The FiveCentNickel blog has a useful post about the personal finance things you can do with your smartphone while on the go - some SMS-based, some browser-based.

The full text of TJX data breach analysis report produced the Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta is available online.

VeriFone has announced that its annual Retail Payments Conference will be held October 17-19 at the Don Cesar Resort in St. Pete Beach, FL. "The Retail Payments Conference is the only event that focuses on payment security, payment standards and emerging payment trends from a retailer and a retail systems integration perspective."

The American Bankers Association reports today that credit card loan delinquencies fell slightly in the second quarter of 2007, according to its Consumer Credit Delinquency Bulletin. "Late payments on credit cards were 4.39 percent of all accounts in the second quarter, compared to 4.41 percent in the first quarter of this year (seasonally adjusted). The ABA report defines late payments as 30 days or more overdue."

Ana Escalante blogs about attending a conference last week on mobile banking - and learning about the mobile banking service in the Philippines called G-Cash.

Visa and Experian announced an alliance to create unique risk management products for financial institutions. According to the companies, "the alliance intends to deliver a series of jointly developed risk management products designed to help financial institutions reduce credit and fraud risk losses."

With the headline "Banking fees soar again in 9th Annual Checking Study", Bankrate.com has published the results of its latest survey of fees associated with bank checking accounts. Among its findings, the survey reported that "the average cost of a bounced check, often referred to as a nonsufficient funds fee, climbed 3 percent since last year's survey to a record high of $28.23."

Visa has announced the availability of the Visa Micro Tag, a new key fob payment device embedded with Visa payWave, Visa's contactless technology feature. The Visa Micro Tag is designed to easily attach to a key ring, and allows cardholders to pay by simply waving their Visa Micro Tag in front of a contactless payment terminal without the need to physically swipe or insert the device into a point-of-sale terminal.

Is there a positive business case for bankers to spend money on enabling mobile banking services for their customers? In an article titled 'Mobile Banking: Where's the Business Case?", Karen Epper Hoffman writes for BAI's Banking Strategies magazine about the question. A sidebar discusses one of the key cost drivers for bankers - whether to take a web browser-based approach to mobile banking or the "on deck" rich application approach that involves having to work with the wireless operators. Jim Bruene says the business case question really doesn't matter - writing that "banks have no choice in the mobile matter."

Jeffrey Selingo reports for the New York Times about merchant frustrations with the costs of credit card acceptance - as "small businesses in particular complain that their profits are squeezed by card-related fees."

Joseph Pereira writes for the Wall St. Journal about the findings of a Canadian government investigation looking into the payment card security breach at TJX.

• Equifax Fraud Solutions Help Businesses Win the Fight Against Fraud
• TSYS Acquiring Solutions to Provide Merchant Processing Services to Veracity Payment Solutions
• Fremont Bank Selects Laru Corporation’s ACH Clarity to Monitor ACH Network Traffic
• CreditCards.com Provides Credit Card Search Engine to ShopLocal
• PayPal Pay Later Now Supported By AspDotNetStorefront
• Barclays and US Airways Launch the New US Airways Dividend Miles MasterCard BusinessCard
• TransUnion Expands Authorized User Solution Offerings to Help Financial Industry Assess Customers' True Risk Throughout Credit Lifecycle
• ING to Power All U.S. Operations with Wind Power
• Frost & Sullivan: "On-the-Go" Access to Financial Services Drives Growth of Mobile Payment and Banking Services
• First Data Integrates Austin Logistics' Predictive Analytic EarlyDetection System(TM) Into Its VisionPLUS(R) Payment Processing System in China
• Bankers On First Data Deal Set To Close Books On Loan

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• The Clearing House Payments Company today announced that Senior Vice President Susan Long will manage both paper check and electronic check clearing services on Oct. 1 and that Senior Vice President Jerry Milano, head of SVPCO Check Services, will retire on March 31, 2008. Long, who joined The Clearing House 14 years ago, had been running SVPCO’s electronic check services.