Javelin Strategy and Research has released a new report titled "Telephone Banking Authentication: Securing a Popular yet Vulnerable Channel" that concludes that "weak authentication measures continue to be utilized for phone banking." According to the report "a majority of top 23 US financial institutions need to strengthen authentication methods for the phone, with over 1 in 4 still asking for a full Social Security number, and only 8% requiring a password or answer to challenge questions."

PAYjr has announced a strategic marketing partnership with the Credit Union Association of New Mexico (CUANM) that enables CUANM to offer a co-branded version of the PAYjr Programs to their existing customer base of more than 500 credit unions as well as future clients of the association's CU Succeed youth financial education program.

Visa has released its global Commercial Consumption Expenditure (CCE) measurement for 2006. "Using the CCE index, a standardized metric to track business and government spending globally, Visa Commercial calculates global CCE in 2006 to be US$66.7 trillion, which represents an increase of 8.0 percent over 2005 expenditures of US $61.8 trillion."

Dave Birch has posted the final agenda for the Tenth Annual Digital Money Forum being held next week in London. He's put together a great list of speakers for this year's event.

• Learn.Equifax.com Web Site Empowers Consumers to Make Informed Financial Decisions
• Chase Launches New Gold MasterCard in Canada
• Bank2Business(R) Now Includes Experian's Small-Business Scoring and Business Authentication
• MasterCard & USA Technologies Expand MasterCard(R) PayPass(TM) e-Port Deployment to Include Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Co.