Verifone's Rob Regan writes in The Green Sheet about contactless/proximity payments.

The benefits of contactless payment for consumers and the retailers have been proven in numerous implementations. Increased convenience for the consumer has resulted in increased sales and faster transaction times for the retailer. Retailers also enjoy lower costs due to fewer requirements to handle cash, improved operational efficiencies, and lower maintenance costs due to the reliability of contactless readers.

Chase and Universal Studios today announced a new instant credit card issuance program for the Universal Entertainment MasterCard from Chase.   » Continue Reading

eBay reported earnings yesterday - including results from PayPal. At the end of the quarter, PayPal reported 45.6 million user accounts, a growth of 67% over last year. PayPal's total purchase volume for the quarter was $4.3 billion, a growth of 64% over last year, and generated revenues of $158.2 million, a growth of 66% over last year. PayPal's loss rate came down to 27 basis points vs. 31 basis points in the December quarter.

Based on this report, PayPal now has more users than AOL (AOL has 40.2M users according to a recent comScore Media Metrix analysis). Given PayPal's currrent user account growth rates, they'll likely pass up HotMail this month, and Yahoo in June.

First Data Corp. announced its first quarter 2004 financial results this morning.