This holiday shopping season, gift cards are hot, but shopping for your spouse is not - according to PayPal's 2007 Holiday Survey conducted in October by Nielsen Customized Research.   » Continue Reading

MasterCard Incorporated has announced financial results for third-quarter 2007, reporting net revenues of $1.08 billion, a 20.1% increase versus the same period in 2006 and net income of $314 million including after-tax gains of $70 million from the partial sale of the company's investment in Redecard S.A. in Brazil. A MasterCard presentation on the results is available online.   » Continue Reading

In an article titled 'Mobile Wallet Will Take Time to Mature In U.S.', RIchard Winston from Accenture writes for Bank Systems & Technology magazine about the challenges in bringing mobile payments to the US market. Winston says "the technology will take time to mature, requiring banks, credit card issuers, cellular carriers and merchants to either cooperate or be forced to act by disruptive competitors entering the market."

Separately, David Evans asks whether Google will be the catalyst for the mobile ecosystem in the US. He says "however, Google faces the same difficulty that other developers have faced–which is interacting with the mobile carriers who understandably want to get paid for their vast investments in mobile capacity." Evans spoke at last week's CTIA conference in San Francisco.

In a post titled "Wells Fargo: Hitching its Reins to Mobile Banking", Brandon McGee writes for the Mobile Money & Banking blog about Wells Fargo's rollout of mobile banking services. McGee writes: "what captured my attention is that Wells Fargo seems to have strategically positioned themselves as the leader in mobile banking."

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