To all of our friends in the United States, we hope you had a really great 4th of July!

Here's a review of this week's top stories on Payments News. If you missed it, last week's Weekly Wrap is here. Back to the future!: for fun, click for this same week's activity a year ago here on Payments News!

Looking for more? Checkout our Other Payments and Banking Blogs page for more from the blogosphere about the worlds of payments and banking.

Quote of the week: by Robert X. Cringely: "So where is the next wave of financial start-ups that view ME, not Citibank, as the customer?"

• American Express News
  • Macerich announced a strategic alliance with American Express who will become the new gift card provider and marketing partner for Macerich shopping centers across the United States. (See more American Express news.)
• Credit Card News
  • According to the New York Times, More regulation is expected for the credit card industry in the US in 2009.
  • L.L.Bean and Barclays announced the launch of the new L.L.Bean Visa card. (See more Barclays and Credit Card news.)
• Debit Card News
  • Capital One has begun soliciting for its "decoupled" MasterCard debit card. (See more Capital One, Debit Cards, and Decoupled Debit Cards news.)
  • Visa Inc. announced that it has revised its U.S. Operating Regulations to expand the conditions under which non-Visa debit transactions can be processed without PIN validation on Visa-branded debit cards, effective July 1, 2008. (See more Debit Card and Visa news.)
  • In the UK, APACS announced that debit cards were used for 72 percent of card transactions representing 62 percent of of payment volume. (See more APACS, Debit Card and UK news.)
• Interchange Fee News
  • Adam Levitin, associate professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, wrote on the Credit Slips blog about Visa's changes to interchange fees for fuel transactions announced last week. (See more Interchange Fee and Visa news.)
• Mobile Banking News
  
  • Huntington launched Huntington Mobile Banking, calling it "a secure, convenient and easy way for Huntington customers to access their bank accounts anytime, anywhere, using a cell phone, smart phone or any other mobile device with browser access." (See more Mobile Banking news.)
  • mFoundry announced that Banc of America Strategic Investments Corp. has completed a strategic investment in the company. (See more Bank of America, mFoundry, Mobile Banking and Mobile Payments news.)
• PayPal News
  • Chris Skinner updates his look at PayPal upon its tenth anniversary. (See more Ecommerce Payments and PayPal news.)
• Open Job Listings on PaymentsJobs.com
  
  • Compliance Manager - Mountain View at Google, Inc. (Mountain View, California)
  • Director Customer Support and Implementation at Purepay (Gaithersburg, Maryland)
  • Manager-Network Technical Operations at American Express (Phoenix, Arizona)
  • Customer Insights Manager - Bankcard/Co-Brand at Alliance Data (Columbus, Ohio)
  • Risk Operations Manager at CyberSource (Mountain View, California)
  • Sr. Product Marketing Manager at CyberSource (Mountain View, California)
  • Web Marketing Manager at CyberSource (Mountain View, California)
  • Finance Program Manager at Confidential (San Mateo, California)
  • Director, Consumer Protection at Jewelry Television (Knoxville, Tennessee)
• Upcoming Glenbrook Payments Education Offerings
  
  • Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp - San Francisco Bay Area - October 15-16
  • Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp - Denver - December 3-4

You can find all of our Weekly Wrap summaries in the Payments News Weekly Wrap Archive. They're published every Saturday and look back at the highlights of the week's news. Please send us on how we can improve the Weekly Wrap!

In an article in today's New York Times titled "Credit Card Overhauls Seem Likely", Jane Birnbaum writes that consumer groups' pleas to lawmakers for help "may well mean that the industry will face some significant regulation by early next year."

In early May, the Federal Reserve proposed new rules to prohibit unfair practices regarding credit cards and overdraft services that would, among other provisions, protect consumers from unexpected increases in the rate charged on pre-existing credit card balances. The Fed is still soliciting comments on the proposed changes - although the comment window closes later this month. The comments are posted publicly on the Fed's web site - so far, over 9,800 comments have been submitted.