According to the Merchants Payments Coalition and a poll they commissioned, US consumers "overwhelmingly believe that Visa and MasterCard should disclose the $30 billion in hidden "interchange" fees they charge each year and consumers want Congress to do something about it."

Joris Evers of CNET News.com interviews RSA president Art Coviello during this week's annual RSA Conference being held in San Francisco. Coviello comments that "if you look at the three biggest Internet banks in the country, they way they have responded to the FFIEC recommendation for having strong authentication in online transactions, each one is using a different type of RSA technology."

Titled "Outrunning the Regulators," this month's Resilience Report from strategy+business and Booz Allen Hamilton by Joni Bessler, Debra Banning, and Roman Regelman discusses the FFIEC guidelines regarding authentication and recommends that "banks institute a mechanism for self-analysis and self-improvement that allows them to anticipate their future security needs. In doing so, they will meet their current burden of compliance, lessen the impact of any future regulatory guidance, reduce their risk exposure, and address customers’ concerns about the security of online banking."

TechNewsWorld carries an interview with PayPal's Todd Pearson by Kelly Shermach of E-Commerce Times about the company's future, and online payment and security.

• PayPal Teams With the City of New Orleans in Support of 2007 Mardi Gras
• ACCENT Intermedia to Launch Collegiate Branded Gift Cards
• VeriFone's MX870 Selected by KeyBank to Speed Customer Identification and Enhance Customer Experience
• BBC: Chip-and-pin weakness is revealed

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Max Narro has been named senior vice president, Product, Marketing and Industry at First Data Resources.