Lucas Mearian and Patrick Thibodeau report in this week's ComputerWorld on the costs the financial industry is going to have to bear as a result of mandates to upgrade the existing encryption infrastructure to triple-DES compliance.

Led by Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard, the major electronic funds companies began seeking an industry conversion to Triple DES several years ago. But with the deadlines looming, banks and retailers are only beginning to deal with the costly conversion, and they're now calling for deadline extensions. Many of the nation's 360,000 ATMs will have to be replaced to comply, as will some back-end systems. Many applications will have to be rewritten to handle Triple DES.

A Bay Area-based company, iS3, is addressing this market opportunity head on with their Secure OMS product suite designed to assist financial institutions in managing the complex environment of key distribution/update in a 3DES world. They also recently announced a strategic partnership relationship with Visa International.

Constantine and Partners, the law firm representing merchants in the Visa Check / MasterCard MasterMoney litigation, has updated some information about the merchant settlement including the implementation last Friday of reduced interchange fees on Visa and MasterCard signature debit transactions.

Vital Processing Services, a joint venture of TSYS and Visa USA, announced today that formed Wachovia card executive Beverly Wells has been named president and CEO replacing Jonathan Palmer.

Wells, who has extensive financial and payments-related experience, retired from Wachovia Corporation in 2002 after 26 years of service. Most recently, she served as executive vice president for Wachovia's Retail Division including bankcard services and the acquiring business from the outsourced processing relationship as well as the acquirer back-office support function. In addition, Wells led Wachovia's $7.8 billion dollar credit card operation.

The Columbus Business Journal reports on Wendy's plan to accept credit and debit cards at 3,000 of its restaurants by November.

Wendy's began experimenting with its EPay system last November at 10 restaurants in Central Ohio. The test was broadened to Seattle, Raleigh, N.C., Boston and Charleston, W.Va., and now about 1,000 Wendy's restaurants take the cards. The trial indicated that letting consumers use their cards at Wendy's makes sense financially and operationally for the Dublin-based company, said Bob Bertini, a spokesman for the hamburger chain.