MasterCard Worldwide has announced that it will "soon implement significant interchange initiatives aimed at addressing concerns that have been raised by the merchant community, and helping them maximize the benefits and value of accepting MasterCard cards." Among the initiatives announced by MasterCard are plans to publish its US Interchange Rate Schedule by November 1 and a new cap on its interchange fees on fuel purchases of more than $50 at petroleum retailers,

Welcome has announced that its XLS payment software is now available for contactless cards - with the company saying that it brings "substantial new features to the basic off-the-shelf card products currently being deployed by banks."

Aberdeen Group has announced findings from companies that participated in a recent study of payment card usage reporting significant benefits in three primary areas with their payment card program. A recently published report that benchmarks payment card usage within the enterprise found that over 60% of companies still allow personal credit cards to be used for company purchases, in spite of the compelling benefits achieved by best in class users of corporate payment card programs.

Following up on its launch earlier this year of Guided by History, a blog now focused on general disaster preparedness in the US, Wells Fargo Bank is launching a new blog called "The Student LoanDown". Wells Fargo is the first major financial services company to launch a blog that's devoted to financing college and managing student debt - and which takes advantage of the bank's almost 40 years of experience in education financing.

In an in-depth article, Alex Ritman writes for ITP Technology about NTT DoCoMo's experiences with mobile payments in Japan - and looks at mobile payments initiatives in Kuwait by MTC-Vodafone and the National Bank of Kuwait - where the bank says that 30-40% of its customers have signed up for the service. In the article, Ritman quotes Ghassan Hasbani, principal of Booz Allen Hamilton's communications and technology practice, who says that “M-payments by itself is not a major source of revenue generation - m-payments make up just around 2% of NTT DoCoMo's overall revenue. However, when you introduce mobile payments, it could reduce churn by up to 15%. This is what was experienced by NTT DoCoMo.” [Note: Read more about mobile payments in the Payments News Mobile Commerce Archive.]

Karen E. Klein writes for Business Week's Smart Answers column about what it takes these days to set up your own online business. She says that, "with barriers to entry falling dramatically over the past decade, becoming an online retailer or service provider has become an attractive option. Startup costs can be as low as $3,000, and the business can be set up in a home office and attended to at nights and on weekends, allowing new entrepreneurs to keep their day jobs."

MasterCard Worldwide has announced the first trial of its latest form factor in contactless payment technology, the MasterCard PayPass wristband.

"The irony of the story is that, in many respects, banks are responsible for the challenges they face. Banks are pushing for more ACH transactions, new ACH items, without necessarily building up new economics, such as applying interchange fees." - from Gwenn Bezard, research director with the Boston-based Aite Group, as reported in an article by Kenneth Cline in Payments Strategies titled "Can Banks Profit From Payments’ Transition?".

David Stewart of Global Concepts writes for Payments Strategies about what bankers need to be doing to insure their debit card programs remain competitive in the face of a number of risk factors including "pending litigation around interchange fees, customer adoption of less profitable payment alternatives such as ACH and the expense of reward programs."

Steve Mott writes for Payments Strategies on the efforts by some in the banking industry to "smash together" check imaging at the point of acceptance with ACH for delivery to the check writer's financial institution. According to Mott, "the stakes are enormous as "checking" goes to the very core of every financial institution's primary customer relationships."

Mobile payments provider Obopay has announced a $7 million strategic investment round led by wireless technologies innovator QUALCOMM. Other participants in this round include investors Redpoint Ventures, ONSET Ventures and Richmond Management, which all contributed to the series A round of $10 million last February.

BankServ has announced that, as part of its strategy to enter the growing field of electronic person-to-person payments, it has acquired Magex Managed Payments Platform, a division of financial technology developer Magex Holdings Ltd. The Magex Managed Payments Platform division is the producer of P2P systems that let consumers exchange money over the Internet or using their mobile phones.

Laurie Giesen writes for BAI's Payments Strategies about debit card fraud and looks at whether recent publicity about these cases could affect debit's on-going appeal to consumers. “The media attention on these recent events could potentially harm banks’ reputation as being a safe place for customers to put their money. This harm to the banks’ reputation could be much more serious than the cost of covering the losses,” says Gwenn Bezard, research director for Boston-based Aite Group LLC.

According to a new Celent report, "Contactless and the Dawn of a New Payment Era", the number of contactless payment devices has nearly doubled in the last year and will capture 15% of the prime market by 2011.

• Fiserv CBS Worldwide Joins with eFunds to Provide Banks Increased Security Against Identity Theft and Money Laundering
• UK: Banks fight e-fraudsters with two-factor authentication
• Confidex to provide 125 million contactless tickets to Chinese railway operator
• Pay By Touch Provides Check Cashing Services for Lowe's Pay and Save, Inc. in Texas
• E-monee.com, Inc. Announces Partnership with WildCard Systems, Inc.
• Cellfire Joins the Mobile Marketing Association
• Visanet Extends EDS Relationship With US$209 Million Agreement
• Utah First Credit Union Partners with Identity Theft 911 to Protect Their Members; Joining the Fight against Identity Theft
• Associated Banc-Corp Chooses Corillian's Strong Authentication Solution; Corillian Intelligent Authentication to Provide Customer-Friendly Security for Online Banking Customers
• id-Confirm(TM) to Provide Biometric Authentication Pilot Program for One of Nation's Top-Performing Banks; SecureLink(TM) Pilot to Enhance Security of Corporate Network
• OTI Delivers Garanti Bank of Turkey Contactless Card Solutions

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• David Durick has been named Director of Business Development at Smart Payment Solutions, a payment processing company.
• Harry B. Blankenship has been named director of payments, compliance, and risk in North America at LogicaCMG. Blankenship has held senior positions with Unisys, IBM Global Services, KPMG Peat Marwick, and Electronic Data Systems and served as vice president for payment systems and access strategies at Bank of America.
• Mobile payments provider Obopay has announced three new vice presidents: Christian Delay as vice president of business development for mobile, Ramy Mora as vice president of consumer marketing and Sam Shawki as vice president of customer operations. Delay joins Obopay from Yahoo! where he led mobile business development initiatives including Yahoo! Go Mobile. Mora's experience includes consumer marketing experience at Clorox, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. Shawki's experience includes Siebel and Netscape.
• Saket Sood has been named Chief Operating Officer at Nochex Limited. Phone: +44 (0)113 344 3991.