The Mercatory Advisory Group has published a new report titled "Business Models and Revenue Streams in Merchant Acquiring: Beyond the Monthly Residual Check" that "focuses on the state of the acquiring market & discusses the market strategy of the industry's most successful players."   » Continue Reading

Mercator Advisory Group has published a new report titled "The ATM Turns 40 - Time For a Change" that "evaluates the current ATM environment and the value chain of participants as it exists today and the future of this ubiquitous self-service device."   » Continue Reading

Yodlee has announced a new SMS-based mobile banking capability for its Yodlee Mobile solution, saying it makes "mobile banking and payments easily accessible for the 124MM U.S. mobile SMS/text messaging users." Previously, Yodlee Mobile supported only mobile browser based access to banking sites.   » Continue Reading

Simone Baribeau writes for The Christian Science Monitor about how faster check clearing times are leading to situations where consumers believe checks they've deposited are good when they're not. "Federal law requires that banks tell consumers their funds are available, says Susan Grant, director of the National Consumers League's (NCL) fraud center, but nothing prevents a bank from telling customers that it may not have verified that the check has been honored."

A new report from Aite Group title "Small-Business Strategies of the 30 Largest U.S. Banks: Closing the Gap Between Bank Offerings and Customer Needs" explores "the key small-business strategies and IT priorities of large U.S. banks. The report findings are based on a survey of 16 of the 30 largest U.S. banks. The report addresses issues such as how banks segment customers, which products are used most often by the small-business segment, which tools are in place to increase cross-selling, which technologies will be deployed, and how these technologies are being chosen."   » Continue Reading

• Visa Brings Olympic Voices to Help Kids Play Every Day and Jump Start Their Olympic Dreams
• Postilion Solutions for Financial Institutions Receive Visa Payment Application Security Validation
• Australia: Mystery bugs bite online banking
• Power Financial Credit Union Introduces Cash Back Checking, Making Free Checking Obsolete!
• TechCrunch: Prosper’s P2P Lending Spreads To Asia
• Computerworld: Breaches Pushing Retailers to Adopt PCI
• USA Today: 5 questions ... for MasterCard CEO Robert Selander