The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has announced the availability of a summary of forthcoming changes to PCI DSS as it moves from version 1.1 to the previously announced version 1.2 in October. READ MORE

Visa has announced that it and eight North American financial institutions – PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the United States, and Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial Group, and Vancity in Canada – have agreed to initiate a pilot program with up to a total of 2,000 participants to test the delivery of real-time notification alerts on Visa accounts. READ MORE

On Track Innovations has announced that Garanti Technology (GT), an affiliate of Garanti Bank, Turkey's third largest private bank, has won the "Best Innovation in a Loyalty Programme" award at the Cards & Payments Europe 2008 for the "Bonus Trink" Sticker project based on OTI's smart sticker contactless payment device. READ MORE

Surcharge-free ATM access is gaining in popularity among debit card issuers as they explore new ways to better serve cardholders, according to the 2008 Debit Issuer Study, commissioned by PULSE. Financial institutions also are increasingly offering debit rewards. READ MORE

Guardian Analytics has announced the general availability of FraudMAP 2.0 - saying that this release extends its "proprietary Dynamic Account Modeling technology to model all individual online account holder activity session by session, from login to logout, increasing FraudMAP's ability to detect suspicious actions and flag behaviors inconsistent with predicted account holder behavior." READ MORE

The Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008, H.R. 5546, was introduced in March by Rep. John Conyers and co-sponsored by 39 other representatives with the objective to "to amend the antitrust laws to ensure competitive market-based rates and terms for merchants' access to electronic payment systems".

A transcript of the Judiciary Committee's recent markup discussion of this bill is available online - and makes for interesting reading.

ChargeSmart has reported that payments for automotive loans and leases are the most prominent transaction since the company launched its online service this past July. With a network of more than 4,000 billers, ChargeSmart’s web-based payment application allows consumers with a major credit card to make payments to companies in four different industries, including auto loans and/or leases, home mortgages, education loans and utility companies. READ MORE

APACS has released its latest quarterly statistical summary of UK card payment activity.

"In the second quarter of 2008 there were 1.8 billion plastic card purchases made in the UK totalling £92.6 billion. The number of purchases was 7.8% higher than in the second quarter of 2007, and spending was 7.5% higher. Debit cards accounted for 73.4% of all plastic card purchases compared with 71.6% in the second quarter of 2007."

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• ComputerWeekly.com: Police warn of security threat to every chip-and-Pin terminal in UK
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• Economist: New tickets, please - The contract for London’s transport card is up for grabs