Cellular South and Obopay have announced the availability of Obopay's mobile payments solution on Cellular South handsets. With Obopay, Cellular South wireless customers can now instantly and effortlessly receive, send and spend money directly from their wireless device to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

The Clearing House and BITS have announced that member banks of BITS Payments Strategy Steering Committee (PSSC) have moved their payments initiatives to The Clearing House’s Strategic forum to create a single bank-driven focal point for payments issues for the financial services industry.

Visa USA has announced a five-year agreement with ADP Employer Services to offer Visa-branded payroll cards to its clients. According to Visa, "the agreement reflects the two industry leaders’ commitment to grow prepaid card solutions that offer convenience and cost savings for businesses and their employees. The Visa branded ADP Total Pay card is issued by a number of Visa member financial institutions."

Tony Adams reports for the Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer about the question of whether Synovus might decide that TSYS would be better equipped to support future growth as a separate standalone company. Although TSYS is already a public company, Synovus currently owns over 80 percent of TSYS' stock.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has announced that the financial services industry, Internet security companies and law enforcement have joined forces to co-host the first Counter eCrime Operations Summit (CeCOS) in San Francisco, California, May 30-31, 2007.

ExxonMobil, along with TIO Networks Corporation and NetSpend Corporation, has announced the launch of the TIO Prepaid MasterCard at participating Exxon and Mobil convenience store locations across the United States. The card is issued by MetaBank.

• Vodafone’s Elisa Renews Contract With MACH For Financial Clearing & Settlement And Data Clearing
• XIRING is supplying the Royal Bank of Scotland Group with strong authentication solution for online banking
• Twenty-Three Additional Gaming Properties to Begin Using Global Cash Access (GCA) To Provide Patrons with State-of-the-Art Access to Cash

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Moin Moinuddin has been named Industry Architect focusing on Retail and Payments at Microsoft Corporation
• Bryan Childerhouse has been named Director, Channel Development, for Chase Paymentech.