Netbanker's Jim Bruene blogs about how finally there was an article in the Wall St. Journal earlier this week about some of the harsher realities of moving from paper to electronic statements. Yes, there are some very real downsides to electronic - even though banks and brokerage houses would like us to all just accept their seemingly endless offers to go paperless. As Jim points out, the issue is simple - they need to offer us lifetime statement archives. Maybe the banks need to sign up for Amazon's S3 if they can't manage providing the online storage themselves?

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson provides the following update on our Payments Boot Camp program: "Glenbrook just wrapped up our Payments Boot Camps for the 2006-2007 "school year". We had lively sessions in New York City last week and in the California this week." Click here to continue reading.

The Economist takes a look at Google Checkout vs. PayPal - saying "Google's foray into payments may prove testing for PayPal, but it looks like being great for e-commerce in general."

Lisa Sanders reports for Advertising Age on the move by Anne Saunders from senior VP-global brand strategy and marketing at Starbucks to Bank of America.

The U.S. Departments of Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security have joined together to issue the "2007 National Money Laundering Strategy, a report detailing continued efforts to dismantle money laundering and terrorist financing networks and bring these criminals to justice."

A new Packaged Facts report concludes that total contactless credit and debit cards in U.S. circulation will reach 109 million by 2011. According to the report, "with the fast-paced American lifestyle continuing to put pressure on retailers to serve customers more efficiently, and card brands such as MasterCard and Visa pushing for bigger slices of the small-ticket payments pie traditionally reserved for cash, the time is finally right for large-scale penetration of smart cards in the payments market."