MasterCard International has announced operating results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2005.

SVPCO has announced that HSBC Bank USA is now exchanging and settling check images through the SVPCO Image Payments Network.

Visa USA has announced there are now over 20,000 Visa Contactless acceptance locations in the United States, including McDonald's, AMC Theatres, CVS/pharmacy and Meijer, and over 4 million Visa-branded contactless cards have been issued.

The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has announced an investigation into MasterCard's new arrangements for setting the fallback interchange fees that apply to all UK domestic transactions made using UK-issued MasterCard credit and charge cards, introduced by MasterCard on 18 November 2004.

Robin Sidel reports for the Wall St. Journal that the antitrust division of the US Department of Justice has submitted a $100 million claim in the $3 billion settlement to be paid by Visa and MasterCard to merchants as part of the settlement reached in 2003 in a class action lawsuit brought by merchants against the card associations.

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.

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