eBay and PayPal have announced "improved protections for buyers and sellers on eBay.com, in time for this year's holiday shopping season. For the first time, buyers who pay with PayPal will be protected on eligible transactions for 100 percent of an item's purchase price, with no cap on coverage. In addition, all U.S. eBay sellers will receive improved seller protection for eligible transactions when they get paid with PayPal." PayPal's increased buyer and seller protections will take effect this Fall. READ MORE »

Meta Payment Systems has announced it has contracted with Fiserv and TransUnion "to enhance the next generation of its award-winning iAdvance product. The partnerships enable Meta to expand its short-term, small dollar loan alternative that is accessed immediately on a MetaBank-issued prepaid card." READ MORE »

The Center for Responsible Lending has published a new report titled "Shredded Security - Overdraft practices drain fees from older Americans" that finds that "unauthorized overdrafts strip fees from Americans 55 and older at the level of $4.5 billion per year. Nearly $1 billion of that comes from people who are heavily dependent on Social Security income." The report also finds that "debit cards are the most frequent trigger for overdrafts even for people 55 and older – these debit card overdrafts are both extremely costly and easy to prevent if the banks were interested in discouraging them."

The ABA has issued a separate press release citing a separate study finding that "91 percent of Americans aged 55 and over have not paid overdraft fees in the last year."

In an article titled "Card Issuers Get Personal To Check Credit", Robin Sidel writes for the Wall St. Journal about how credit card issuers are beginning to consider factors other than credit scores in determining the amount of credit they'll extend on their credit cards.

MasterCard has announced an agreement with Obopay "to offer a fully-integrated on-demand person-to-person mobile payment service in the United States. The service, offered via MasterCard MoneySend, will give new and existing MasterCard issuing customers the ability to provide an innovative mobile payments service to their MasterCard cardholders on all credit, debit and prepaid MasterCard-branded products." READ MORE »

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