Are you a payments professional living in the San Francisco Bay Area?

With some friends, we're exploring starting a payments professionals' networking group for the San Francisco area that we're calling BayPay.

Let us know if you're interested in learning more about BayPay.

PayPal's CEO Jeff Jordan reviewed the company's performance at today's eBay analyst meeting. He reported that PayPal's share of 2004 consumer ecommerce volume as 9 percent in the US and 5 percent globally.

He also reported on the deal announced last year with GE Consumer Finance to launch PayPal Buyer Credit with $28 MM of PayPal purchases using Buyer Credit in the fourth quarter of 2004.

Here's an interesting slide from today's presentation that how PayPal segments the off-eBay merchant opportunity.

Visa USA today introduced its small business spending forecast and segmentation analysis. The small business segment - businesses with under $25 million in annual sales - accounts for one-third of all expenditures by businesses in the United States. According to Visa's CCE analysis, non-payroll spending by U.S. small businesses will increase an estimated 5.4 percent this year to $4.7 trillion, and expand further to reach $5.3 trillion in 2008.

The Stanford Daily reports on the recent implementation of PassMark Security by the Stanford Federal Credit Union.

“When you log on, you see a picture and a pass phrase at random,” said Sam Tuohey, vice president of e-commerce and technology for the SFCU. “If you think that’s fine, you can do that. Otherwise, you can upload your own picture or browse the images online.”

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has announced the results of a survey of online banking users (PDF) completed in November 2004.

Fifty-three million people, or 44% of internet users and one-quarter of all adults, now say they use online banking. Those figures amount to an increase of 47% over the number of Americans who were performing online banking in late 2002. Of all the major internet activities tracked by the Project since its inaugural survey in March 2000, online banking has grown the fastest. Internet users with high-speed connections, those with six or more years of experience, and those between 28-39 years old are the most likely to bank online.