The heftier equity base has also helped it acquire Chase Manhattan's credit-card business in Singapore.
By late last year it was clear that Bank One's credit-card business had deteriorated.
The credit-card business has been an important revenue generator for Sears, representing about three-fifths of the group's operating income.
The bank is exploring a sell-off of its branches and credit-card business in America, to refocus on corporate banking there.
The truth is that the bank's bosses worry that the untried debit card might cannibalise some of its highly profitable credit-card business.
Banks like the credit-card business because the juicy interest rates on card balances, combined with their own cheap deposits, produce fat profits.
He said that he foresees continued strong results as the bank builds more branches it currently has 50 and develops its newly opened credit-card business.
Visa, which declined to comment, is no longer in the debt-collection credit-card business, according to lawyers for debtors who have gotten card offers.
And this at a time when the credit-card business was already becoming more competitive, with new entrants offering rates as low as 5%.
Returns on the Dean Witter end of the business are poor, and Mr Purcell said recently that the credit-card business would be spun off.
The credit-card business also offers access to a wider customer base.
By placing its credit-card business and systems firm under the holding company, Mizuho would get handy income to help fill holes made by its banking operations.
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Outsourcing services, whether a bank outsources its credit-card business or a hotel its reservations, is harder to manage than outsourcing the manufacture of chips or tyres.
Barclays, for instance, has good figures on fraud in its credit-card business, but until recently it kept no records on how many times its dealers have breached trading controls.
As the credit boom reached its peak, the firm's credit-card business was growing by a dizzying 20% or more a year, with younger consumers with scant track records among the targets.
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Caixabank has begun searching for a partner who would buy part of its Spanish credit- and debit- card business, the latest indication of a selling spree by Spanish banks to raise capital.
The biggest doubt is over Bank One's credit-card operation, a business in which it and Citibank are the market leaders.
It retains a vast credit-card and mortgage-origination business, both of which are gold mines in less desperate environments but which require lots of committed staff.
Barclaycard is a multi-brand credit card and consumer lending business which also processes card payments for retailers and merchants and issues credit and charge cards to corporate customers and the UK Government.
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Still, experts think non-credit-card payment services will be a growth business over the next few years.
Citigroup has said its portfolio of retail credit-card loans isn't a core business.
Purcell pushed Mack out in 2001 and retained control of the firm until the spring, when he faced unrelenting pressure from shareholders to divest the firm of the underperforming brokerage business and the credit-card unit and focus the firm back on its core strength: institutional securities.
Small businesses that do tend to carry balances may want to consider using cards from Bank of America, the only major credit card company that has voluntarily implemented small-business-friendly protections.
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Scott Henshaw recently started using a credit-card reader that plugs into his smartphone at his family business, Pacific Transportation Technologies LLC, a machine shop in Kirkland, Wash.
The recession left a vast legacy of foreclosures, personal and business bankruptcies, debt-collection and credit-card disputes.
"They are like a partner in my business, " he says of the credit-card networks and bank issuers.
Morgan Stanley and other big firms are also starting to rebuild their securitization business, which pools together auto loans, credit-card receivables, and other forms of credit, and then issues bonds backed by them.
"Just as credit-card companies accept some level of loss as a cost of doing business, so some CIOs are saying 'if I do a really solid job of protecting my systems, then I can live with the low-level pain that some break-ins cause, ' " said Paller.
While Mr. Dorsey has focused on the design of the company's products, including its signature square-shaped credit-card processor, Mr. Rabois has been focused on running other parts of the business, such as marketing and business development.
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