VeriFone and NBC Owned Television Stations have announced a significant long-term strategic and advertising sales agreement.

This new partnership, effective January 1, 2012, will deliver audiences across the country access to NBCUniversal’s award-winning news, information and entertainment programming in more than 12,000 taxi cabs as well as at thousands of gas stations and other digital out-of-home platforms in the future. The agreement will also provide advertisers unmatched capabilities to engage consumers interactively through e-commerce, couponing and microsites.

The Reserve Bank of Australia is considering tightening its current rules that permit merchant surcharging on Visa and MasterCard products.

The proposed variation will allow scheme rules to limit surcharges to a reasonable cost of acceptance, while still ensuring that merchants cannot be prevented from fully recovering their costs. The need for this change arises because in recent years some surcharging practices that potentially compromise price signals, such as surcharging in excess of card acceptance costs, have become more widespread. The Board believes that the proposed variation will improve the efficiency of the payments system by providing better price signals to cardholders.

Comments are due back by Feb 10, 2012.

EMVCo has announced publication of a white paper providing an update on its work to securely standardise contactless mobile payments (CMP).

Patricia Partelow, EMVCo Executive Committee Chair, comments: “EMVCo recognises the great potential of using a mobile handset to initiate a payment. At the same time, we acknowledge that this creates new challenges for the payments market that must be resolved to implement a secure, efficient and sustainable infrastructure. EMVCo has been working over the last few years to ensure that its specifications and testing processes meet the requirements of this emerging payment environment and the development of this white paper delivers a full update on the activity. The document also aims to enhance the understanding of EMV technology among CMP industry stakeholders.”

The white paper is free to download from EMVCo’s website.

On the web:

• PayPal Tests New NFC Mobile Payment App in Sweden - MobilePaymentsToday.com
• Isis looks for Mobile Payments Partnerships beyond the US - Rethink Wireless
• Western Union Targets Small Businesses with Payments Portal - American Banker
• InspirePay Launches Online Payment Tool - Boulder County Business Report
• Target To Sell Credit Card Business, Focusing On Core Biz - Forbes
• The Many Flavors of EMV - Portals and Rails

On the wires:

• Citi Expands Global Coverage of Its Commercial Cards Business in Israel
• BillingTree Enlists IP Commerce to Expedite Merchant Boarding Services