Visa has been hit with a lawsuit for allegedly infringing a patent covering the notification and authorisation of transactions via text messages sent to cardholders' mobile phones.
The suit has been filed by Miami-based Charge Notification Services Corporation (CNSC), which is run by card industry veterans Ivan Ochoa as CEO and COO Daniel Davila.
According to legal newswire Law360, the firm filed a suit last Thursday in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claiming Visa had advertised a service that infringed several claims of the patent.
Back in August Visa revealed plans to pilot an automated alerting system that will notify cardholders of transaction activity via SMS text message and e-mail.
It partnered PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, US Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the US, along with Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial and Vancity in Canada, and said at the time that it began testing mobile notifications the previous year with an internal employee pilot.
Ochoa says the lawsuit comes after CNSC spent several months trying to work with Visa "with no results".
"As Visa continues to infringe on our patent, we really must take this legal action against them to protect our business," adds Davila.