One of our favorite industry publications is Jim Bruene's Online Banking Report. For over 10 years, Jim's done a great job with OBR - and on his NetBanker blog.

Last fall, Jim held his first conference - Finovate 2007 in New York City - and it sold out quickly. Videos from Finovate 2007 are available online.

Jim's just announced the first of two events he's got planned for 2008 - FinovateStartup scheduled for April 29th in San Francisco. This one-day conference will showcase the hottest financial technology startups – including Andera, Boulevard R., Buxfer, CAPS, Clairmail, Credit Karma, First ROI, Jwaala, Lending Club, Mint, Prosper, SmartHippo, Unified Money, and Wesabe.

Early-bird registration is open now - the first 25 Payments News readers can use coupon code "paymentsnews7" to get an additional $100 discount off of the registration fee. Online Banking Report subscribers can get a $250 discount off of the registration fee. We'll be attending FinovateStartup ourselves and look forward to seeing you there.

Businesspundit.com points to an article by Charles Owen Kile Jr. in the Journal of Accountacy titled "Accounting for Gift Cards". "In practice, the reporting of gift card sales and breakage among retailers varies significantly and it is unclear what future action, if any, standard-setters and regulators will take toward unifying the range of practices."

Another mobile payments startup has launched: Mpayy. Brian Dillard posts an interview on the Pathfinder blog with Trace Johnson, Mpayy's product VP.

The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) has been examining the regulatory implications of new technologies in banking. According to the group, "basic, everyday financial services are out of reach for more than two billion people in developing countries. But the rapid growth of branchless banking - including mobile phone banking - is reducing the cost and expanding the availability of such services."

MasterCard Worldwide reported Q4 2007 financial results this morning. MasterCard’s gross dollar volume increased 15.2%, on a local currency basis, to $634 billion on a 17.2% increase in the number of transactions processed to 5.2 billion. Worldwide purchase volume rose 16.1%, on a local currency basis, during the quarter to $477 billion, driven by increased cardholder spending on a growing number of MasterCard cards. As of December 31, 2007, the company’s financial institution customers had issued 916 million MasterCard cards, an increase of 12.6% over the cards issued at December 31, 2006. An accompanying presentation is also available.

Social personal finance website Wesabe has announced the launch of an automated "add your bank" feature, allowing Wesabe's members to immediately add their financial institutions and upload data. During the sign-up process, if a new member's bank or credit union isn't one of the nearly 5,000 currently supported by Wesabe, they can add it to the database in less than a minute and begin uploading data. Wesabe's Marc Hedlund blogs about the new feature.

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