At its annual meeting today, Starbucks announced several new initiatives including adding a new rewards feature for registered users of its Starbucks Card. Starbucks says that currently one in seven customers uses the Starbucks Card to pay.

We've received the following announcement from Pay By Touch: "Solidus Networks, Inc., dba Pay By Touch, regretfully announced today that it will no longer process biometric transactions on behalf of its merchant customers and consumer membership base, as 11:59:59pm March 19, 2008."

Dave Birch writes on the Digital Money Blog about a presentation given by Julian Niblett of Boots, one of the UK's largest retailers, at the New Payments Channels conference in London. Interestingly, Boots studied where in their stores contactless made economic sense, and where it didn't. But, perhaps even more interesting were Niblett's comments on the costs of cash acceptance vs. the cost of cards.

The Financial Services Technology Consortium has announced a new Mobile Banking and Payments Project. The first phase will "identify and document technology-based opportunities for banks in the mobile arena." The project proposal is available online.

Discover Financial Services reported first quarter financial results this morning - with sales volume up 5% and US card managed loans up 2%. Discover reported managed credit card net chargeoffs of 4.37%, up 52 basis points from the prior calendar quarter. A transcript of Discover's earnings call today is available online. Discover will be holding an investor day meeting in New York City tomorrow, Thursday, March 20.

Wells Fargo has announced the Wells Fargo vSafe service, calling it "the first online storage solution from a financial institution that lets retail banking customers store and organize copies of important materials, such as financial statements, loan and tax documents, wills, passports, and birth, marriage and death certificates."

Visa Inc. began trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange - stock symbol V - in early trading the shares traded up over 30 percent from the $44 offering price. Visa has added a new Investor Relations section to its corporate web site. Visa Inc.'s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Joseph W. Saunders, made a statement following the launch of trading: "This is an exciting and historic day for Visa. It marks the culmination of a more than two-year process that led to our global reorganization and our becoming a public company."

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago will host its eighth payments conference entitled “Payments Fraud: Perception versus Reality” on June 5-6, 2008 at the Chicago Fed. The conference, which will highlight threats to the security of the payments system and explore solutions to those challenges, will cover such topics as:

• Identifying security issues in the retail payments system
• Preventing and containing payments fraud
• Allocating losses when payments fraud occurs
• Exploring fraud in emerging payment channels
• Evaluating public and private responses to payments fraud

The planned conference agenda is available online. Early registration ends March 28. Registration details here.

• WSJ Business Technology Blog: Another Hot New Technology Turns Cold (Pay By Touch)
• Guardian: Experts cast a wary eye over new online payment systems
• Consumers of Hannaford Brothers Co. Supermarkets File Class Action Suit for Loss of Credit Card and Debit Card Data; Filed By Berger & Montague, PC
• BAI Webinar on Threats from Decoupled Debit Cards - Thu, April 3 - Noon ET
• Visa Hosts Students from Brooklyn's Kappa V School at New York Stock Exchange as Part of First Day of Trading
• OPEN From American Express(R) Adds StubHub to Small Business Savings Program
• New Mercator Advisory Group Reports: Small Business Banking Changing Landscape, Retail-ization of Corporate Banking, and US Wireless POS: Gets Up from the Table and Runs Out the Door
• UK: Payroll Card Launched by Modus
• FreedomPay(R) Announces the Patriot Card(TM), A Virtual Payment Card Leveraging the Benefits of ACH and Check Conversion Networks

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Tony Wootton has been named Senior Vice President of Business Development at YapStone, Inc. Previously, Wooten was Vice President and General Manager of Payment Solutions at The Green Dot Corporation.