A research report titled "Crediting Debit: How Debit Cards Will Grow in a Changing Environment" from TowerGroup concludes that "the debit card's increasingly dominant position as a payment vehicle will continue through 2009 and beyond. Prepaid cards will also continue their rapid growth as a result of foreclosures affecting credit scores and consumers continuing to require the benefits of payment card access."

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes: At Glenbrook, we often conclude one of our Payments Boot Camps with an informal poll of participants on their favored cash replacement form factor (mobile phone, fingerprint, etc.) At a private payments workshop in San Francisco last week, we were surprised by the strength of that group's response in favor of fingerprint. We decided to test it out (still pretty informally!) with a quick Facebook poll.

LogicaCMG has announced "a pilot project at a branch of the Dutch supermarket, C1000 in Molenaarsgraaf, near Rotterdam where 100 customers will be able to pay for their shopping by mobile phone. This six-month pilot is an open innovation initiative led by LogicaCMG and Schuitema, owners of the C1000 supermarket chain, in close cooperation with Rabobank, KPN, NXP Semiconductors and RFID Platform Nederland."

Chase Paymentech has announced an "expanded, multi-year contract to provide payment processing services for all Sears Holdings Corporation retail businesses, which include Sears, Kmart and Lands' End."

Bankrate.com has published its Fall 2007 Debit Card Study - exploring debit card reward programs, fees for PIN debit usage, Capital One's decoupled debit, etc.

BasePoint Analytics has announced BasePoint Early Payment Default (EPD), a statistical pattern recognition score designed to assess the risk of early payment default in mortgage applications and loans. EPD alert uses advanced analytic scoring technology that enables mortgage lenders and investment banks to score and identify each loan’s early payment default risk in real-time during the underwriting process before a new loan is funded, and before it is purchased on the secondary market.

In a post titled "Merchants will pay 7-9% for a full payment service which delivers sales vs. 2% interchange for payment alone", Aneace Haddad blogs about last week's Welcome 2007 User Summit in Dubai where "several banks gave presentations which showed how they were achieving impressive results by enveloping the payment transaction within an overall service that solves real problems for merchants (like identifying and attracting infrequent customers and encouraging them to spend more, which is a really big problem)."

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• New York Times: Nothing Says ‘Buy’ Like ‘Free Shipping’
• PayByCash™ Accepts MOL International's ePoints, Extending Secure Payment Options to the Growing E-Commerce Markets in Malaysia and the Pacific Rim
• Bank fees in NH keep on coming