Today's Senate Banking Committee hearing on 'Turmoil in U.S. Credit Markets: Examining the Recent Actions of Federal Financial Regulators' has several witness testimonies - two of which are especially worth reading - the testimony of NY Fed President Timothy F. Geithner and JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. As Paul Kedrosky wrote earlier today about Geithner's testimony: "Read it twice. Or three times. As many as it takes."

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The Direct Response Forum (DRF), a trade association for payments professionals in the direct response marketing industry, has announced that it has begun accepting registrations for its 19th Annual Forum to be held in San Diego, Monday August 11 through Wednesday August 13.   » Continue Reading

TSYS Loyalty has announced the 'development of an innovative product that calculates points and rewards for customers who subscribe to multiple products with a single financial institution, which include, but are not limited to direct deposit, credit, mortgage, insurance and Certificate of Deposit accounts.'   » Continue Reading

The American Bankers Association has announced that consumer credit delinquencies in the fourth quarter of 2007 reached their highest levels since 1992. "The composite ratio, which tracks eight closed-end installment loan categories, rose 21 basis points to 2.65 percent of all accounts in the fourth quarter (seasonally adjusted)." The number of delinquent bank card accounts rose 20 basis points to 4.38 percent, but remains close to the five-year average of 4.40 percent according to the ABA.

Research analyst Kristie M. Engemann and economist Michael T. Owyang of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis have published an article in the April issue of The Regional Economist titled "Extra Credit: The Rise of Short-term Liabilities".   » Continue Reading

Celent has published a new report, 'Do Banks Want Customers in Their Branches?' that examines the results of a web-based survey conducted among 157 financial institutions in December 2007. Among them, 56% of respondents offer RDC and another 9% are in pilot with the product. US financial institutions have invested heavily to grow their geographic branch footprints while concurrently investing in self-service technology to keep customers out of those same branches. Paradox or strategy?

SCM Microsystems has announced the SCL3710 NFC reader, a USB dongle which enables a variety of contactless applications using mobile electronic devices. 'The reader can be used to enable contactless transactions for merchants. When inserted into a PC or notebook that is connected to a system such as a Point of Sale (PoS) terminal, vending machine, access terminal or parking meter payment device, the SCL3710 dongle communicates contactlessly with consumers’ NFC-enabled devices to support contactless transactions.'   » Continue Reading

Ethan Cohen-Cole, a financial economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, has published a working paper titled 'Credit Card Redlining' that 'evaluates the presence of racial disparities in the issuance of consumer credit. Using a unique and proprietary database of credit histories from a major credit bureau, this paper links location-based information on race with individual credit files. After controlling for the influence of such other place-specific factors as crime, housing vacancy rates, and general population demographics, the paper finds qualitatively large differences in the amount of credit offered to similarly qualified applicants living in Black versus White areas."' In a commentary about Cohen-Cole's paper on the Credit Slips blog, Adam Levitin writes 'what this all speaks to is the need for greater transparency in the credit card industry, including the collection of more publicly available data.'

JetBlue Airways has announced that customers booking at www.jetblue.com now have the option to purchase flights using PayPal.   » Continue Reading

Today's Wall St. Journal contains several letters to the editor in response to the Journal's editorial last Saturday "urging a market solution to excessively high credit-card interchange fees." One commenter writes "What aggravates so many merchants and service providers is the fee surcharges that are unilaterally imposed upon merchants for accepting certain types of credit cards most often associated with the multitude of rewards programs so widely advertised."

Jane J. Kim writes for the Wall St. Journal about Capital One's changing of interest rates on some of its credit cards from variable to fixed rates. With a fixed rate, any further reductions in interest rates as the result of Federal Reserve actions aren't passed along to the cardholder as lower interest charges.

In an article titled 'Just Put It on My Phone', Olga Kharif writes for Business Week about this week's flurry of mobile banking announcements. "Companies are introducing services with new ways for consumers to buy, sell, and carry out other transactions using wireless handsets."

MasterCard Worldwide has announced an agreement with The TJX Companies Inc. (TJX) to offer an 'Alternative Recovery Program to MasterCard issuers affected by the previously announced data breach of TJX. The agreement calls for TJX to provide up to $24 million to support an Alternative Recovery Program to settle claims made by issuers to recover costs and losses they claimed to have incurred in connection with the breach. Issuers must have previously filed claims and agree to the Alternative Recovery Program's terms to be eligible for compensation funded by the agreement.'   » Continue Reading

• The Motley Fool and Mint.com Partnering to Make Personal Finance Easier
• CardWorks Processing Acquires Assets of Pay By Touch Processing, Inc.
• Fifth Third Bank Teams with Leading Healthcare Providers to Deliver a Claims-to-Payment Business Intelligence Platform
• Credit Slips: More Than 4,000 Bankruptcy Filings Per Day in March
• StoreFrontBackTalk: Restaurants Using Credit Card As Their Loyalty Card
• Bank of America Patents Innovative Technology for Corporate Cards
• NovoPayment Clinches Two Major Payment Industry Awards
• NCR Extends Patient Self-Service Convenience to Mobile Phones
• Overview of Credit Card Companies Discussed in Wall Street Transcript Specialty Finance Report
• CSI Announces Mobile Banking Solution
• RCR Wireless News: Mobile banking: Poised to cash in
• New Hampsire: Credit card debt is a growing concern
• Moneris Solutions Announces Strategic Acquisition of Keycorp Canada Inc.
• WSJ: How to Stop Identity Thieves From Targeting Your Child
• ICBA Extends Exclusive QwickRate Relationship
• NY Times: A Stormy Decade for Citi Since Travelers Merger
• Citi Launches Domestic Settlement Service for Interbank Forex Trades

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated. For job opportunities available for payments professionals, visit PaymentsJobs.com. Employers looking to hire payments professionals can post their job openings there as well.