We're taking a look back at the major payments-related news stories for 2005.   We've examined our archives month by month and have culled the the most important and interesting highlights.  We'll be posting each month's highlights over the next few days.  Here are the Payments News highlights from February 2005.

Patricia Sabatini reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the deployment of contactless payment cards.  Now accepted at about 22,000 merchant locations nationwide, Sabatini reports that "Visa estimates that number will zoom next year by tenfold, to 220,000 locations."