News, Plastic cards

In light of the strategic goals to deliver comprehensive e-commerce solutions, cost savings and preferred access to Authorize.Net to customers in Maine, e-onlinedata, a subsidiary of PowerPay, Maine's largest merchant processor, and Maine Hosting Solutions (MHS), a premier provider of Web hosting technology, support and design, started their partnership.

According to the recent report of Bank of America, the Official Bank Sponsor of the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team, and Visa, the Official Payment Services Brand of the U.S. Olympic Team, a Visa-branded prepaid card will enhance the Olympic experience of all U.S. athletes and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) staff members participating in Beijing 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Citibank made a statement that it was teaming up with Octopus Cards Limited (OCL) to conjointly introduce in Hong Kong a new co-brand card - Octopus Citibank Credit Card. With new Octopus function customers are able to implement fast and convenient small-value payments at over 50,000 points of presence in both retail and transport while the credit card enables high-ticket purchases at an extensive network of merchants around the world.

A new integration is taking place on the electronic payments market. According to the official statements MasterCard Payment Gateway was integrated with iPayables' electronic invoice delivery capabilities to provide expanded payment solutions to corporations and financial institutions.

Small payments can be made without handing in a personal identification number or affixing a signature. In Australia ANZ Banking Group Ltd and card provider Visa are offering a new payment card.

When making purchases within the amount that doesn’t exceed $35, a user can carry out a transaction just by holding the card within five centimeters of a contactless card reader.

The construction industry and payment solutions company established a new relationship. Dexter + Chaney, a leading ERP system, serving more than 1,000 customers in the construction industry is going to cooperate with Comdata(R) Corporation, a leader in payment innovation. With Comdata MasterCard(R) solution Dexter + Chaney will be provided with a co-branded payment card that will enable improved purchasing controls and integrate costs faster than traditional non-card payment methods.

Customers using the Bopo Visa prepaid credit cards of the failed company Bill Express are recommended to dispose their balance within the next four weeks.

The newly appointed administration of Bill Express is going to cut the use of ATM and EFTPOS cards. The measure is to be effective by the middle of next month.

The dual interface Visa cards were introduced by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). The cards are destined for contact-based and contactless payments.

The new product based on the Visa's payWave contactless technology was developed under the partnership of ICBC and local retailer, Parkson.

A new chief human resources officer was appointed at MasterCard Worldwide. The seat is to be taken by Stephanie Voquer who previously served as a group head of human resources for MasterCard Europe, based in Brussels.

Stephanie Voquer, who is a native of Canada, finished McMaster University with an Honors degree of a Bachelor of Arts.

Card users in Bulgaria are soon to meet new MasterCard and Maestro chip cards issued by SG Expressbank. The bank made several upgrades in the card design.

The previous series of magnetic stripe bankcards will be replaced according to their expiry dates without involving cardholders into the procedure.