YeePay has announced it has partnered with China Unicom, the nation's second largest mobile operator, to promote mobile top-up service in Beijing, adding support for two more banks and launching online service for mobile top-up.

This week's Economist contains an article titled "The end of the cash era" (subscription required) and subtitled "Welcome the coming age of electronic money, but safeguard the anonymity of cash". A interesting quote: "Some Japanese merchants have already begun to offer discounts to people using electronic cash. Others will follow."

An editorial in the Spartanburg (SC) Herald-Journal questions whether it's right for banks in the US to be issuing credit cards to illegal immigrants - saying that the "Bank of America has found a segment of the market that isn't currently being exploited by credit cards." The Wall St. Journal reported earlier this week on Bank of America's card issuing efforts for immigrants.

In an article titled 'New Credit Cards May Leak Personal Information," Erik Larkin writes for PC World writes about the privacy aspects of new contactless credit cards - including a discussion of new "second generation" specifications from Visa that require the issuer not include the cardholder name in the data transmitted by the contactless card's chip.