Visa USA has announced results of a study of generational spending preferences that it says "debunks stereotypes and highlights the impact and consequences of one generation passing the mantle of economic influence to the next."

According to the study, "an overwhelming majority of both Baby Boomers (79 percent) and Echo Boomers (74 percent) believe that our society will one day operate without cash and checks and will conduct all payment transactions electronically."

7-Eleven has announced that its stores have begun selling the Vanilla Visa Gift Card issued by Elan Financial Services and distributed by InComm.

The Smart Card Alliance Contactless Payments Council has announced new resources for merchants wanting to know more about accepting contactless payments. A new white paper titled "Accepting Contactless Payments: A Merchant Guide" (PDF) and a presentation titled "Contactless Payment Deployment: Merchant Implementation Guide" (PDF) are available free of charge online.

In an article titled 'In Online World, Pocket Change Is Not Easily Spent", Dan Mitchell writes for the New York Times about micropayments - noting that successful approaches seem to based upon aggregation of transactions, helping to reduce the payment system costs by consolidating multiple small purchases into a single, larger purchase amount transaction. Earlier efforts that involved prepaid-like characteristics (with consumers pre-funding an account) have failed.

Elizabeth Douglass of the Los Angeles TImes reports on how more gas stations are offering consumers discounts for paying with cash instead of credit cards. According to Douglass, the merchants are trying "to dodge the rising fees that credit card companies tack onto transactions."

Rebecca Jones writes for Denver's Rocky Mountain News about consumer attitudes toward online banking - reporting the fears about security remain the "No. 1 roadblock." She reports that "online banking's greatest advantages - easy access and paperless transactions - also are its greatest liabilities in the minds of some."

Valerie Bauerlein writes a page 1 story for the Wall St. Journal about Bank of America and its CEO Ken Lewis. She writes about last week's investment of $2 billion by Bank of America in Countrywide Financial saying that investment "helped stabilize the credit markets and gave Bank of America a foothold in the nation's biggest mortgage lender."

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We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• David E. Kaplan has been named Chief Financial Officer of Arcot Systems. Prior to joining Arcot, he served as chief financial officer at Dragon Media Online, Inc.
• Trent Sorbe has been named Senior Vice President of Credit Products for Meta Payment Systems. Sorbe previously served as president of Fishback Financial Corporation’s national products group in Brookings, South Dakota.