Global Payments has announced that as of September 26, 2006, Ruth Ann Marshall will join its Board of Directors. Most recently, Marshall served as President, Americas for MasterCard International responsible for all major banking and retail relationships, as well as governance, business development, global acceptance, product management, finance, planning, and human resources.

Bank of America has announced that its BA Merchant Services unit has entered into an agreement to sell its independent sales organization business of National Processing Company to Iron Triangle Payment Systems, a payments processing business financed by GTCR Golder Rauner. BofA says it's doing so "In order to pursue its aggressive growth goals and better integrate its sales efforts with existing in-house capabilities."

RSA Security has announced that it is teaming with Verid in order to further expand the range of strong authentication technologies included in its comprehensive RSA Adaptive Authentication solution. RSA Security will integrate Verid's knowledge-based authentication (KBA) technology into the RSA Adaptive Authentication platform.

Mercator Advisory Group has announced a new report titled "The Small Business Credit Card Challenge: Capturing The Large, Messy Opportunity" that explores "the challenges of small business credit card issuing, a key strategic segment for card issuers seeking to grow payment volume at rates above overall industry averages and to add to their portfolio outstandings."

Visa USA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have announced their assessment of the five leading causes of data security breaches and offered immediate, specific prevention strategies for each.

Umpqua Bank has announced it has begun construction on its first neighborhood store in Portland, Oregon's Beaumont neighborhood. According to the bank, this location is the first example of Umpqua's new neighborhood store strategy. "Like cafes and other gathering places, Umpqua's neighborhood stores embed into established neighborhoods, providing residents and visitors with an engaging space to browse local merchandise, shop online, enjoy a cup of coffee, and learn about community events and resources -- in addition to banking."

This week, the Lehman Brothers 2006 Financial Services Conference was held in New York. A number of banks and financial services companies presented their latest updates at this first major industry conference of the fall season. Here are some links to these presentations (all PDF): American Express, Bank of America, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, US Bank, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo.

NCR and Ready Credit Corporation have announced a new self-service kiosk that issues instant prepaid MasterCard cards. Utilizing the NCR EasyPoint Xpress kiosk platform, Ready Credit’s ReadySTATION provides consumers a convenient way to purchase an immediately-usable ReadyCARD Prepaid MasterCard.