Listen to the web. "Jason Knight and Marc Hedlund are the co-founders of a company called Wesabe, which is all about bringing people together in a community designed to make getting the most from your money dead simple." Read more about what they're thinking at their blog "Wheaties For Your Wallet". For example, read Marc's recent frustrations trying to pay his American Express credit card bill online. Or another post about how Marc felt he was treated as a (now an ex-) Washington Mutual customer.

MasterCard Worldwide has announced the launch of the World Elite MasterCard - describing it as a "new card platform for elite affluent consumers, small businesses and executives of large corporations." The card targets the "elite affluent demographic" targeting those with annual household incomes greater than $250,000.

Back in June, we pointed to an article by Adam Levitin. Adam emailed us this morning with news that a greatly expanded version of his paper is now available online: "The Merchant-Bank Struggle for Control of Payment Systems." His prediction: "the payments industry will look very different in a decade."

Chase Card Services says that it is "notifying 2.6 million current and former Circuit City credit card account holders that computer tapes containing their personal information were mistakenly identified as trash and thrown out."

H&R Block has announced plans to open low-cost bank accounts for free for 1 million of its tax clients and to significantly reduce the cost of its refund anticipation loans for tax season 2007. The company has outlined a four-part plan that includes a next generation, low-cost bank account new high-yield savings products, lower cost refund anticipation loans and enhanced financial education to better serve its tax clients.

SVPCO-Electronic Clearing Services has announced that monthly check image volume in August surpassed $200 billion and 75 million items as compared to $45.3 billion and 5.3 million items in the same month last year.

Litle & Co., a payment processor for direct marketing merchants, has announced that it was ranked number one on the Inc. 500 list of the country’s fastest growing private companies. Litle & Co. says it topped the list with a three-year sales growth of 5,629% and 2005 revenues of $34.8 Million. The Inc. 500 list can be found in the September print issue and will be available online on September 19th.

"The Mobile Phone as the Key to Daily Life" - that's the theme of this year's NTT DoCoMo's Annual Report to Shareholders. DoCoMo says that it is developing new businesses such as credit services based on the strength of its customer base of over 50 million subscribers and that it "intends to hasten this evolution by providing diverse, innovative services that enhance the convenience of customers' daily lives, including not only voice calls and Internet connection services via i-mode, but also credit payments, e-money, e-ticketing, music players and television, and even ID cards and house keys."

American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International have announced the formation of an independent council - the PCI Security Standards Council - designed to manage the ongoing evolution of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard.

Astroleap has announced the launch of eureka!mobile, a new mobile software application enabling users to access, save and redeem location-based coupons, discounts and promotions via their wireless phone.

Cardholders of European banks will soon be able to use their payment cards for transactions in other European countries just as easily as in their home country according to the new Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes (EAPS). The executives of several national card payment schemes have agreed on principles of cooperation that will enable the creation of a "new alternative for pan-European payments" that will bring significant additional benefits to banks, retailers and cardholders.

Andy Williams writes for SecureIDNews about MARTA's new smart card-based fare collection system that in the final stages of launch. The MARTA system, built by Cubic Transportation Systems, is the first U.S. system to deploy both limited use smart card paper tickets along with conventional plastic smart cards - both using different flavors of Philips MIFARE chips. Williams quotes Neil Poling, program manager at MARTA, who says ""one of the disappointments in the whole smart card deployment efforts with MARTA and across the country has been the reluctance of banks and card associations to become involved. There have been a lot of promises and a lot of discussion from banks on where we go with stored value, but it's never comes to fruition. When we got into this, we were very excited about the possibilities, becoming partners with banks and card associations, but they've been extremely cautious about getting involved."

Jay Cline of the Carlson Companies writes an opinion piece for ComputerWorld about how there's no one "silver bullet" solution to two-factor authentication, saying "it’s bad for business and bad for the economy for standards organisations to mandate a one-size-fits-all solution. Continued flexibility is the right way to go to address this complex risk."

• Court: Credit Card Companies Put Ahead of Church Tithing By Controversial 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Law
• SafePay Launching Its Own Branded Prepaid Visa(R) Cards and Pin-based Debit Cards
• Western Union and Banco Nacional de Mexico Extend Money Transfer Alliance; Expanded Relationship Adds Vigo Brand to Service Offerings
• Focus On Hispanic Merchants Payment Processing Needs Paying Off For 1st Federal Financial
• Wachovia's New Online Retail Lockbox Imaging Tool Dramatically Improves Receivables Posting

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Angel Pacheco has been named vice president, new business development at FreeStar Technology Corp., an international card payments processor and technology company.
• Geoff Judge has been appointed to the board of directors of Global Cash Access Holdings Inc. Judge currently serves as the acting chief revenue officer of Piczo Inc., a social networking site for teens that was named the fastest-growing Web brand in the United Kingdom for 2005.