In an article titled "Card Network Earnings Are In - It’s Now Safe to Exhale!", Glenbrook's Bryan Derman takes a look at the just announced quarterly results of the major card networks - Visa and MasterCard.

It seems like it’s been a month now that we at Glenbrook – and people all around the payments business – have been holding our collective breath waiting to see what level of purchase volumes would be reported by MasterCard and Visa for Q4 2008.

Well, the results came in the last 24 hours, and while it wasn’t pretty, the numbers weren’t quite so bad as some had feared. In fact, in some ways, they were a mildly pleasant surprise.

  » Click to read the full article.

International eCommerce can be a risky undertaking for U.S. and Canadian merchants, according to new data from CyberSource.

During 2008, 30% of surveyed merchants that accept international orders online stopped taking orders from one or more countries due specifically to high levels of fraud. 76% of merchants in that group shut off orders from Nigeria, 58% froze out Ghana, and 32% slammed the door on Pakistan. Other countries blocked in 2008 included Indonesia (23%), Singapore (19%), Romania (18%), China, Russia, and Vietnam with 13% each and South Korea and Hong Kong with 10% each.

Risk management and collections have become critical functions for lenders to stay afloat in today’s financial storm and set the stage for stronger performance after the current economic crisis has subsided. Edgar, Dunn & Company will present a free webinar titled: “Collections in Turbulent Times” on February 11, 2009 at 2 PM Eastern in cooperation with SoundBite Communications.

Universal Air Travel Plan (UATP), the payment network privately owned by the world's airlines, has announced record charge volume and profits for calendar year 2008. UATP CEO Ralph Kaiser stated,

"UATP continues to prosper even in today's economic environment. While we see challenges from an overall decrease in travel spending in the upcoming year, there are enough growth drivers in our business to continue to be optimistic about our performance in 2009."

New data from Mintel Comperemedia shows that only 5.4 billion credit card direct mail offers were sent to Americans in 2008. According to the company, this is the lowest annual total the firm has reported since 2000. READ MORE

Moneybookers USA has announced its integration on eBay.com as an official payment provider starting in February.

The Moneybookers payment platform offers a wide range of local and international payment options worldwide, with both merchants and customers benefiting from its ultra-secure payments system and high conversion rates. The system protects auction buyers' personal data from identity theft and fraud, whilst enabling sellers to offer their customers one of the easiest ways to pay online.

Citibank N.A. has announced the launch of Citi Online Remit, a new online money transfer service to India.

Citi Online Remit provides Non Resident Indians (NRIs) the facility to transfer funds to India from any US Checking/Savings account or using a US Credit/Debit Card as a direct transfer into the beneficiary’s Bank account or as a draft couriered to the beneficiary’s mailing address in India.

Commerce Bancshares and Visa have announced they have signed a five-year renewal agreement, extending the companies’ longstanding relationship. Under terms of the deal, Commerce Bancshares will continue offering the full range of Visa consumer and commercial products – including prepaid, consumer debit and credit, small business debit and credit and commercial cards – through 2013. Commerce Bancshares will also continue to use Visa Debit Processing Service for its prepaid processing capabilities. READ MORE

Amazon.com has announced that the Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is now out of beta and also easier to use with Amazon FPS Quick Starts. Using FPS, developers can enable your applications with common payment transactions such as one time payments, recurring payments and pre-payments in hours rather than days. Amazon is also offering free payment processing for a limited time to developers who build an application using Amazon FPS. More info on the Amazon Payments Blog.

Navy Federal Credit Union, the world’s largest credit union, and Visa Inc. have announced they have signed a multi-year agreement to renew and extend their longstanding relationship. Under the terms of the agreement, Navy Federal will continue to offer Visa-branded consumer credit and debit products to its 3.1 million members worldwide. In addition, Navy Federal will expand its Visa prepaid and small business product offerings. READ MORE

MasterCard has announced financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2008.

"Net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2008 was $1.2 billion, a 14.2% increase versus the same period in 2007. Currency fluctuations (driven by movement of the euro and the Brazilian real relative to the U.S. dollar) tempered net revenue growth by 3.5 percentage points for the quarter. The higher net revenue in the fourth quarter versus the same period in 2007 was fueled by pricing changes, which contributed approximately 8 percentage points of the net revenue growth; and a 6.0% increase in the number of transactions processed, to 5.5 billion."

MasterCard's gross dollar volume in the US actually declined in the fourth quarter by 5.2% to $256 billion. US credit purchase volume was down 11% while debit was +6%. MasterCard dramatically reduced its advertising and marketing expenses by 32.8% in 4Q08 vs. 4Q07 - helping fuel an increase in operating margin from 16% to 38%.

MasterCard is holding an earnings call this morning. A copy of the earnings presentation for use on the call is available online. READ MORE

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