The Deloitte Center for Banking Solutions has published a hew paper titled “Is the retail payments industry headed for disruption?” . The paper "focuses on how retail payments for consumers and merchants is in overshoot and vulnerable to “disruptive innovation” — our term for an innovation that changes the competitive framework within an industry. The study also provides insights on how retail payment players can leverage their brand recognition, infrastructure, volume and profitability to help turn the search-to-purchase experience to their advantage."

Edgar, Dunn and Company's latest INSIGHT newsletter is now available with a feature article titled "The Race is On in Prepaid" by Mark Beresford and Steve Karp. "While no prepaid product has reached any significant level of dominance, important incremental victories are being won. Likewise, enough prepaid products have misfired at this point that we can see some lessons in the experiences of the non-starters."

Grameen American and Experian have announced the two companies have established "a unique data reporting relationship to support Grameen America's business" that will "enable Grameen America's borrowers to establish their credit files and will provide the foundation for building the borrowers' credit scores allowing access to financial services previously not available."

I recently purchased an Apple iPod touch - and when it arrived a couple of days ago I was struck by how it looked a bit like a large-ish credit card - especially when turned on its side. Got me wondering what this fascinating chunk of technology might look like - and be capable of - in another 5 or 10 years.

APACS, the UK payments association, has launched two new advice guides "offering practical advice on choosing a plastic card for a teenager or young adult. One of the guides, Choosing cards - a guide for the under 18s , is aimed at young people, and the other, Using cards - a guide for parents , is for their parents. These form part of a series of consumer advice guides produced by APACS aimed at simplifying personal finance."

In an article titled 'For-Credit Course", Rob Walker writes for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine about Chase Card Services "+1" credit card - offered primarily by way of a sponsored group setup on Facebook called Chase +1. Chase limits access to the group so that only Facebook members who are part of college networks can join. Chase also has a Chase Credit Education group on Facebook that is open membership.

Public Citizen has published a report titled "The Arbitration Trap: How Credit Card Companies Ensnare Consumers" (PDF). In a press release, the organization said "Public Citizen pulls back the curtain to reveal the cozy and dangerous relationship between credit card companies and the private arbitration firms that decide their binding mandatory arbitration cases. The result of an eight-month investigation, the report provides, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of data on nearly 34,000 arbitration cases, and in-depth stories of credit cardholders and their struggles in this nightmarish system."

AT&T has added a page to its website describing the mobile banking services it is introducing in partnership with Firethorn as part of a strategic alliance announced last November. The page features a banner saying "Safe Banking on the Go", emphasizing security and lists BancorpSouth as currently offering mobile banking with Wachovia, SunTrust, Synovus, and 1st Bank listed as "coming soon". Brandon McGee writes a bit about it on the Mobile Money & Banking blog.

Julie Schieffer writes for Financial News about steps being taken to improve the fraud risk management of the automated clearing house system in the US.

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