InformationWeek reports on the planning that went into preparing Visa's VisaNet systems for handling peak holiday season volumes.

The company, which Monday reported a sharp increase in holiday-related shopping transactions, spent much of the year preparing its mainframe to handle a peak rate of 5,200 VisaNet transaction messages per second. Visa said Tuesday that the system reached its peak on Christmas Eve at 5,119 transaction messages a second.

The Economist reports on what's ahead for new Citigroup CEO Charles Prince.

The American Banker reported yesterday (subscription required) that Concord EFS' Star network is raising interchange fees on PIN debit card transactions effective February 1st.

With the recent settlement of the anti-trust lawsuit against First Data and Concord EFS, Star will be competing in the marketplace with rival network NYCE, among others, for bank issuance of PIN debit cards. Increased interchange is one mechanism to motivate bank issuers to either stay with or join Star. Of course, it's the card accepting merchants that pay the price as the interchange increases come out of their bottom line.

Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos forecasts growth in micropayments on the Internet.

Micropayments could also hasten the arrival of Web services that interact with one another -- say, a calendar, map and traffic-monitoring service working together to automatically guide you to your next appointment via the shortest or least congested route -- with each collecting a small per-use fee.

Micropayments, along with marked improvements in network-identity management (a federated system that could make single sign-on a reality in 2004), mean that IT managers need to be thinking about new kinds of services their companies will be able to profit from, using all the latest advances.

Visa USA has reported on the growth in US spending on Visa credit and debit cards over this holiday season.

Visa spending in the retail segment(1) topped $43.2 billion during the four weeks preceding December 28, a 10.3 percent increase over the same period of 2002. Visa debit cards (which include check cards and prepaid cards) showed the strongest year over year increase, growing 16.7 percent to $16.1 billion. None-the-less, the bulk of Visa spending on retail this holiday season was charged to credit cards for a total of $27.1 billion.

The first day of the traditional holiday season, Black Friday (November 28), was Visa's biggest retail day, with nearly $2 billion spent at retailers. However, December 20 sales came in a close second, accounting for over $1.9 billion in retail spending.

This holiday season, the highest grossing retail sectors for Visa cards have been Department Stores, Apparel, and Mail and Phone Order sales, for a total of over $10 billion from November 28 to December 28. Spending in the Specialty Retail and Hobby category grew the most among retail sectors, with dollar volume increasing 13.5 percent from 2002.