MasterCard has announced first quarter 2006 financial results reporting net income for the quarter of $127 million compared to $93 million in 2005. For the three months ended March 31, 2006, net revenue was $739 million, a 12.3% increase versus 2005.

A great friend of Glenbrook's is Broox Peterson, formerly Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for Visa for over 20 years. Broox retired from Visa a couple of years ago and since then has been doing free lance legal work with information technology and payments companies.

Broox has written a great article about some of the implications that entrepreneurs may want to consider regarding the regulatory implications of building a new payments company - something that, in our experience, entrepreneurs may not fully understand or appreciate.

Click here to continue reading Broox's insights into this important topic.

MasterCard has announced two new two-factor authentication solutions, the MasterCard All-in-One Authentication Device and MasterCard Mobile Authentication, "designed to enhance security for both online banking and e-commerce transactions."

MasterCard has announced updated numbers for PayPass cards and acceptance locations saying that, to date, "approximately seven million PayPass cards and devices have been issued to consumers and PayPass is now accepted at approximately 30,000 merchant locations around the world."

Clear2Pay has announced a ‘Faster Payments for the UK’ solution based upon the Open Payments Framework (OPF), a library of component building blocks built entirely on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The Faster Payments initiative for the UK aims to reduce clearing times on electronic payments between banks following telephone or internet instructions from customers, including standing orders.

Rhys Blakely reports for the London Times on yesterday's announcement from Transport for London clarifying that they had not pulled the plug on plans to expand acceptance of its Oyster prepaid cards but that the technical and financial partners they were working with simply hadn't provided an acceptable approach.

The presentations from this year's Digital Money Forum held in London in late March are now available online - including via a convenient link to a zipped file (14.3 MB) with all of the speaker presentations in one download and another for all of the panelists.

Included is a very interesting presentation from the perspective of a major merchant looking at contactless technology titled What Do Retailers Want From The New Technology? (PDF) by Paul Chapman, Advanced Payments Manager at Tesco, and another on Mobile Financial Services for the Third World by Susie Lonie of Vodafone describing the M-Pesa mobile finance pilot in Kenya.

• MasterCard Wins Two Awards from Card Technology for its Contactless Payment Success
• Online multiplayer game gains real ATM cards
• Oberthur Card Systems Takes the Lead on Contactless Expansion; Only U.S. Company That Provides End-to-End Manufacturing and Personalization Services to Meet the Accelerated Demand
• ZDNet: Bruce Schneier on security's 'people problems'
• Alliance Data Signs Multi-Year Agreement With Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD)
• Payment Data Systems, Inc. Joins Green Dot(R) Financial Network -- Adds Tens of Thousands of Load Locations
• Sun Java Card technology adds contactless and biometry support industry
• RFID in Japan: FeliCa Stickers to turn "anything" into wallets
• Synovus, TSYS make list for best ethics
• babble upgrades online payment system to DataCash