Mark Huband reports in the Financial Times on how counterfeiting, forgery and credit card crimes have become the financial backbone of terrorist cells in western Europe.

AdAge reports that Visa USA has appointed former Charles Schwab CEO Susanne Lyons as EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of Visa USA. Lyons replaces Becky Saeger who left Visa USA recently to join Schwab as executive vice president of brand management and branding communications READ MORE »

Update (July 28, 2004): See our post "PayPal Class Action Settlement Claims Procedures" for the latest.

PayPal announced today that it had reached a preliminary settlement agreement with a proposed class of PayPal customers who allege that "PayPal did not appropriately communicate about customer transactions and did not appropriately process limits that were placed on some customer accounts." READ MORE »

MSNBC technology correspondent Bob Sullivan writes about a soon-to-be released survey by Gartner that will report that nearly 2 million Americans have had their checking accounts raided by criminals in the past 12 months, each reporting an average loss per incident of $1,200 resulting in a total of more than $2 billion in losses for the year.

Gartner researcher Avivah Litan blamed online banking for most of the problem. "There has been a big increase in the abuse of existing checking accounts," Litan said.

The Smart Card Alliance has announced the addition of 21 new members.

JCB has announced that it has announced a two month trial of its new wristwatch "Offica" corporate solution. READ MORE »

CyberSource has released the results of a recent study it performed that concludes that merchants can convert as many as 20% more customers by offering them more payment types to choose from.

Those merchants offering one payment type, such as general purpose credit cards, for example, convert 60% of their shoppers. Those offering four types, e.g., credit cards, gift certificates, eChecks, PayPal, etc., convert 72% of their shoppers -- a 20% increase.

The survey results are incorporated into a new industry whitepaper from CyberSource, "The Insider's Guide to eCommerce Payment".

Sterling Allan of Pure Energy Systems News reports on PayPal's recent changes that allow payments for certain types of transactions to be completed without requiring a PayPal account.

SmartPros reports on payroll cards.

About 56 million Americans don't have a bank account, and just 55 percent of American workers are enrolled in direct deposit. These statistics indicate that the two main forms of paychecks -- direct deposit and printed checks -- leave room for yet another paycheck solution.

Small business owner Charlie Redmond writes in DMNews about merchant card acceptance.