A recent Global Risk Management survey by Deloitte reports that four out of five major financial firms now have a chief risk officer.

Global financial services institutions are facing growing exposure to risk from a variety of factors, including mega-mergers, off-shoring, outsourcing, greater regulation, and the need to manage an increased volume of lending.

Vance McCarthy writes in Integration Developer News about JPay, a new set of open application program interfaces intended to eash the cost, time and complexity for supporting electronic payments.

The JPay API will support payments in an open, Web-like environment, and specifically allow Java applications (typically Web applications or Java enabled content servers) to utilize a third-party payment service. The proposal is being back by some of the leading names in transaction-driven Java, including Oracle, IBM, Sun, HP and Siemens.

More information about JPay is available on the JPay home page.

Will Sturgeon reports from the UK for Silicon.com on the use of "verbal signatures" for two-way authentication between banks and their customers.

A number of banking customers have become concerned about the apparently random methods used by some banks to contact them, with unsolicited calls singled out as a source of confusion in these days of phishing, where criminals, typically posing as banks attempt to trick users into divulging details such as passwords and log-ins.

eFunds has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ClearCommerce, a privately held provider of fraud prevention and payment processing solutions for card not present transactions, for an initial purchase price of $19.4 million.

Julie Hauserman reports in AuctionBytes.com on PayPal's confidence that it can meet various regulatory challenges.

PayPal spokeswoman Sara Bettencourt says the company doesn't foresee problems. "We don't actually see compliance with regulations as a challenge," Bettencourt said. "We have a large, dedicated team within the company that focuses on this."

Monty Phan reports in Newsday on the sentencing of Philip Cummings to 14 years in prison after he admitted to contributing to the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history.

First Data Corp. announced this morning that it has completed the acquisition of the credit card processing unit of FinecoBank S.p.A.

David Lazarus writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about some of the risks associated with electronic payments.

"All this technology has been pushed aggressively by banks but they haven't put in sufficient safeguards for consumers," said Ken McEldowney, executive director of Consumer Action, a San Francisco advocacy group. "Consumers have to take some personal responsibility for their accounts," he said. "But the burden is on banks to fix the problem."

Bruce Mohl reports in the Boston Globe on litigation brought by the Massachusetts state attorney general against mall operator Simon Property Group charging that the terms of Simon's gift card program violates state law.

Both the dormancy fee and the one-year expiration date would appear to violate the Massachusetts gift card statute, which requires gift cards to be redeemable at full face value for at least seven years.

Liz Pulliam Weston writes for MSN Money on building a credit score.