Glenbrook will be holding two executive workshop "boot camps" during May near our headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

The first workshop, a two-day "deep dive" into the US payments industry, will be held May 19-20 and taught by Carol Coye Benson and Scott Loftesness.

The second workshop, a one day intensive session examining payments from the merchant perspective, will be held May 26 and taught by Jay DeWitt and Allen Weinberg.

Both of the May workshops will be held at The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

NACHA today reported that more than 12 billion ACH payments were made in 2004, a 20 percent increase over 2003. The growth was largely driven by the rapid expansion of ARC -- the accounts receivable check conversion application -- which experienced a nearly six-fold increase in volume to more than 1.25 billion payments.

Internet-initiated ACH payments also grew significantly with 967 million ACH debit payments worth over $300 billion initiated over the Internet, a growth rate of over of 40 percent from 2003.

NACHA announced this morning that it has awarded its 2005 George Mitchell Payments System Excellence Award to Citigroup.

Carrie Kirby reports for the San Francisco Chronicle on the online underworld where private personal information is quickly and easily sold over the Internet.

The credit card numbers, bank account numbers, eBay accounts and other data sold there are stolen in corporate security breaches like the one at ChoicePoint, through offline crime like old-fashioned pickpocketing, and through scams known as "phishing" attacks, in which criminals trick people into revealing account information with slick-looking fake e-mails.

In a related story, Kirby reports on the latest kinds of phishing attacks.

Visa has announced the implementation of a semi-annual software update to VisaNet.

Fort Knox National Company has announced the results of a recent survey completed by Edgar Dunn & Company examining the key consumer drivers and motivations for their use of electronic payment services.

Carreker and ID Analytics have announced an alliance to address payment and deposit fraud schemes.

• McDonald's Plays Cards

• ACH Direct Announces a New ODFI Partnership with The Bancorp Bank at NACHA's Annual Payments 2005 Conference

• JPMorgan Chase Launches Distributed Payment Capture Solution That Integrates ACH and Check Clearing Channels

• National City Receives NACHA Quality Award for Integration of Check and Electronic Payment Systems

• Check Free Receives NACHA Quality Award for ARC Processing

• Investors Business Daily profiled Global Payments in its Friday issue last week.

• TRUSTe and Ernst & Young LLP Issue Guide to Help Companies Avoid the Risks Associated With Phishing Fears

• VeriSign Announces VoIP Solution for Financial Services Industry

• CheckFree Introduces e-Check Bridge, a Solution to Mitigate Risk for Corporate Check Conversion Fraud

• US Dataworks Broadens Clearingworks(TM) Functionality and Introduces Distributive Capture Capabilities at PAYMENTS 2005

• American Bank Note Holographics' HoloMag-TM- to Be Featured on Visa Branded Cards

• Bottomline Technologies Receives U.S. Patent on Award-Winning Electronic Payments Platform

• Alacris(R) Announces Strategic Partner Relationship with Axalto