Payments News continues to grow in regular readership - we're delighted that so many of our friends find it to be of value. Earlier this morning, a Bank of America staffer became the 5,000th email subscriber to Payments News - a new milestone! We crossed 4,000 email subscribers in late May - so roughly 8 new Payments News email subscribers have joined every business day since then.

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Payments News is a "sideline" for us at Glenbrook! Our real "day job" is the strategy consulting work we do for a wide range of clients involved in electronic payments - along with our payments education program serving payments professionals. Carol Coye Benson and I just today finished a chock-full two-day Payments Boot Camp here in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you're interested in attending the next one of our Payments Boot Camps, we'll be in Denver on December 3-4, 2008.

Metropolitan National Bank (New York) and its wholly-owned subsidiary CashZone have announced the launch of the CashZone Prepaid Visa Card "Check2Card" Program in select PriceRite stores. CashZone Check2Card is a program that allows CashZone members to convert paychecks and most government-issued checks, for no charge, into instantly available funds (or "loads") on a CashZone Prepaid Visa Card. READ MORE

In an article titled "Lending Alternative Hits Hurdle", Brad Stone writes for the New York Times about some recent challenges being faced by the person-to-person lending companies in the US market. Last week, Zopa announced it was exiting the US market. Yesterday, Prosper.com announced it stopped accepting new lenders pending registration of its securities with regulatory authorities. Earlier this week, Lending Club announced it had completed its registration of $600 million in securities.

Revolution Money has announced that RBS WorldPay (formerly RBS Lynk) will be offering RevolutionCard as a payment option to its merchants. According to the companies, the agreement extends the RevolutionCard network to nearly 300,000 online and physical merchant locations. READ MORE

Fiserv has announced its CheckFreePay walk-in bill payment service has partnered with PayScan America to utilize PayScan's patented bar code bill payment process to offer "an enhanced retail payment solution that will enable walk-in consumers to pay their household bills quickly and easily at retail checkout lanes and self-service kiosks." READ MORE

The Clearing House has announced that it is seeing accelerating usage of Universal Payment Identification Codes (UPICs) by public and private sector entities across the U.S. UPIC payments have grown to a record $4 billion in the third quarter of 2008, up 61% compared to the same period a year ago. A UPIC is used for credit payments only and thus lowers the possibility of unauthorized debits, checks and demand drafts. The UPIC was developed by the Electronic Payments Network (EPN), the ACH business of The Clearing House, in conjunction with the financial services industry. READ MORE

The SmartCard Alliance has announced a new white paper titled "What Makes a Smart Card Secure?" that was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Contactless and Mobile Payment Council’s Security Work Group "to provide an overview of smart card security features and other security designs inherent in smart card-based systems." READ MORE

Celent has published a new report titled "State of Remote Deposit Capture 2008: Sprint Becomes a Marathon" noting that "The past year has seen remarkable remote deposit capture solution adoption among midsize banks, community banks, and credit unions. By the end of 2008, two-thirds of all US banks and 40% of all US financial institutions will have adopted RDC."

Citigroup has reported its third quarter 2008 financial results. In its cards business in North America, Citi reported a decline in purchase volume of 3% year over year along with a 3% decline in the number of open credit card accounts. Average managed loans in its North America cards business grew 4% while credit losses grew 68%. "The managed net credit loss ratio increased 262 basis points to 7.13%." Floyd Norris of the New York Times comments on Citi's overall financial results.

Reflecting on the issues he identified in a paper written a couple of years ago, David Evans writes on the Catalyst Code blog: "Banks that have been waiting to rethink their card programs—from loyalty to pricing to product redesign should make a crash effort to save this profit stream."

eBay reported third quarter 2008 financial results yesterday - saying that "PayPal had a strong quarter with $597 million in net revenue, an increase of 27% year-over-year. Net total payment volume (TPV) for the quarter was $14.81 billion, an increase of 28% year over year. The net revenue and net TPV growth was driven primarily by the continued excellent growth of merchant services globally and increased penetration on eBay. Global active registered accounts increased to 65 million, representing 19% year over year growth."

Glenbrook's Russ Jones takes a look at PayPal's third quarter results. SeekingAlpha.com has posted a transcript of eBay's Q3 2008 Earnings Call.

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• The PayPal Blog: A New Tool for Canadian E-Commerce
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• First Data & Wausau Financial Systems Expand Relationship
• American Express Survey Shows Majority of Canadian Small Business Owners are Not Panicking in the Wake of Economic Turmoil