Prosper has introduced its first monthly People-to-People Lending Market Survey that provides key statistics including: membership and loan volume statistics, marketplace returns; borrower rates; mix of prime, near prime and sub-prime loans, noteworthy marketplace statistics/trends and a market commentary by Chris Larsen, Chief Executive Officer of Prosper.

NACHA has announced the fee structure for its online payments pilot, Secure Vault Payments (SVP). According to NACHA, "the pilot, scheduled to go live the first quarter of 2008, will enable consumers to initiate private and secure payments for purchases and bill payments through their financial institutions' online banking platforms. During the pilot, participating financial institutions will authenticate consumers and provide real-time payment authorizations for ACH Network transactions to the participating online businesses."

According to our calculations, on a $50 purchase, the fees would be: 1) an authorization fee of $0.675 paid from the merchant's bank to the consumer's bank, a $0.06 switch fee paid by the merchant's bank, another $0.06 switch fee paid by the consumer's bank, a $0.01 network fee paid to NACHA by the merchant's bank and another $0.01 network fee paid to NACHA by the consumer's bank. The total of all the fees here - not including any mark-up by the merchant's bank to the merchant - would be $0.815 or about 1.63% of the purchase amount. Read on for the details of NACHA's announcement.

Update - September 18, 2007: We spoke with NACHA this morning about our calculations above. While the total fees collected from all parties involved on a $50 transaction are the $0.815 shown above, the fees charged to merchants for a Secure Vault Payments transaction would be the authorization fee of $0.675 paid by the merchant's bank, plus the $0.06 switch fee paid by the merchant's bank, plus the $0.01 network fee to NACHA paid by the merchant's bank. Those merchant-side fees total $0.745 on a $50 purchase or about 1.49% of the purchase amount. The merchant's bank will, of course, need to charge additional processing fees to the merchant for providing the Secure Vault Payments service which would be over and above those "wholesale" fees.   » Continue Reading

Consumer Reports has published an article titled "The dark secrets of debit" that explores the growth in debit card usage, explains the difference between signature and PIN-basd debit, and points out how banks are making money by not declining transactions but, rather, charging overdraft fees when funds aren't available in the consumer's account.

Jane J. Kim reports for the Wall St. Journal about plans by Capital One to launch a money market account soon that will offer rewards points based upon a customer's average monthly balance.

Monitise plc and Metavante have announced the formation of a joint venture company, Monitise Americas LLC, to pursue building a mobile banking and payments ecosystem for the United States. Plans for the joint venture were originally announced by the companies in March 2007.   » Continue Reading

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