Friday's Washington Post has an article by Kathleen Day regarding proposed legislation that would allow retailers and manufacturers to own full service banks nationwide.

At issue is whether Congress should expand the power of obscure entities known as industrial loan companies. These state-chartered, limited-purpose banks -- which operate in Utah, California, Colorado, Nevada and Minnesota -- generally specialize in one area, such as offering credit cards. The owners of these companies are not regulated by the Federal Reserve and may include automakers, discount department stores and other firms that are largely unrelated to financial services.

Sun has published an interesting article about the payer authentication solutions now being implemented by Visa and MasterCard.

We're picking up some interesting "chatter" on our radar regarding renewed interest in micropayments on the Internet. We're thinking there's enough interest that it's worthy of doing some more digging to learn more about what others are thinking. If this is a subject you're interested in -- particularly if you think you have stuff to sell where a micropayment solutions would be valuable to you, please let me know directly -- or -- also feel free to post a comment here. Quoting from a Barton Biggs' piece earlier this week:

As Philostratus wrote: "the wise perceive things about to happen."

Are micropayments, finally, about to happen? I've started a new page to log my new learnings about micropayments.

Brussels-based Clear2Pay has announced it has closed a new round of equity financing.

"The successful implementation of the Visa Direct environment in London, is proof that we are indeed able to implement the Clear2Pay vision in existing and complex environments. Financial service providers can literally make quite some money by improving efficiency in their payment systems and integration with their customers. This is an area where we at this very time, when inter-bank fees are under heavy scrutiny, need to focus on. The bilateral payment systems we know today automate existing processes and cannot deliver that promise. I strongly believe in what I call 'the New Wave': internet based payment systems which handle transactions at a multi-lateral level. The bank retains and strengthens its role as the primary payments processor and customer relationship owner, whilst at the same time enhancing efficiency, improving ease of use and cutting costs." said Michel Akkermans, CEO and Chairman of Board of Directors of Clear2Pay.

eMac Digital has announced that it has been selected by McDonald's to supply its next-generation POS system. It also announced that Accel-KKR, co-founder of eMac Digital, is buying out an equity stake in the company previously owned by McDonald's. eMac Digital provides a variety of services to the global foodservice industry.

Catuity, Visa USA, Visa International and Welcome Real-Time have announced they have entered into a patent cross-license agreement.

Under the Visa Loyalty Program Patent Agreement, Catuity, Visa and Welcome will cross license existing and future patents for Visa smart loyalty programs. This cross license will be worldwide and royalty-free until the last patent expires. The cross license will extend to all Visa affiliates, members and merchants. Participants will develop and promote interoperable loyalty solutions by integrating the Visa interoperability toolkits within their platforms. These toolkits, demonstrated by Visa, Welcome and Catuity during Cartes 2002, allow cards with one technology to be used in terminals connected to a different loyalty platform, and for data from different loyalty processing centers to be aggregated to enable customer service activities.