Kevin Taylor reports that the Bank of New Zealand will begin issuing American Express cards in addition to the Visa and MasterCard cards it already issues.

The BNZ general manager, credit cards, Pradeep Roy, said American Express had its own brand attraction, particularly among younger people. American Express has 1700 offices worldwide and was supported in 130 countries.

First Data Corp. has announced the formation of First aSuretee LLC.

First aSuretee was formed to provide the industry's first, simple, secure and scaleable method for authentication that taps the power of digital signatures without the complexities, cost or limitations associated with other security solutions. aSuretee(SM) technologies enable companies to implement an Account-Based Digital Signature (ABDS(SM)) Solution, a breakthrough authentication system that provides a cost-effective replacement for the handwritten signature in the digital world.

To help evangelize its solutions and bring developers on-board, First aSuretee has opened the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) Interface Project on SourceForge. A Q&A is also available. Speaking of First Data Corp., the company's latest 10-Q filing is now available on the SEC's EDGAR service.

iPIN has announced that Alexandre Gonthier, company founder, is taking over as chief executive officer and that it has secured $8 million in its most recent round of funding from Accel Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital, Invision AG, Nexus Group LLC, Sutter Hill Ventures and Verbena Communications.

Melbourne's The Age reports on the contention between MasterCard and the Reserve Bank of Australia with respect to the court case on the RBA's reform of the Australian credit card system.   » Continue Reading

The Denver Post reports on the competitive threats to First Data's Western Union subsidiary.

The Australian press has been buzzing lately about credit card magnetic stripe skimming. Here's the latest article by Caitlin Fitzsimmons from Australian IT.

"Magnetic stripe cards provide secure authentication between the ATM and the bank host, but the card is just an automated entry of the account details," Mr Fletcher said. "Chip cards hold certain information secret and can authenticate to the terminal and provide data to the host."

Matt Richtel and John Schwartz report on changes to the credit card association rules enacted last week that apply to so-called "high risk" merchants.

Visa will charge its member banks a $500 registration fee and an annual renewal fee of $250 for each high-risk company they pay a credit-card charge to. Those fees will be passed on, with a markup, to the sites themselves. MasterCard is expected to roll out similar fees, industry analysts say. The sums are insignificant to larger sites, but could well drive smaller sites into the red; tens of thousands of adult sites are home-grown entities, industry experts say.

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