According to the Mercator Advisory Group, US credit card issuers are under increasing pressure as their business growth has shrunk to near or below 5% annually. To address the needs of US credit card issuers for growth, Mercator has published a new research report titled "Opportunities for Growth in US Credit Card Issuing".

Glen Fest reports for Bank Technology News on health savings accounts and the increasing interest that financial institutions have in offering these accounts.

First Data Corp. has announced that Ed Labry, president of the company's Prepaid Services, will assume additional responsibility for leading First Data's Domestic Merchant Services business. The company also announced today that following a 60-day transition period, Scott Betts, president of Domestic Enterprise Payments, will depart the company.

Business Week reports that Visa USA has announced that overall sales volume on its cards during the holiday season between October 31 and January 1 rose 17.5 percent to $257 billion. Visa said about $26.5 billion, or 10.3 percent, of overall spending was conducted online.

Simson Garfinkel writes for CSO Magazine on techniques to securely protect data - and let you sleep at night.

All of the following approaches protect the data in the database against both outside attackers and malicious insiders. That's because these tactics work by either eliminating or scrambling sensitive information so that it no longer poses a security risk.

TowerGroup has announced new research by senior analyst Beth Robertson that find that increased consumer comfort and familiarity with online bill payment will help drive consumers toward adoption of other online services -- such as bill presentment, the use of non-traditional payment options, or the use of online account applications -- in 2006.

Bank of America has announced that it made available SiteKey, an online banking security feature that helps prevent fraud and identity theft, to bank customers in the Northeast in December.

Market Platform Dynamics has announced a new paper exploring the evolution of mobile payments in Japan and Asia by Andrei Hagiu, an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, titled "i-modes and Octopi: Will Asia Reshape the World's Payment Industry?"

Shankar Gupta reports for Online Media Daily this morning that Google appears to be planning to charge pay-per-view for some videos on its Google Video site.

Speculation surrounding the pay-per-view model suggested that the Google online payments system, Google Wallet, would be used by both downloaders and uploaders to send and receive micropayments for video content.

First Data Corp. has named B. Amrish Rau as country manager for India.

This morning's Wall St. Journal has an editorial about Wal-Mart's request pending with the FDIC to enter the banking business. According to the editorial, the request is being opposed by bankers - in particular, the Independent Community Bankers Association.

America First Credit Union has announced the launch of its Picture Perfect Visa Card utilizing the new Visa branding, along with photo card personalization technology from Serverside Group. America First is one of the first US issuers to use the new Visa Brand Mark and card design standards.

EMVCo, a joint venture operated by JCB, MasterCard and Visa, has announced the release of the Common Payment Application (CPA) Specification "to facilitate global chip migration and deployment by decreasing the cost, complexity and maintenance requirements of Issuer's card systems."

The latest issue of the FDIC's Supervisory Insights newsletter contains the article "Online Delivery of Banking Services: Making Consumers Feel Secure" by Richard D. Lee, Senior Technology Specialist at the FDIC. This article reviews key findings of an FDIC study that evaluates a variety of identity authentication technologies. The article also focuses on interagency guidance requiring insured financial institutions and service providers to address the protection of sensitive customer data and assets as part of the development of Internet banking products and services.

In the current issue of the FDIC's Banking Review is an article titled "Overview of Recent Developments in the Credit Card Industry" (PDF) by Douglas Akers, Jay Golter, Brian Lamm, and Martha Solt. All the authors are in the Division of Insurance and Research at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Douglas Akers is a research assistant, Jay Golter a financial analyst, Brian Lamm a senior financial analyst, and Martha Solt a senior economist.

Publi-News and Altenor Consulting have announced a new "Innovative Cards" report that reviews 240 bank or co-branded cards from across the world with innovative qualities. The report is published in both French and English.