Peter Pollack writes for Ars Technica on his views of the newly announced VeriSign VIP service - both pro and con.   » Continue Reading

David Berlind posts on his ZDNet Between the Lines blog about Bank of America's SiteKey in a post titled "Will BofA's SiteKey thwart phishing attempts?"

While wandering around the Wells Fargo Bank online site this afternoon, I stumbled across a new link to an RSS feed containing a daily news item called "This Date In Wells Fargo History." While perhaps not an exciting development in terms of bank adoption of RSS, this does feel a bit like a milestone event! A help page describing more about RSS is also provided. It will be interesting to watch as Wells Fargo and other US banks begin to syndicate more of their content.

Counsel for a group of merchants that has sued all the major credit card companies for antitrust violations has announced that, following negotiations, Discover has agreed to drop its "No Surcharge Rule'' and, consequently, that Discover would be dropped from the antitrust class action currently pending in a Brooklyn, NY federal court before District Judge John Gleeson.   » Continue Reading

Robert Hof of Business Week does an in-depth story on the Prosper.com Marketplace and compares its approach to that of eBay by matching small borrowers with lenders. Also, see our earlier post about Prosper.com.

Scott Murdoch reports for the Herald Sun on increasing competition among credit card issuers in Australia including, what the Reserve Bank of Australia has called "no-frills" credit cards.

Heartland Payment Systems has announced it has acquired Debitek, a prepaid and stored value solution solution provider. Financial terms of the transaction, which was structured as a stock purchase, were not announced.   » Continue Reading

Discover Financial Services has announced the launch of Discover® Debit, the first new signature debit program to be offered to financial institutions since the ruling in the Department of Justice anti-trust case in October of 2004. Two signature debit card products will be supported: the Discover Debit Card for individuals and the Discover Debit Business Card.   » Continue Reading

VeriSign has announced the launch of VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP), a program designed to "help provide identity protection for consumers who conduct business online." VeriSign said that VIP is supported by several online companies including PayPal, eBay and Yahoo!. In addition, SanDisk has announced plans to support VIP by manufacturing and distributing OATH compliant USB mass-storage and trusted flash devices and Motorola plans to enable this technology on consumer mobile devices.   » Continue Reading

Kevin Murphy writes for the Computer Business Review on today's announcement of the VeriSign Identity Protection network reporting that with VIP users will optionally be able to sign in to Yahoo, eBay and Paypal services using a single one-time password token. Murphy sees VeriSign's VIP putting some competitive pressure on RSA Security, a market leader with its token-based authentication solutions.

PayPal has announced that it has surpassed 100 million user accounts enrolled in its service. "This growth reflects the rapid expansion of PayPal's network across the global Internet, including the eBay marketplaces as well as merchants all across the web," the company said in a press release.   » Continue Reading

Bruce Schaller writes for the Gotham Gazette about transit fare collection systems in general and the upcoming trial by MasterCard and Citibank of PayPass card acceptance at twenty-four New York City subway stations.   » Continue Reading

Friend and colleague Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion sends news this morning from the UK about the new Digital Money Forum blog that he's launched.   » Continue Reading

Kathy Chu reports for USA Today on efforts by credit card issuers to encourage the use of credit cards for tax payments this year.   » Continue Reading

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.

• 'Tap and go' at Cineplex Entertainment theatres with MasterCard PayPass
• ZDNet: Web of intrigue widens in debit-card theft case
• Ingrian Releases Cryptographic Tool for Highly Scalable Batch Processing - PCI Mandate Fuels Demand for High Volume Credit Card Encryption
• Countrywide Home Loans Selects Experian-Scorex's ScoreRight(TM) Credit Score Simulator to Increase Funding Rates and Improve Customer Service
• Alabama Credit Union Partners with Dynamic Card Solutions to Offer Members Instant Issuance