Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm's Firethorn Holdings have announced that customers of Wachovia, SunTrust, FirstBank, and BancorpSouth, now have access to their accounts "in the palms of their hands."

In an article titled 'Has chip-and-pin failed to foil fraudsters?', Danny Bradbury writes for The Guardian about the UK's experience with Chip and PIN equipped payment cards. In addition to the technology change, the UK also changed how consumers report fraud. Bradbury notes that 'legal changes last April forced customers to report card fraud to banks, and not the police.'

Richard Gamble writes for Treasury & RIsk Magazine about purchasing cards and a shift in how they're being used that improves their effectiveness. Gamble writes "for years, banks marketed purchasing cards as a stand-alone product that worked best when a company could get as many suppliers as possible to accept it." But suppliers often balked at participating, leading to only partial success. Instead, Gamble reports that the "next generation of payments automation will have “a single user interface on the front end, but four pipes on the back end” that will deliver payments by card, check, ACH or wire."

TransUnion's TrueCredit.com has commissioned GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media to assess Americans' thoughts about their finances at the turn of the New Year. "The survey found that in 2007, one in four (25 percent) of all Americans missed making one or more on-time bill payments, with the bulk of those delinquencies occurring on Utilities (12 percent), Credit Cards (12 percent) and Medical Services (11 percent). Meanwhile, only 17 percent choose paying down debt as their top resolution for 2008, down notably from 22 percent in last year's survey."

Merchant e-Solutions has announced it is continuing "to make growth investments in its e-commerce business sector, first by developing payment solutions that are specifically engineered for card-not-present transactions, and now by announcing the appointment of Kevin Gallagher as the General Manager of the MeS e-Commerce business."

NCR in partnership with ViVOtech has announced a suite of contactless payment terminals for the point of sale (POS) that "enable mobile and contactless payment at a variety of customer touch points, including retail checkout, restaurant drive-thru and the diner’s table."

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson spent a few days over the New Year's holiday in New York City - and files this report on using her debit card along the way.

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