Obopay has announced it has partnered with Yodlee to facilitate instant bank account verification, letting Obopay customers immediately link their existing bank account to Obopay.

MasterCard has announced the MasterCard Payment Gateway - calling it "a flexible enterprise-wide payment processing platform for routing commercial payments between buyers, suppliers and their financial institutions." According to MasterCard, the gateway "gives companies a streamlined total payables solution designed to increase productivity and profits with enhanced security, while simplifying the entire payments process."

First Data’s STAR Network has announced highlights from its 2006/2007 Consumer Payments Usage and Segmentation Study that "includes a segmentation analysis of specific market groups based on their payment tendencies at the point of sale. The six segments found in the research include the signature debit, PIN debit, cash/PIN debit, cash, check and credit card segments. The segments — determined by an analysis of payment behavior, demographics, attitudinal characteristics, payment preference and value-based characteristics — provide a new way to look at the point of sale payments landscape."

NYCE Payments Network has announced it will offer mobile banking and payments services to financial institutions — calling it "the first commercially available service from a U.S. debit card payments network." Monitise Americas and NYCE's parent, Metavante, have signed an agreement through which NYCE will deliver the Monitise Americas platform directly over its existing network architecture.

Experian has announced that it will offer "the option to freeze credit reports to consumers nationwide. Beginning Nov. 1, Experian will allow any consumer across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories to place a freeze on their credit report. A credit file freeze prevents new creditors from accessing the credit file without the consumer's consent."

Gemalto has announced a partnership with Taiwan’s Far EasTone Telecommunications Ltd. to implement "Asia’s first mobile contactless SIM-based NFC (Near Field Communications) trial. The trial, which will start in November and be rolled out in phases, is part of the GSM Association’s 'Pay-Buy Mobile' initiative which seeks to define a common global approach to using NFC technology to link mobile devices with payment and contactless systems."

Evan Schuman writes on his Storefront Backtalk blog about efforts by the National Retail Federation's CIO David Hogan to rethink the assumptions behind the Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard. According to Hogan, "the bottom line is that it makes more sense for credit card companies to protect their data from thieves by keeping it in a relatively few secure locations than to expect millions of merchants scattered across the nation to lock up their data for them." More details about the NRF's recommendations are on the NRF web site including a letter from Hogan to the PCI Standards Council.

Yahoo!, eBay and PayPal have announced a collaborative effort to better protect consumers against fraudulent e-mails and the dangerous scams known as phishing attacks. Starting today, eBay and PayPal customers worldwide using Yahoo! Mail will have a safer e-mail experience – they will begin receiving fewer fake e-mails claiming to be sent by eBay and PayPal. Yahoo! Mail is the first Web mail service to block these types of malicious messages for eBay and PayPal through the use of DomainKeys e-mail authentication technology. More commentary on this news by PayPal's CISO, Michael Barrett, over on the PayPal Blog.

Guardian Analytics, a fraud prevention solution provider for protecting online channels, has announced the completion of $4.5 million in Series B financing from Foundation Capital of Menlo Park, Calif. "The company will use the Series B funding to launch the company and its fraud prevention solution into the market and quickly expand product development, marketing and sales efforts."

APACS is advising consumers in the UK "to be mindful of the postal strikes over the next week as important post could be delayed that could have a knock on affect on finances."

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