[Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness writes...] At Dave Birch's invitation, I'll be heading to London on Monday for next week's 11th annual Digital Money Forum on Wed-Thu April 23-24 in London. I'll be participating on the "Meet the Bloggers" panel on Thursday along with fellow payments bloggers Chris Skinner, Aneace Haddad, Colin Henderson, and Dave Birch himself - moderated by Steve Bowbrick.

Should be fun! If you'll be attending the Forum, I look forward to seeing you there. If you'd like to meet up separately while I'm in London (Friday April 25 is open), just let me know.

We mentioned earlier this week that Forte Financial's Erin McCune was in Las Vegas this week - not for the ETA Expo but for the TAWPI Payments in Transition Conference. TAWPI = The Association for Work Process Improvements - "a professional membership association dedicated to providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities for practitioners and technology and service providers in payments automation, distributed capture, and imaging & forms processing."

Erin's done a superb job of blogging her notes from the conference sessions - and the association has done a great job as well of providing downloadable copies of the conference presentations!

The Kroger Co. has announced that 'beginning May 2, 2008, customers can receive free groceries through a gift card program available exclusively in Kroger stores. The program allows Kroger customers to exchange their tax refund or economic stimulus checks for a Kroger gift card with an extra $30.00, $60.00 or $120.00 added to it. Gift card amounts correspond to the payment amounts outlined by the Internal Revenue Service for the federal economic stimulus program.' READ MORE »

GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham writes that "Obopay has scored $20 million in additional funding, CEO Carol Realini told me this afternoon. She and other Obopay executives contributed to the round by wiring their investments to the company coffers by way of their Obopay accounts on their mobile phones." [Editor's note: We've not yet found an official press release from the company announcing the financing.]

The Financial Services Technology Consortium's annual conference this year is being held June 17-19 at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel in Sonoma County, California. The theme of this year's conference is "On the Innovative Edge: Successful Strategies for Financial Services". The agenda with speaker details is available online along with registration. Note that Early Bird registrations are only available through tomorrow. After tomorrow, registration fees for the conference increase.

Update: The Early Bird registration rates are still available - through April 28.

The House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit is holding a hearing today on H.R. 5244, The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. The prepared testimony of the witnesses is available on the Subcommittee's hearing page. Four consumers are testifying along with other financial services regulators (from the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC, and OTS), card industry executives (from Citi Cards, American Express, and Discover) and consumer groups (Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Action, and US PIRG).

Update: CNNMoney.com reports on the hearing and testimony by Sen. Carl Levin and Sen. Ron Wyden who both urged the House to take action on the legislation.

Metavante has announced an agreement with Advanced Payment Solutions (APS), making it the payment processing house for the entire prepaid portfolio of APS, including the cashplus prepaid gold MasterCard, the Gap Year cashplus card and a range of other fully re-loadable prepaid MasterCard programmes. READ MORE »

PULSE and its parent company, Discover Financial Services, have announced the signing of agreements with seven additional financial institutions for the issuance of Discover Debit cards. READ MORE »

The Reserve Bank of Australia has published the Proceedings from its Payments Systems Review Conference held last November. 'The conference was designed to bring together a wide range of parties to discuss the reforms of recent years and how best to move forward. It was attended by around 90 invited participants, drawn from financial institutions, payment schemes, industry bodies, merchants, consultants, academia and public policy institutions.' The table of contents of the proceedings is here.

• Frontier CEO: Credit-card processors eyeing airline industry
• VeriFone Announces Preferred US Reseller Program
• FSTC Completes Significant Fraud Collaboration Project
• Authentium’s New SafeCentral Shuts Down Cybercrime
• Fidelity National Information Services Announces Conversion of Banco Real's Card Portfolio to FIS' Brazilian Card Servicing Company
• Bankrate.com: Improve credit score by using credit cards
• Extending PCI Standards to Protect All Confidential Data
• Discover(R) Motiva Card Receives Accolades By Top Publications

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Pam Patsley has joined Advent International as a Boston-based operating partner, focused on opportunities in the financial services, payments and transaction processing sectors. Patsley spent the past seven years with First Data Corp., most recently as president of first Data International.