested a 15-day extension to submit its annual report for fiscal 2008, which ended Oct. 31, reports American Banker, a CardLine sister publication. The San Jose, Calif.-based payments terminal maker announced its...

BRIEFS.
January 9, 2009... Prepaid card processing company and provider FNDS3000 Corp. has hired Raymond Goldsmith as chairman of its board of directors. Goldsmith also is chairman and CEO of Sherington Holdings LLC, an Atlanta-based private investment company. ...

CONSUMER SECURITY NECESSARY FOR MOBILE-PAYMENT ADOPTION, ISO SAYS.(independent sales organization)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... Consumer adoption is necessary for the success of mobile payments, yet consumers may be leery of using the payment technology because of data-security concerns, says Wayne Keddy, CEO of Granite Payment Alliance, a Roseville, Calif.-based...

CUBIS FINANCIAL CEO PLANS TO TARGET TRAVEL, PAYROLL CARDS IN '09.
January 9, 2009... Cubis Financial Ltd., a provider of closed-loop credit cards based in Las Vegas, plans to promote its travel cards and sell its cards to payroll program managers in 2009, Phil Huston, Cubis CEO, tells CardLine. Cubis promoted Huston to CEO from...

PHOTO I.D. ON DEBIT CARDS A USEFUL BENEFIT, SURVEY SAYS.
January 9, 2009... Debit card users and prospective users support having photo identification on debit cards, suggest the results of a Synergistics Research Corp. survey. The telephone survey of 641 debit card users and prospective users found that 60% of...

BRIEFS.
January 9, 2009... Wells Fargo & Co. announced that as of a result of its merger with Wachovia Corp., effective Jan. 1 customers of both banks have free use of the company's 12,260 combined ATMs for cash withdrawals in 39 states plus the District of Columbia.

KB TOYS TO HONOR ITS GIFT CARDS THROUGH JAN. 11.
January 9, 2009... KB Toys, a toy-store chain owned by Denver-based retailer Parent Co., will continue to accept its gift cards in New York and Connecticut until the close of business on Jan. 11. Parent filed for bankruptcy protection last month. New York...

MOBILE-BANKING REVENUES EXPECTED TO DOUBLE IN 2009.
January 16, 2009... Mobile-banking vendors' revenues will nearly double this year, to $26 million from $13.9 million in 2008, if the number of deployments doubles as the vendors expect, according to a report from Boston-based research firm Aite Group. For the...

SISTERS BUSTED FOR ATM SCAM.
January 16, 2009... Three sisters successfully made phony $25,000 deposits into each of their accounts at Deseret FCU ATM because of an apparent systems glitch, according to a report in Credit Union Journal, a CardLine sister publication. The sisters were able to...

ISO COOPERATING WITH TOBACCO INVESTIGATION.
January 16, 2009... Electronic Clearing House Inc., a Los Angeles-based independent sales organization, stopped working with online merchants selling tobacco products more than 18 months ago, says Chuck Harris, ECHO vice president. Last week, Lawrence Wasden,...

CHASE DROPS SECURE CREDIT CARD INHERITED FROM WAMU.
January 16, 2009... JPMorgan Chase & Co. is discontinuing a secured credit card it inherited from Washington Mutual Inc., according to a report in American Banker, a CardLine sister publication. Secured credit cards require cardholders to put up cash collateral...

TIMING SAID TO BE WRONG FOR DROPPING SECURED CARDS.
January 16, 2009... Observers say they were surprised by JPMorgan Chase & Co's decision to drop the secured card program it inherited from Washington Mutual Inc. last year. "This would seem to be the exact wrong time to be getting rid of secured cards," says...

SMALL-BUSINESS CARDS SAID TO STILL BE A GOOD ISSUER MARKET.
January 16, 2009... Issuers still have plenty of room to grow their small-business card portfolios, even during a challenging economy, according to a new report by Mercator Advisory Group LLC. "In spite of the current economic environment, it's still a very...

FIRST DATA, VERIFONE INTRODUCE TERMINALS.
January 16, 2009... First Data Corp. has added two proprietary point-of-sale terminals to its product lineup, the transaction processor officially announced today. The FD300 enables merchants to use one payment terminal for multiple merchants in the same location,...

