News, Plastic cards

Facebook will be offering gift cards preloaded with Credits at retail stores across the United States. The first to offer the cards will be the Target supermarket chain.

The Facebook gift cards will be sold in the values of $15, $25 and $50 at all of Target's 1750 retail stores and at Target.com. The gift cards on display at Target were created by GMG Entertainment which also produces Apple's iTunes cards.

Blackhawk Network, a provider of prepaid and financial payments solutions for consumers and businesses, announced the expansion of its Reload Network. Now the networks includes the new Reloadit Pack, which expands Blackhawk's proven capabilities in prepaid innovation, offering the most convenient solution for consumers to reload their prepaid cards.

MasterCard Worldwide entered into an agreement with Borderlinx, an international provider of cross border ecommerce shopping, to enable improved access to the global ecommerce marketplace for MasterCard customer financial institutions and their cardholders.

MasterCard has set collaboration with SilkAir in a move to offer discerning travelers in eight exotic destinations in Asia exclusive privileges on board SilkAir's Business Class.

The eight destinations include the followings:

Leader in providing global payment solutions available in over 40 countries, hyperWALLET, announced Tuesday its plans to expand its integrated global prepaid card products.

A worldwide gift card distribution network Blackhawk Network has launched a new brand of prepaid products called PayPower.

PayPower enables consumers to control their spending with simple and convenient solutions that feature value, transparency, security and budgeting.

The new suit of prepaid products and services targets consumers who search for alternatives to traditional financial credit, whether for everyday use, travel, online purchases or simply to pay a bill.

MasterCard Inc will purchase British payment processing company DatCash Group Plc for about $520 million in cash in a move to expand its ecommerce business.

MasterCard, which makes money from processing credit and debit card payments on its network, said it would pay 360 pence per share, representing a 54 percent premium to DataCash's Wednesday close.

The company expects the deal to hurt its fourth quarter 2010 earnings per share by about 5 cents, break even in 2011 and add to earnings in 2012.

The deal is expected to close by October end.

As the flow of Chinese tourists into South Korea is rapidly increasing enthusiastic purchase of Korean products has resulted in a surge in the use of China’s dominant China UnionPay credit card in Korea.

As reported by BC Card who shares its payment network with China UnionPay142.1 billion won ($120.79 million) was charged to the Chinese credit cards between January to July, an increase of 163 percent from a year ago.

Citi and MasterCard Worldwide announced that Citi will implement the first-ever consumer application in the U.S. of MasterCard inControl. The solution is an innovative service that gives cardholders the ability to set spending controls and receive real-time information about their accounts.

With MasterCard inControl consumers can customize their spend management controls and maintain secure and intended usage through real-time alerts. Through inControl, cardholders will be able to:

Visa announced that its social media network dubbed as the Visa Business Network (www.VisaBusinessNetwork.com) has been significantly enhanced and now small business owners can easily interact with peers in a collaborative way allowing them to get personalized help on goals ranging from growing their customer base to managing their business.

According to the results of the study commissioned by PULSE financial institutions implement new tactics to attract more debit card users. 72% of issuers consider improving the performance of their debit portfolios by increasing penetration, activation and usage as a top priority this year. The key tactics on the agenda is the deployment of instant issuance technology.

With instant issuance, cardholders receive a debit card at the branch as part of the process of opening a demand deposit account, rather than receiving their card in the mail.

Barclaycard has selected SoundBite Communications, a leading provider of on-demand, multi-channel proactive customer communications to deliver proactive customer communications across Europe.

The company also established a wholly-owned subsidiary, SoundBite Communications UK, Limited, to meet the growing demand for its proactive customer communications solutions in Europe. This move enables SoundBite to establish dedicated staff based in the UK to accelerate its European growth strategy.

A UK major card network Barclaycard has entered into a partnership with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) accounting firm KashFlow to pilot an e-invoicing service for merchants. According to the reports of TechCrunch, Barclaycard is running the pilot test with 100 merchants so as to trial the KasFlow-based system for creating, sending and managing invoices through a Web browser.

Apart from this functionality participants will also be able to track late transactions and receive payments via the Barclaycard gateway, for which the firm charges a three per cent fee.

According to Gemalto announcement, Dexxis Instant Issuance solution for on-the-spot EMV card personalization has been chosen by Zitouna Bank in Tunisia for use across the bank's branches nationwide.

Acculynk has entered into a partnership with MasterCard Worldwide to provide PaySecure®, Acculynk’s Internet PIN debit solution, to U.S. financial institutions that issue Debit MasterCard cards.

PaySecure is used an optional verification tool for PIN-based e-commerce transactions. Under the agreement the participating institutions will be given an opportunity to expand and enhance their e-commerce authentication methods with PaySecure via the MasterCard Worldwide Network.