The mainstream and personal finance press are starting to write about MasterCard's upcoming initial public offering. Just this afternoon we've seen stories on the MasterCard IPO from Ryan Batchelor for Morningstar.com and Grace Wong for CNNMoney.com.

Batchelor says he thinks that MasterCard is a "bargain" at the estimated price range of $40-43. He has an $80 fair value estimate on the stock which would result in a market cap of about $10.8 billion for MasterCard.

Chen's report is much less sanguine, saying that "the company's future appears less certain "given that "MasterCard faces mounting lawsuits, and long-term investors could end up footing the company's legal bills."

Either way, it sounds like it won't be long now before we'll know the financial market's reaction to MasterCard. We'll all be watching.

Andy Williams reports for SecureIDNews on the rollout of NFC technology for bus passengers in Hanau, Germany - project of Nokia, Philips, Vodafone and the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV).

The American Conference Institute has announced an upcoming conference being held in New York City on June 6-7 titled "The National Forum on Optimizing Patents and IP in Financial Products & Services".

PayPal CEO Jeff Jordan will be hosting an eBay Town Hall meeting to answer questions about PayPal later this afternoon beginning at 4 PM Pacific time.

[Editor's question: Is anyone aware of any other financial services CEO ever holding an online Q&A meeting with living, breathing customers and merchants?]

Coinstar has announced the expansion of its gift card mall program into the United Kingdom. Coinstar says its gift card mall consists of a display rack of leading dining, clothing, entertainment, book, home and service gift cards strategically placed in-store for shopper convenience.   » Continue Reading

Visa Asia Pacific has announced that visitors to its regional market spent US$23.7 billion on their Visa cards during 2005, a 17 percent increase over 2004. According to a new Visa Asia Pacific tourism spending report, the biggest increase in tourist spending was in China, where Visa cardholders spent $636 million more last year than they did in 2004.   » Continue Reading

ChipIn, a Hawaii-based "Web 2.0" startup, has just come out of stealth mode and launched its new "social eCommerce" service designed to help individuals connect with people in their social network for collection of money for a personal cause, to purchase a gift, or for community fundraising. Read more about them in this article from Hawaii Business magazine and on the Chipin blog.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has released its annual survey of the fee income commercial banks earn from their domestic banking operations reporting that total domestic fee income of participant banks grew by 4 per cent in 2005, to A$ 9.2 billion. The Australian Banking Association has published a separate report on the subject prepared by Dr Kim Hawtrey of Macquarie University, Sydney.

Pay By Touch has announced that Fast Phil's, operator of 11 convenience stores in Spartanburg, Union and Chester counties in upstate South Carolina can now pay using a finger scan. Among the benefits of convenience of this form of payment, Pay By Touch is also highlighting that the consumer's payment information is protected from disclosure to even the store's employees.   » Continue Reading

Digital Transactions reports on Wal-Mart's response to may of the concerns raised by critics of its pending ILC application. Wal-Mart's complete response dated May 12, 2006, is also available online on the FDIC's web site.

In an article titled 'Where's Citi?", Liz Moyer writes for Forbes about Citigroup's US strategy - saying that while "Citibank never sleeps, but as far as American consumers are concerned, it might as well be sleepwalking."

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