Pay By Touch has announced that Citibank Singapore has rolled out Pay By Touch's biometric payment services to its Citibank Clear Platinum cardholders. "Effective today, cardholders are invited to enroll in the biometric credit card service, and pay for goods and services with the touch of a finger."

American Express has announced that its charge cardmembers will be able to physically include a gift insurance reminder with gifts by downloading the new American Express Gift Insurance Receipt that "communicates the protections offered by American Express." The receipt will be available for downloading from November 15 through December 31 at http://www.800thecard.com.

The 2006 American Express Gift Card survey of 1013 shoppers concludes that, for the first time, "gift cards will supplant toys, games, music and movies as the gift of choice, and will rival even the perennial favorite, apparel, as the gift to give and get this holiday season."

CheckFree and Firethorn Holdings have announced an exclusive partnership agreement to deliver mobile banking and bill payment services to financial institutions.

GE Money has announced that, "in an effort to educate consumers with need-to-know information about credit, budgeting, mortgages and protection against identity theft, Everyday Money (www.everydaymoney.org) launched today. Everyday Money is a consumer-friendly web site written in uncomplicated language. It contains dynamic, user-friendly interactive tools to help consumers learn about and improve their everyday interactions with money and finances."

Sam’s Club and MasterCard Worldwide have announced that Sam's Club will begin accepting MasterCard credit cards today for payment at all U.S, Puerto Rico and Canada Sam’s Club locations. Sam's Club has annual revenues of about $40 billion per year - some of which will now be captured as MasterCard purchase volume. Until today, the retailer had only accepted credit cards issued by Discover and its own private label cards. According to the press release "now all MasterCard cardholders, both consumers and business owners, with a Sam’s Club Membership, have access to exceptional values on a multitude of goods and services as well as affordable luxury merchandise." Robin Sidel And Kris Hudson report on the news for the this morning's Wall St. Journal saying that the deal for MasterCard is "a coup in its rivalry with Visa USA Inc." as Sam's is not also accepting Visa's credit cards.

VeriSign has announced a deal to enable purchases at Coca-Cola vending machines via mobile phones in Austria. Now, over two million mobilkom austria and ONE wireless customers have access to the mobile payment function at vending machines across Austria.

The American Banker and Financial Insights have released their third annual FinTech rankings of the top technology providers to the financial services industry worldwide.

XBux has announced the success of their XBux Prepaid Card Program that "aggregates sponsors, promoters and competitors to simplify reward delivery." According to the company, the XBux Prepaid Card Program, powered by Ecount, enables immediate, streamlined payments to competitors.

David Joachim writes for the New York Times about remote deposit capture. "While checks do not necessarily clear any faster using remote deposit, the practice does help eliminate “desk float,” or the delay between trips to the bank."

"It was less than a year ago that a landmark transaction at the famous Macy’s Herald Square in New York City kicked off the first phase of a reciprocal acceptance agreement between Discover Financial Services LLC, a business unit of Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), and China Unionpay (CUP), China’s only national bankcard payment network. Today, a single swipe of a Discover Card marks the second phase of the agreement, signifying the acceptance of Discover Network cards at more than 480,000 merchant locations and 90,000 ATMs across China."

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