Visa Inc. announced today that it has priced the initial public offering of 406,000,000 shares of Class A common stock at $44 per share. Visa's shares will begin trading on March 19, 2008, on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "V". Visa expects net proceeds from the offering, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, to be approximately $17.3 billion.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Cash Unit has established a Payments Advisory Council "to study and analyze payments trends with an eye toward anticipating consumer behavior." Their first Payments Advisory Council report is now available - surveying nine merchants about the payment options they accept and the trends they're seeing in terms of consumer preferences.

The Smart Card Alliance’s first annual Payments Councils Summit held recently in Salt Lake City, Utah, reviewed the growth of contactless financial and transit payment markets in the US.

Quova has announced a partnership with Guardian Analytics to help protect online financial accounts from fraud and identity theft. "Under the partnership, Guardian Analytics has integrated Quova’s IP geolocation data into its FraudMAP solution. Providing online channel risk management, FraudMAP delivers fraud detection, forensics and ongoing risk monitoring based on strong analytics and predictive models of individual behavior. The unique solution was built from the ground up to automatically detect new online fraud threats in real time without requiring rules development or algorithm training."

The PayItGreen Alliance says it is "asking consumers to turn off paper bills and statements and make payments electronically. The Alliance, comprised of leaders in the financial and consumer billing industries, was formed in 2007 to educate consumers about the positive environmental impact of choosing electronic bills, statements and payments over paper alternatives. The Alliance has named April as PayItGreen Month to launch this initiative."

Obopay has announced that "customers can now use their existing bank accounts to send and receive money via their mobile phone. With Obopay's mobile money transfer, non- customers can pick up payments without signing up for Obopay. These innovations make it easier than ever for any bank customer to conveniently send and receive payments from their mobile phones."

Metavante has announced that it will process and settle transactions for NACHA’s Secure Vault Payments, an automated clearing house (ACH)-based Internet payments system that allows consumers to conduct e-commerce and bill payment transactions without sharing personal or account information online.

Cornerstone Advisors has released "Cornerstone Report 2007: Benchmarks and Best Practices for Mid-Size Banks" urging "bankers to recognize how misaligned the industry has become and implores individual banks to break out of a "current closed loop that will go nowhere.""

Yodlee has announced an agreement with Vodafone UK for it to exclusively re-sell Yodlee’s mobile banking solution. "Yodlee Mobile, which will be individually branded for each UK financial institution, provides customers with easy, secure access and proactive monitoring across multiple financial accounts (banking, investments, bills, credit cards, etc). Access is available through a mobile WAP browser as well as two-way text messages, and alerts can be received on email as well as through text. Two major UK financial institutions have already signed up for the Vodafone/Yodlee Mobile Banking solution, and will launch by year end." READ MORE »

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