We came across a press release late this afternoon from a South Carolina-based supermarket chain - BI-LO/Bruno's - that is intended to address concerns that have surfaced in the media over the last few weeks about gift card fraud.

Contactless News interviews Trevor Pavey, Manager of Contactless Payments, Texas Instruments, about his view of what the future holds for contactless payments - including his top three predictions for 2007: more retailer roll-outs, "cool" new form factors, and greater consumer acceptance.

Mercator Advisory Group has announced a new Prepaid Market Forecast 2006-2009 report including a detailed forecast for both open and closed loop prepaid card segments over the next several years - with specifics on the growth and estimated load volumes in each of 34 prepaid segments.

The latest edition of Trident Capital's newsletter (not yet available online) has arrived with a front-page profile of one of its UK-based portfolio companies, Advanced Payment Solutions. According to Trident, "APS has become the leading provider of prepaid general purpose payment cards to unbanked and underbanked consumers in the UK." APS launched the first general purpose prepaid Chip and PIN payment card in the UK in August 2005 and has recently launched a new Gold Prepaid MasterCard.

On his Online Banking Report blog, Jim Bruene writes about Citibanks' approach to what he calls "True Mobile Banking" - suggesting that the guy to talk to is Sausalito, CA-based mFoundry CEO/Founder Drew Sievers. Jim says he's preparing a mobile banking forecast for the next issue of his Online Banking Report.

Yesterday and today, Goldman Sachs has been hosting its Financial Services CEO Conference in New York. Most of the major bank CEOs - along with other financial service company leaders - have been presenting. As we enjoy seeing (if not listening to) what the bank CEOs are presenting, we've collected a set of links to many of these presentations for your downloading and reading enjoyment.

TowerGroup's Colin Kerr is out with a new report titled "Where's My Payment? Using Logistics Management to Drive an Enterprise View of Payments" - saying that "now is the time for banks to shift their view of payments processing - treating it as an enterprise-wide business rather than a service function."

Despite the proliferation of high speed Internet among U.S. homes, most eCommerce shopping happens during work hours, according to CyberSource.

Bill Me Later sends along the following news about some interesting holiday shopping trends they've noticed this season.

Jessica Guynn writes for the San Francisco Chronicle about ex-PayPal CEO Peter Thiel and the Founders Fund that he runs with former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Guynn notes that "PayPal started out as an encryption product that beamed money between mobile devices before hitting on the online payment business that it ultimately sold to eBay for $1.5 billion."

Visa USA has announced "the launch of its first contactless prepaid cards, providing consumers a faster and more convenient way to pay and offering merchants increased revenue opportunities, increased throughput and improved customer loyalty. MetaBank will be the first financial institution to issue the cards."

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that "passengers on public transport around London could soon be able to make quick, contact-free, cashless payments and travel around the Capital using one card." Barclaycard and Transys, the consortium behind the Oyster smartcard system, have agreed to a three year exclusive relationship to develop a new card that places Oyster and Barclaycard Visa on one piece of plastic. The new card will also include Visa's 'wave and pay' contactless payment technology for making purchases of less than £10.

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Marlene Maxon has been named senior vice president of marketing and James DeVoglaer has been named vice president of information technology for NetSpend Corporation.
• Kim Hosmer has been named senior vice president of corporate marketing for Experian Americas. Previously, Hosmer was vice president of global marketing at First Data Corporation, Western Union.
• Stewart Peretz has been named Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Avalon International, a software manufacturer specializing in Payment Solutions Built for Check 21.

ClickandBuy has announced ClickandBuy Version 2.0 - what the company says is "the latest version of its digital payments platform, which will enable merchants to provide more billing options and will allow consumers to create new accounts where they can hold money on balance in a personal ClickandBuy account. Once the account is set, users are able to jump to different merchants within the ClickandBuy network."

On the Hitwise blog, LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise posts some interesting numbers about traffic to the Toys R Us website vs. competitors. Two weeks ago, she reports that the Toys R Us site was the leading source of traffic to Google Checkout.

Shanghai Daily reports that China UnionPay has sold additional shares to several Chinese banks and may also sell shares to overseas financial investors.

Anil Mascarenhas of India Infoline has posted an interview with Raj Jain, vice chair and managing director of RS Software, a software solutions provider to a number of clients in the electronic payments space. Jain says RS Software is "in fact the first Indian full-services provider for the electronic payment industry covering Consulting, Enterprise Applications Integration, and Applications Management & Outsourcing."

• American Express Incentive Services Adds Electronic Solutions Card to DirectSpend(SM) Prepaid Lineup
• Wincor Nixdorf Deploys ACI Software for Transaction Processing
• myFICO.com Introduces “One-Stop Shop” for Loan and Credit Information
• Corillian Signs Synovus for Online Banking Authentication
• Digimarc Launches New Service to Improve States’ Ability to Identify Driver License Fraud
• Cogneto Provides Clarity on FFIEC Online Banking Guidelines
• Goldleaf Financial Solutions Partners with Diverse Computer Marketers, Inc.
• eFunds Names Dr. Ángel Cabrera to Board of Directors