Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes: "We just finished holding our 7th public "Payments Boot Camp". At this week's session we had a great and diverse group of payments professionals - including people from banks, payments providers, technology companies, eCommerce merchants, investment firms and law firms. We're always fascinated to watch the shifting topics which absorb the interest of the audience. This session the emerging infrastructure of the prepaid card industry was particularly a hot topic - who the big players are and how they fit into the value chain. Check to ACH conversion, check imaging, and "Check/ACH Convergence" made for a lively discussion (and lots of boxes and arrows!). More than in our earlier sessions, we had a group that already had a good understanding of PayPal and its business model - maybe it's time we move PayPal from our "Emerging Payments Systems" section into our discussion of "Core Payment Systems"! Our next Payments Boot Camp session is being held next month - November 7th and 8th - in Denver. Please think about joining us."

Eric Grover, a partner at Menlo Park-based Intrepid Ventures, writes a viewpoint column for the American Banker today about what lessons Visa can learn from MasterCard's IPO completed earlier this year - suggesting that "Visa can improve upon MasterCard's experience, particularly in dealing with legal liability and corporate governance, aligning the interests of managers and owners, presenting a cohesive global story, and differentiating its strategy from MasterCard's."

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below. Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights." The New York Times says "microcredit, also known as microfinance, is the practice of giving or loaning seed money for small businesses to people -- often women traditionally excluded from normal financial channels -- in villages or towns across the developing world, on the theory that economic strength in a country or region can be built from the grass-roots level up."

Martyn Williams provides an update for InfoWorld on NTT DoCoMo's DCMX payment service in Japan - reporting that it has enrolled over 860,000 people to the service. "The system relies on a non-contact smart card platform developed by Sony Corp. called Felica. Payment is made by placing the phone close to a reader/writer terminal in participating stores. There are already around 60,000 such terminals in place and NTT DoCoMo expects this to more than double by April 2007."

Dan Balaban writes for Card Technology about near field communications technology for mobile payments - and asks whether this time the mobile network operators and financial institutions can find enough common ground to work together - saying "as the NFC payment pilots continue to launch and thoughts turn to possible rollouts, the oft- debated question of “who owns the customer” continues to rear up."

Consumer Reports has some advice for consumers about using debit cards - saying "you should get the most out of it, understand the trade-offs, and be aware of the gotchas." Among the recommendations: only use debit cards with Visa or MasterCard logos (to minimize liability) and don't choose a bank or debit card on the basis of reward programs (because it could take years to actually benefit).

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