Gosh, it's that time of year again - what many (including me) think of as just the best holiday in the US - Thanksgiving. At Glenbrook, we've got a lot to be thankful for this year. Our colleagues of payments professionals across the payments industry have all worked hard to make sure everything's ready for the upcoming annual "Black Friday" onslaught of volume. Chase Paymentech's index will be tracking things over the weekend - so you can see how the consumer economy is doing vs. the last two years. Meanwhile, enjoy the holiday with friends and family! Remember, it's just the best!

After rampant speculation earlier in the week, late today PayPal officially introduced the "PayPal Plug-In" - describing it as "a free download for your Internet browser that allows you to pay with PayPal anywhere MasterCard is accepted online."

Florence Fabricant writes for the New York Times Dining section about portable POS terminals - they've been used heavily in Europe for the last 10 years and are now beginning to be seen in restaurants here in the US. Your card never leaves your hand.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has published a new research paper titled "Understanding Risk Management in Emerging Retail Payments" by Michele Braun, James McAndrews, William Roberds, and Richard Sullivan.

Montgomery County, Maryland’s Office of Consumer Protection has released its fifth annual gift card study called, “Gift Cards 2007: Best and Worst Retail Cards; A Deeper View of Bank Cards Doesn’t Improve Their Look .” The report contains valuable information and recommendations regarding gift cards issued by 22 stores and restaurants and 20 banks/financial institutions.

In an article titled 'One More Thing Cellphones Could Do: Replace Wallets', Dan Fost writes for USA Today about using mobile phones for payments. "It's relatively easy to make cellphones very secure devices," said Allen Weinberg, managing partner at Glenbrook Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif., financial services and electronic payments consulting firm. He said the encryption is "as good as or better than what you do with an ATM or at-home banking. No one is going to pick up your phone and start moving money around the world. It's just not going to happen."

In an article titled 'Credit Cards Lose Ground to PayPal', Catherine Holahan writes for Business Week that "PayPal's payment service is likely to show up on a lot of unusual sites this holiday season." She cites a professor who says that "fear of identity theft and payment fraud is driving the adoption of PayPal and Google Checkout in the U.S."

Fronde Anywhere, a provider of mobile products for the financial services and corporate sectors, has launched BusinessMobile as part of its Bank Anywhere suite, making it easier for businesses to maintain control of their cash flow while on the move.

• U.S. E-Commerce Holiday Spending Surges by Mid-November After Slow Start to Season
• OCC Reminds Consumers to Read Gift Cards’ Fine Print
• Washington Post Security Fix Blog: Credit Card Thieves Flood Wikimedia With Pennies
• Denver Post: Banking offered via cellphone
• Sony, NXP to promote mobile-phone payment tech