Lucy Conger writes about Elektra, a downscale household goods retailer in Mexico that is opening Banco Azteca, the first bank to aim at Mexico's middle and working classes.

Starting next year, Banco Azteca plans to introduce a range of products, including used-car and personal loans, debit cards, checking accounts and mortgages. Elektra's database of the credit payment histories of four million current and former customers will help the bank make credit decisions and cross-sell its products, analysts say.

A report by Doug Tillet and Liz Handlin of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank on the market potential for serving the over 10 million unbanked individuals on the US.

IBM and JP Morgan Chase have announced a seven-year outsourcing agreement.

The agreement will enable JPMorgan Chase to transform its technology infrastructure through absolute costs savings, increased cost variability, access to the best research and innovation, and improved service levels. By moving from a traditional fixed-cost approach to one with increased capacity and cost variability, JPMorgan Chase will be able to respond more quickly to changing market conditions. JPMorgan Chase will outsource a significant portion of its data processing technology infrastructure, including data centers, help desks, distributed computing, data networks and voice networks. The agreement includes the transfer of approximately 4,000 JPMorgan Chase employees and contractors as well as selected resources and systems to IBM in the first half of 2003. Application delivery and development, desktop support and other core competencies will largely be retained inside JPMorgan Chase.

Susie O'Brien reports that major retailers in Australia are not planning to impose surcharges on credit card usage -- at least not right away.

Until now, the cost of processing credit card transactions has been met by retailers and businesses, but from tomorrow this cost can be passed directly to the consumer. Many businesses were adamant yesterday that they would not take this step unless forced to do so by spiralling costs. Others said they would investigate the move if it became a norm in their industry. The Australian Retailers Association said services such as gyms, doctors and dentists, tradespeople and professional groups were the most likely to introduce the charge. Association executive officer Brian Donegan said the pressure was also great on small retailers who paid banks up to 3 per cent of their turnover on credit charges.

Nor Faridah Rashid reports from Kuala Lumpur on MasterCard's plans to fight counterfeiting of cards by magnetic stripe skimming from deploying Magneprint, a technology developed by MasterCard International and MagTek.

Magneprint is the first technology that proactively helps prevent card skimming by using the "intrinsic" physical properties or a magnetic stripe (which are unique to every card) to differentiate between an original and a cloned card.

Bob Tedeshi reports on results from the holiday season for online merchants and, in particular, the very strong sales of gift cards.

As online merchants began tallying the results of a stronger-than-expected holiday season, they were further buoyed last week by another bit of good news: gift certificates, a favored scrip among post-holiday bargain hunters, enjoyed their best season ever online. By Dec. 20, holiday sales of gift cards and e-mail gift certificates had soared 64 percent over last year, pushing the 2002 total toward the $250 million mark, according to comScore Networks, an Internet research firm.

D.C. Denison profiles SpeechWorks and edocs, two Boston-area companies providing technologies to enable customer self-service.

"Speaker verification," for example, is rapidly emerging as an important capability, allowing the system to identify a caller by his voice patterns. Verification is important not only for security, but also for enhanced convenience. "If the system recognizes you, it can immediately shift to your preferences," said Chambers. "It enables customers and companies to significantly streamline their interactions." Get ready for this: "Oh, hello Mr. Smith. Are you traveling to New York again?"