Atlanta-based InComm says it anticipates the greatest demand in history for its products and services this Holiday shopping season. "We've never seen demand so high," said Brooks Smith, InComm President and CEO. "We have a unique perspective in that we see the increased demand and resulting sales across all retail channels. We expect our gift card sales to at least triple last year's numbers, and our retail partners and their customers will benefit from expanded offerings at more convenient shopping locations."

OPEN from American Express has announced the expansion of its OPEN Savings program with the launch of airline partners Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways. OPEN Savings gives small business owners automatic savings virtually every time they use an American Expres Business Card to make purchases at any OPEN Savings partner.

Stuart Elliott reports for the New York Times about Discover's new advertising campaign - featuring scissors. Elliott suggests that unlike more humdrum ads for other credit cards, "one that shows scissors being used to slice and dice credit cards like so many vegetables may get noticed." See also Discover's new website featuring the new campaign.

MasterCard Worldwide has announced a "business-to-business advertising campaign to support the company’s recent unveiling of a new corporate identity and tagline, The Heart of Commerce™. The campaign, which targets customers, acquirers, issuers and merchants, builds on the company’s new corporate positioning, demonstrating its globally integrated structure and strategic vision to advance commerce worldwide."

Tom Zeller Jr. reports for the New York Times on a statistic developed by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse - roughly 93,754,333 private consumer records have been compromised in some fashion. What do consumers get if their data has been compromised? Typically, one year of free credit monitoring paid for by the company responsible for the compromise. Zeller goes on to report "in the battle to stop the great hemorrhaging of personal data, the enemy is us."

Paul Gores writes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about how local businesses have begun using remote check capture services to make deposits of checks they receive into their checking accounts. Gores quotes one industry analyst who says "it's proven to be a very attractive product that is very easy for banks to sell." As it turns out, several Wisconsin companies are involved in providing remote deposit capture services nationally including Fiserv, Metavante and Wausau.

Peter Judge writes for the UK's TechWorld about near field communications (NFC) technology - reporting that some industry analysts believe that the mobile operators are slowing down the deployment of NFC for payment applications by insisting they have to recoup the cost from the contactless payment services NFC could enable.

Kim Hart reports for the Washington Post about Chevy Chase Supermarket and plans to implement a new pay-by-cellphone payment system developed by MobileLime within the next year. Hart reports that "Kevin Kirsch, 39, who co-owns the store with his father and brother, is hoping to ease customers into using their phones as a shopping tool by first sending coupons, giveaways and store updates via text messages."

Robin Sidel reports for the Wall St. Journal on efforts by MasterCard and Visa to ensure merchant compliance with the industry's PCI data security protection rules. Sidel reports that, beginning October 1st, Visa will begin focusing on the largest US merchants - a total of 334 merchants who in aggregate represent nearly 50% of Visa's annual US volume.

• FORUM Credit Union Selects BioPassword's Two-Factor Authentication Solution for Secure Online Banking
  
• New Smart Card Alliance White Paper Gives Government Agencies Tools to Begin Implementing FIPS 201 Compatible PACS Systems
  
• ViVOtech Wins Best Vendor Partner Award from MasterCard
  
• GE Money and PeachDirect Make Luxury Affordable with Consumer Credit Program
  
• Fujitsu and Softex Deliver a Single Solution for Biometric Authentication and Password Management
  
• Visanet Brazil Adopts Welcome's XLS to Make Visa EMV Cards More Exciting and Attractive to Cardholders and Merchants Than Any Other Card Brand
  
• Trends in Bank Fraud: New Fortent White Paper - 'Winning the War Against Financial Fraud' - Outlines Latest Challenges for Banks
  

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Bertrand Moussel, formerly at Oberthur Card Systems, has been named Executive Vice President Sales for Latin America and EMEA and Goh Say Yeow, formerly at Gemalto, has been named Executive Vice President Sales for Asia Pacific at INSIDE Contactless.