The Wall St. Journal's Heard on the Street column for Thursday reviews the potential candidates for acquisition/merger following Wednesday's announcement of the JP Morgan Chase / Bank One merger.

Among the remaining potential names on the dance card are Detroit-based Comerica Inc., KeyCorpin Cleveland, U.S. Bancorp of Minneapolis, SunTrust Banks Inc., in Atlanta, National City Corp. of Cleveland, Sovereign Bancorp Inc. of Wyomissing, Pa., Union Planters Corp. of Memphis, Tenn., and SouthTrust Corp. of Birmingham, Ala.

The official press release on the JP Morgan Chase / Bank One merger is now available. READ MORE »

Bank One has introduced an impressive email alert capability which can inform customers of all sorts of activity on their checking, savings or credit card accounts. About nine months ago, Russ Jones posted an opinion piece asking for just this kind of service. He was delighted to learn that this new service had recently been made available.

Washington Mutual has announced that it will be trialing the sale of $1,000 CD's using an auction process powered by eBay.

During the promotion, approximately 600 six-month CDs of $1,000 each will be made available for bidding during a six-week period, with approximately 100 CDs listed each week. Shoppers will be able to bid on the interest rate of their CDs -- with bidding starting at higher interest rates, and subsequent bids bringing down the interest rate until the auction listing closes. If the final bid meets an undisclosed reserve, the successful bidder is expected to get a competitive interest rate on his or her CD.

To view the WAMU CD auction site, see: http://www.wamucdauction.com.

The New York Times is reporting that JP Morgan Chase is acquiring Bank One in a deal worth $60 billion.

There are big potential implications for the industry from this deal. Combining Chase's card business with that of Bank One on the issuer side plus the combination of Chase Merchant Services with Bank One's majority ownership of Paymentech. Big implications for Visa and MasterCard too -- Bank One has been a Visa loyalist, Chase a MasterCard loyalist. Wow!

Amazingly, sale of cellular telephone ring tones has jumped 40 per cent in the past year to $3.5 billion in sales. Purchasing of ring tones is currently the predominant form of mobile commerce being done by consumers.

Harris Interactive has released the results of a survey of consumers regarding debit cards that was sponsored by MasterCard.

According to the survey, convenience, security and ease-of-use are significant factors behind consumers' choice to use debit cards.

Visa USA has announced Visa Extras, a new payment card rewards program to help Visa member financial institutions deliver new rewards opportunities to consumer and small business cardholders -- particularly for everyday expenditures, such as travel, office supplies, groceries, gas, bills, clothing, dining and entertainment.

"Increasingly, today's consumers and small business owners are turning to Visa payment cards because of the overall value they provide versus paying with cash or checks, which don't provide any additional benefit," said Elizabeth Buse, executive vice president Visa USA.

"You don't need to be a big spender to benefit from Visa Extras as the program is specifically designed to reward cardholders for the personal and business expenditures they make every day at the places where they like to use their Visa cards."

For more details, see: http://www.visa.com/visaextras. [Note: I just tried to enroll an Amazon/BankOne Visa card -- it wasn't eligible to participate in the Visa Extras program.]

Graeme Smith reports in Canada's Globe and Mail on McDonald's restaurants in Winnipeg using biometric palm scanners to replace time clocks for employee check-in/out.

The most common biometric terminals look like miniature bank machines, about the size of a breadbox. As a first step, an employee must usually type in a personal identification number or swipe a pass card. That calls up an encoded image of their hand, which the machine uses for comparison with the employee's handprint. They can replace door locks and time clocks, and track an employee's habits.

John Edwards, a dealer at Amano Cincinnati, a time-systems manufacturer based in Mississauga, Ont., said sales of biometric systems surpassed those of pass-card time clocks this year. "It's outselling my swipe-card terminals 10 to one."

Julia Cheney of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's Payment Card Center has published a white paper summarizing the results of a recent workshop on identity theft (PDF).