Late today, the financial agencies of the U.S. government announced they had entered into an agreement with Bank of America to provide a package of guarantees, liquidity access, and capital as part of their commitment to support financial market stability. READ MORE

Almost 300 folks are now following Payments News on Twitter since we began posting in real-time to Twitter last May. If you're active on Twitter and would like notification in your Twitter feed when we post a new item to Payments News, it's easy to subscribe to the Payments News Twitter feed!

Since we started on Twitter, about 1,500 "tweets" have gone out in real-time as we've posted new stories here on Payments News. Read on if you'd like to learn more - on the other hand, if you prefer receiving only a daily email update from Payments News, Twitter's not for you! READ MORE

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) has posted a press release on her re-introduction of the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights today along with Senators Charles Schumer and Mark Udall.

“A credit card agreement is supposed to be a contract, but in recent years cardholders have lost the ability to say no to unfair interest rate hikes and fees. This bill levels the playing field between card companies and cardholders while fostering fair competition and free market values. It sets no rate caps, fees, or price controls, nor does it dictate any business models to card companies. There is no doubt that credit card companies provide a valuable service and deserve to earn a fair profit, but consumers deserve the right to be able to understand their accounts and be empowered to control them. This bill would give cardholders the information and rights they deserve to make decisions about their own credit,” said Rep. Maloney.

Connie Prater at CreditCards.com takes a deeper look.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has announced its 9th annual Payments Conference on the topic of “Payments Pricing: Who Bears the Cost?” to be held at the Chicago Fed on May 14-15, 2009. The conference will focus on:

• Evaluating the role of public intervention
• Comparing perspectives on market-based solutions
• Offering incentives to affect payments behavior
• Leveraging technology to increase competition
• Developing future payment pricing strategies

Who should attend? Decision-makers from financial institutions, payment networks, regulatory bodies, central banks, merchants and payment innovators as well as academics.

For more information, please visit http://www.chicagofed.org/paymentsystems.

Reuters reports that Senator Charles Schumer of New York and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado have re-introduced the credit card reform legislation (called the "Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights") originally authored last year by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York and that Rep Maloney will be doing the same in the House.

In an article titled Citi, BofA Problems Seen Spreading to Other Banks, Jeff Cox reports for CNBC that financial analysts are predicting a spread of the problems currently affecting Citi and Bank of America to other US banks.

Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager, Google Checkout writes on the Checkout blog that Google will begin charging processing fees to non-profits using Google Checkout who are no members of Google's Grants program.

The SVPCO Image Payments Network has announced it exchanged a record 5.6 billion check images in 2008, up 97% from 2.8 billion images in 2007. For all of 2008, dollar volume also hit an all-time high of $8.5 trillion, up 71% from $5 trillion in 2007. The number of institutions exchanging images also rose to an all-time high of 44 in 2008, up from 24 in 2007. The SVPCO Image Payments Network began operations in January 2005. READ MORE

This morning, the top 5 free finance applications for the Apple iPhone as listed in the iTunes Music store are: Mint.com, Bank of America - Mobile Banking, Bloomberg, Chase Mobile, and PayPal.

Discover Card has announced the launch of a mobile solution for its cardmembers at Discover.com Mobile. This mobile version of the Discover Card Web site will allow cardmembers to manage their credit card account directly from their mobile phone’s browser. READ MORE

Austin Ventures has announced the acquisition of three companies and the subsequent formation of Century Payments Inc. (“CPI”) in partnership with CEO-in-Residence Robert Wechsler.

The new company, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, will focus on providing growth capital strategic assistance to merchant service providers (“MSPs”) and on building best-in-class sales forces to support our network of distribution partners. AV has committed up to $50MM of equity capital to support management’s strategy of additional acquisitions and organic growth. Mr. Wechsler will lead the new organization as its President and Chief Executive Officer.

Moneybookers has made a newly-developed payment process immediately available as a free plug-in to Magento, anl Open Source shop software provider. "By using the Moneybookers interface, implemented as a whitelabel product, the Magento shop operator will benefit from Moneybookers' global ePayment network. Customers can pay quickly and easily directly via the web store - by credit card or one of the 60 other local payment options offered by Moneybookers." READ MORE

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council has issued guidance titled "Risk Management of Remote Deposit Capture" .

This guidance addresses the necessary elements of an RDC risk management process in an electronic environment, focusing on RDC deployed at a customer location. The general principles of RDC risk management discussed here are also applicable to financial institutions’ internal deployment and other forms of electronic deposit delivery systems (e.g., mobile banking and automated clearing house [ACH] check conversions).

Today marks the start of financial insitutions reporting their earnings for the fourth quarter - a quarter that pundits say may be the first is almost twenty years when the industry in aggregate didn't make any profits.

First up is JP Morgan Chase who reported fourth-quarter 2008 net income of $702 million, compared with net income of $3.0 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. In its cards business (which now includes Washington Mutual's card business as well), the net loss was $371 million, a decline of $980 million from the prior year due primarily to increased provision for credit losses. Charge volume was up only 1% year over year. The net charge-off rate grew to 5.29%, up from 3.89% last year. More details are included in this presentation on the Chase website.

• Amazon Payments Blog: You spoke, we listened – Callback API is now live with Checkout by Amazon!
• Christopher Brauchli: Citigroup And The Credit Card
• Inside Facebook: How Major Retailers Can Improve the Effectiveness of Their Facebook Pages
• Future Banking Blog: Twitter and the Customer Experience at Bank of America
• CHARGE Anywhere and Tripoint Communications Deploy Wireless Point of Sale Solutions in the Bahamas and the Turks & Caicos Islands
• San Francisco Issues Municipal ID Cards With Capture Technologies’ Solution
• a thousand cuts :: adam cohen's blog: Do Alternate Payment Methods Help Retailers?
• Wall St. Journal: More Pain Ahead for Card Issuers
• PaySimple Blog: Recurring Billing with Credit Cards and eChecks? No Sweat!
• Amazon Payments Blog: Don’t IOU? – Just Amazon TextPayMe™
• Fair Isaac Expands Program for Lenders to Deliver Free FICO Scores to More Consumers
• The PayPal Blog: Is Free Shipping Right for You?
• DMNews: Study: Google Checkout use slowing
• Digital Money Forum Podcast: Murdo Munro, Paytekh
• Examine the Private-Label Credit Cards in The U.S., 6th Edition
• StorefrontBacktalk: Macy's Own Software Caused Its Holiday Debit Card Glitch
• The Conference Board(R) Spain Business Cycle Indicators(SM)
• The Financial Services Club's Blog: Mobile payment provider 'infuriates' banks - commentary about M-Pesa
• U.S. Consumer Confidence Sinks Lower as Americans Appear to Be Waiting for the Obama Administration to Throw It a Lifeline
• Alliance Data Signs Multi-Year Agreement with HSN, a Leading Multi-Channel Lifestyle Retailer
• Reuters: Capital One card delinquencies rise in December