eBay today completed the acquisition of PayPal. Congratulations to the whole PayPal team! PayPal is the "shining star" example -- and a lonely one at that -- of a new emerging payments company that built significant shareholder value over the last couple of years. What PayPal did was truly unique. My hat's off to whole the PayPal team!

FMI has published a study on smart cards in the US and what they might mean for food retailers.

With the smart card industry turning its attention toward the retail sector, a host of questions are being raised. This paper will give a brief overview of how smart cards work, where they are being used, and how the emergence of smart cards might impact the grocery industry in the years to come.

Texas Instruments has a useful FAQ on its 13.56 MHz RFID products -- the core of the "near field communications" technology that Sony and Philips are talking about. Philips has a good discussion on the application of their RFID products to banking. The Digital Pusan Card is a newly released implementation using Philips' technology.