Ruth Simon reports in the Wall St. Journal on an industry trend towards more aggressive credit card fee increases (subscription required) by US card issuers.

Michael Luo reports in the New York Times on a significant fare increase coming for taxi-riding New Yorkers -- along with a plan for all New York City cabs to accept credit and debit cards by November 2005.

Jon Udell examines some issues associated with forging emails with digital signatures. The use of digital signatures on emails from trusted parties has been proposed as an anti-phishing countermeasure.

Ivan Schneider reports in Bank Systems & Technology that Visa USA expects debit card transactions are going to represent 15 percent of all consumer payments in the US by 2007.

Kevin Laws shares his perspective on what's happened to mCommerce in the US.

The US carriers have tried to control mobile services and mobile commerce, and all they have succeeded in doing is killing it. The barriers to providing applications are so high that the content is just uninteresting and expensive.

This morning's Wall St. Journal Heard on the Street column (subscription required) reports on the large piles of cash held by major European banks and speculates that many of them will use the cash to make acquisitions.

Although share buybacks and dividend increases are a possibility, many predict a rush of deal-making over the coming year, as banks seek ways to boost earnings and help them compete against larger rivals. This could involve anything from small "bolt-on" acquisitions to bigger and riskier ones, with some banks even contemplating large, cross-border European deals.

MasterCard has filed its annual proxy statement with the SEC. Included in the statement is information about the directors of MasterCard as well as 2003 compensation details for the top five most highly compensated MasterCard executives.

Jennifer Bayot reports in the New York Times on American Express' plans to issue cards in China.

Unlike previous credit cards issued in China by foreign banks, the American Express and Citibank cards allow payment not only in dollars but also in Chinese currency. That makes the cards viable for ordinary consumers.

More on the story in this press release from American Express.