BRIEFS.
January 16, 2009... Santa Clara, Calif.-based contactless- and mobile-payment developer Vivotech Inc. has named John Shap senior vice president of global sales. Shap previously was senior vice president for worldwide sales and marketing at software maker...

ANALYST EXPECTS CARD ISSUERS' Q4 RESULTS TO BE 'UGLY'.(Financial report)
January 16, 2009... Credit card issuers' fourth-quarter and year-end 2008 results, which companies will begin reporting this week, will be among the gloomiest in recent history, some analysts say. JPMorgan Chase & Co. this week said it would report its quarterly...

TURKISH COURT SENTENCES TJX SUSPECT TO 30 YEARS FOR BREACH.
January 16, 2009... A Ukrainian man wanted in the United States for his alleged role in a fraud ring that stole payment card data from TJX Cos. and other retail chains has been sentenced in Turkey to 30 years in prison for allegedly hacking into Turkish bank...

ISSUERS EXPAND CONCESSIONS FOR DEBT-STRAPPED CUSTOMERS.
January 16, 2009... More credit card issuers are considering softening the terms of credit card loans for certain customers in extreme hardship during the economic crisis, credit-counseling experts say. The nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based National Foundation for...

REVOLVING CREDIT DOWN IN NOVEMBER.
January 16, 2009... U.S. revolving credit, 98% of which is credit card debt, fell slightly in November, to $973.5 billion from $976.3 billion the previous month, according to a Federal Reserve G.19 report on consumer credit released yesterday. Total seasonally...

GROUP RELEASES PCI BEST PRACTICES FOR RETAILERS.
January 16, 2009... The National Retail Federation yesterday released 25 best practices intended to help retailers reach cost-effective compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standards. The Washington, D.C.-based federation developed the best...

WINN DIXIE DISTRIBUTING RELOADABLE DISCOVER PREPAID CARD.
January 16, 2009... Prepaid card provider nFinanSe Inc. is offering its prepaid Discover card at Winn Dixie Stores Inc., a grocery-store chain based in Jacksonville, Fla. The company claims it offers the lowest-cost reloadable prepaid card with a purchase price of...

ACI EXPERIENCES GROWTH DESPITE DIFFICULT ECONOMIC CLIMATE.
January 16, 2009... ACI Worldwide Inc., which provides payment-systems software, says its retail merchant business in North America is doing well despite the tough economy. ACI, which has 88 mostly large retail customers in the Americas region, had 30% of its...

MOBILE-PAYMENT PRODUCTS TESTED, AND MARKET TRIALS AHEAD.
January 16, 2009... Tyfone Inc. has completed beta testing its mobile phone payment system and plans to begin market trials in several regions worldwide, reports American Banker, a CardLine sister publication. The Portland, Ore.-based banking technology vendor...

BRIEFS.
January 16, 2009... Payment processor Moneris Solutions US has named Ken Musante as chief sales officer and Linda Grimm, senior vice president of operations. Musante was president of independent sales organization Humboldt Merchant Services, which Moneris bought...

CITI MAY DISMANTLE 'FINANCIAL SUPERMARKET'.
January 16, 2009... Some analysts expect Citigroup Inc. on Friday to announce plans to sell off its consumer-finance and portions of its credit card operations as the troubled company tries to raise cash and downsize its once-mighty operations. Citi this week...

JAVELIN: PREPAID NOT JUST FOR KIDS, UNBANKED ANYMORE.
January 16, 2009... Prepaid card program managers should not focus just on unbanked and younger consumers because the market for such products is expanding, according to a Javelin Strategy & Research report "Prepaid Product Evolution: Align Processor Relationship...

CHASE TO REBRAND WASHINGTON MUTUAL ATMS.
January 16, 2009... JPMorgan Chase & Co., which purchased Washington Mutual Inc.'s operations in September (CardLine, 10/3/08), will rebrand 1,900 Washington Mutual ATMs throughout California with the Chase name, the company announced Tuesday. New York-based Chase...