Clint Riley writes for the Wall St. Journal about the success that insurers have been having entering banking. He features MetLife Bank in the story saying that the bank has "quietly has deployed bankers, rather than insurance agents, in MetLife's insurance offices in 12 U.S. markets."

Glenbrook's Jim Salters files this report: Even if you've been following the authentication space and the industry dash to comply with the FFIEC Authentication Guidance, it's likely that you've never heard of Arcot. But that may soon change. According to the company, a major bank in the US will soon announce their plans to deploy ArcotID technology to its millions of retail banking customers. And while this might sound like just another customer win for an authentication solution provider, this appears to represent a dramatically different authentication strategy than we've seen so far from a large US bank, with interesting implications.   » Continue Reading

Last Wednesday, PayPal announced several settlement agreements. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is hailing an agreement he reached with online payment service PayPal (PDF) as "a landmark victory for millions of consumers and businesses using the online service to send and receive payment for goods and services worldwide."   » Continue Reading

Bank of America and Visa USA have announced a six-year partnership agreement, "renewing their long-standing relationship through 2011 and keeping Bank of America the largest issuer of Visa-branded payment cards." The agreement will be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2006 and run through Dec. 31, 2011.   » Continue Reading

Charles Arthur writes for the Guardian about "clickprints" - "a unique pattern of web surfing behavior based on actions such as the number of pages viewed per session, the number of minutes spent on each page, the time or day of the week the page is visited, and so on" - based upon research by Professor Balaji Padmanabhan, at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Catherine Yang, of the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis.

Telenor and the Norwegian banking industry have announced they have entered into a "unique agreement to make life simpler for millions of Norwegians by making banking and payment services available via a mobile phone, anytime and anywhere."   » Continue Reading

VICOR has announced the findings of its first-annual Corporate Payment Progress Index (CPPI) concluding that the corporate payment industry is rapidly moving toward electronic processing of business-to-business transactions. According to VICOR, the CPPI is the first and only industry metric that quantitatively tracks and measures the overall progression of corporate payments.   » Continue Reading

Bitpass has announced its next-generation digital commerce engine, which the company says "allows merchants, publishers, marketers and consumers to fully capitalize on digital content."   » Continue Reading

• U.S. Bank Offers Northwest Airlines WorldPerks Visa Credit Card Members Flexible New Benefits
• USA Today: Schools give student data to banks
• American Express Incentive Services Introduces New DirectSpend(SM) Prepaid Cards
• American Express Introduces Merchant Management Services to Its Patent Licensing Program
• Financial Institutions Using Fingerprint Authentication for Secure Access and Compliance, Eliminating Password Management Problems
• MoneyGram Global Network Reaches Milestone; Money Transfer Agent Locations Hit 100,000
• Fiserv’s ACCEL/Exchange® Helps Canadian Financial Institutions Fight PIN Debit and ATM Fraud
• MarketWatch: Rewards roller coaster - Tips for navigating the complex world of credit-card rewards programs
• >BLM Technologies and LendingTools.com Join Forces to Facilitate Community Banks’ Move to Remote Deposit Capture
• Alpine Bank Acquires Saylent’s Y-Debit Solution to Manage Debit Cards; Increase Debit Card Loyalty Program
• Chase Expands New York’s Most Convenient ATM Network to 2,200

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Linh Huynh has been named Business and Strategic Development Director for the Americas and Lim Boon Heong has been named Marketing & Business Development Director for the NFC Business Line in Asia Pacific for INSIDE Contactless.