Elena Malykhina blogs for Information Week about what banks and their partners are doing to secure mobile banking services.

A new survey sponsored by CheckFree and conducted by Harris Interactive and the Marketing Workshop concludes that, for the first time, consumers in Internet-connected households are paying more of their bills online than by paper check. "Online payments made up 39 percent of the total volume of bill payments among online households, an increase of 4 percent over the previous December 2005 survey. In contrast, the volume of checks sent through the mail fell 4 percent to 34 percent of the overall volume."   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Jay DeWitt will be speaking at two conferences over the next couple of months. First is a workshop titled "Mastering E-Payments and Web Security" being held on June 4th prior to the Internet Retailer 2007 Conference in San Jose, California. Jay's on of three instructors for the session "Beyond Credit Cards: E-Checks, PayPal, Google Checkout & Much More".

Next up, Jay will be presenting on "RFP Best Practices" at the Direct Response Forum on Monday afternoon, August 6, 2007, in Seattle, Washington. At this session, you'll learn how merchants can produce an effective RFP and learn from industry experts on the do's and don'ts in order to maximize the best results.

Financial Insights has announced the results of a consumer survey of over 1,000 U.S. adults revealing their usage of a variety of new and emerging payment methods - finding a downward shift in the use of closed-loop (single merchant) gift cards, a shift to open-loop (multi merchant) gift cards, the rapid adoption of online payment security systems, and the decline in the influence of rewards programs in card usage outside of a niche demographic.   » Continue Reading

Ann Keeton reports for the Wall St. Journal about the expanding use of fingerprint biometrics. She reports that about "10% of new laptops sold in the U.S. come equipped with tiny, inexpensive fingerprint censors, eliminating the need for people to remember passwords."

Gillian Shaw writes for the Vancouver Sun about the increase in debit card fraud in Canada - saying it has "more that doubled during the past three years, reaching close to $100 million in 2006."