CardWeb reports on the increasing inclination of US consumers to pay down their credit card debt and the impact its having on the growth in receivables.

There are approximately 185 million bank credit cardholders in the USA. Of these about 70 million pay-off in full each month, 71 million make more than the minimum required payment, and 44 million make minimum required payments.

Steven Marlin in Information Week reports on the Financial Services Technology Consortium's (FSTC) counterphishing effort.

The Chicago Tribune carries a Bloomberg story on the potential financial benefits banks will receive as a result of Check 21.

"We'll be able to save a lot of money," said Kennedy Thompson, chief executive of Wachovia Corp., the nation's fourth-biggest bank. "It will eliminate a lot of paper, reduce the huge infrastructure of check processing and all of the transportation of checks."

The US Department of Justice has announced the the arrests of nineteen individuals "who are alleged to have founded, moderated and operated one of the largest illegal online centers for trafficking in stolen identity information and documents, as well as stolen credit and debit card numbers."

Red Herring reports on yesterday's PayPal thank you day -- including the reactions of some PayPal users who remain disgruntled by PayPal's outages earlier this month.