An international payment specialist Travelex Global Business Payments unveiled a new service to allow its customers to trade in Chinese renminbi via its unique GEO Global Clearing Network. It will be the first non-bank institution to offer yuan transactions. Now Travelex customers will be able to trade with high profile Chinese companies using the yuan currency to evade foreign exchange risks. For many businesses, the ability to price, settle and invoice in renminbi will encourage a faster, cheaper and more transparent supply chain.

MasterCard Worldwide has launched a new initiative called MasterCard Partners in Prepaid which is aimed to stimulate MasterCard’s collaboration with partners and customers around the world and drive growth in prepaid, according to the company statement. The new program introduced by MasterCard is to focus on delivering innovation at a number of levels: in the sharing of global best practices, in thought leadership, in investments in partner growth; and in simplified interactions.

M2 Europe has teamed with fleet technology innovators, Airmax Group, to introduce a transit and corporate payments solution, the Airmax Scope Prepaid MasterCard. The Card combines the benefits of hosted data from vehicles with detailed payment reporting to provide comprehensive online fuel and expense management. 

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc is suing American International Group for $9 million in payments the bank says it is owed from credit default swap protection it bought from the insurer on companies including General Motors and Washington Mutual. Lehman alleges in a suit filed with a New York bankruptcy court last week that AIG is using the bank's failure as an excuse not to make payments, and that this violates U.S.

Bankers at Barclays’ investment bank are set to repeat its performance in the second half of the year and to see their pay and bonuses more than double to nearly £250,000 this year as their division reports bumper profits today. The return of bankers’ bonuses is expected to provoke outrage so soon after the meltdown in the financial system, which prompted the worst recession since the Second World War.

The service was piloted in the UAE with Kibsons International, a domestic importer of fresh food produce.AME Info. reported that HSBC Bank Middle East has announced the launch of a new Payroll Card Service in a team with C3 Card, that allows customers to process salary payments electronically, providing security to the employees similar to a debit card.

As it became known on Tuesday, Barclaycard is raising the number of its cardholders with the contactless functionality on their plastic cards. Thus, new contactless payment technology within the card will let Barclaycard Gold and Classic cardholders make payments of up to £10 by swiping their card against a reader, like the system used for Oyster travelcards on the London Underground.

This week Western Union hosted the third annual stockholders’ meeting. At the meeting President and Chief Executive Officer Christina Gold reiterated the company’s strategy and emphasized its commitment to delivering value to shareholders.About 89.54% of the shares entitled to vote were represented at the meeting in person or proxy. All voting results are preliminary. The stockholders voted to re-elect Roberto G.

S1 Enterprise, a division of S1 Corporation and a provider of bank-centric services, announced the release of 3.7 version of its S1 Online Banking solution. The company reports that S1 Online Banking 3.7 has incorporated the latest Web 2.0 technologies to improve the user experience, while at the same time enhancing flexibility by separating the presentation layer from the business logic through the use of cascading style sheets.

European Commission charged Visa Europe Inc. with anticompetitive practices in what relates to payment-card fees as MasterCard last week settled the issue with the European regulator. According to the commission Visa’s fee structure prevents competition among its issuing banks and makes stores accepting credit cards to incur high costs.

This week First Data Corp. announced its fourth quarter and full year financial report for the period ended December 31, 2008. The report reveals that consolidated revenues for the quarter increased by 8% to $2.3 billion. The adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the quarter rose 1% to $667 million. The net loss for the quarter stood for $3.2 billion which consisted of a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $3.2 billion.

Digital Check, a provider of desktop check scanners and remote deposit capture technology to the financial industry, announced that Metavante® Corporation, a leading provider of banking and payments technology, certified its CheXpress® CX30 check scanner which means that Metavante becomes an authorized reseller of Digital Check’s technology and can utilize the company’s check scanners in conjunction with its remote deposit capture solution.

A number of newly unemployed homeowners will be provided an opportunity to reduce their payments on the mortgages from Citi, the group stated on Tuesday. The payments for three months will be lowered to an average of $500 per month for certain borrowers who lost their jobs and are at least 60 days delinquent. In case these customers remain unemployed after that period the bank is going to work with them personally.

Central bank of New Zealand has reported that Credit card billings in the country in January rose as consumer spending has remained low.The increase made a seasonally adjusted 1.7 percent against a 2.2 percent fall in December. The increase became the first upward shift in four months. Moreover, the gain has been reported to be the strongest monthly gain since May 2006.Earlier this month it was revealed that the retail sales of electronic cards showed no growth in January, comparing to the 0.6 percent decrease in the previous month.

Last week John Barlow, President of Barlow Research Associates, Inc. announced the winners of Barlow Research’s 2009 Monarch Innovation Awards. Digital Insight, Wells Fargo and Bank of America were honored among others for their innovative products. The award was arranged to recognize financial institutions that provide the most innovative products to business customers and to recognize risk takers who create/promote innovation within their organizations.