Floyd Norris, chief financial correspondent of the New York Times, posts about the Visa IPO - asking how much of the Visa IPO proceeds will stay in Visa to help the company grow?

Meta Payments Systems has announced "the iAdvance Line of Credit for the millions of Americans who are unable to access affordable, small dollar credit."

Bankrate.com has published findings from a national poll of 1,014 consumers that examined attitudes toward consumer debt. Among the findings, "66 percent of Americans say debt is often the result of unfortunate circumstances beyond a person's control, while 60 percent say it is usually the result of bad decisions."

Edgar, Dunn recently commissioned an independent online survey of 700 individuals in the United States who made Internet purchases during the 2007 end-of-year gift shopping season, and the results revealed a significant shift in consumer use of these types of "alternative forms of payment". A new Insight article by Pascal Burg explores some of the implications of this shift to key stakeholders including alternative payment providers, traditional payment providers, merchants, and consumers. Almost a third of survey respondents used PayPal, Bill Me Later or Google Checkout to make an online purchase during the 2007 end-of-year gift shopping season.

In an article titled 'Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web', John Markoff writes for the New York Times about the rich Internet application environment released today by Adobe: Adobe AIR. Adobe's list of showcase AIR applications doesn't yet include any from banks or other financial services companies.

Wells Fargo has announced that it has "extended its Foreign Exchange Online service to small businesses. This service allows businesses to send and receive foreign currency wires in more than 90 currencies using an internet connection."

Visa Inc. has filed with the SEC Amendment No. 4 to its Form S-1 Registration Statement along with an amended Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2007. The amended S-1 indicates Visa plans to sell up to 46,600,000 shares of Class A common stock at a proposed maximum offering price of $42 per share raising $18.757 billion. Andrew Edwards writes for the Wall St. Journal that Visa's IPO could be the largest in US history.

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