NACHA has announced that the number of US ACH payments in the 4th quarter 2008 grew by 4.5 percent over the same period in 2007, topping 3.8 billion. "Internet-initiated ACH payments (known as “WEB” entries) experienced robust growth, increasing 16.5 percent over 4th quarter 2007 volumes. Strong growth also occurred with certain business-to-business payments (known as “CTX” entries) in which remittance information is exchanged electronically. The number of these payments grew by 15 percent over 4th quarter 2007 levels." READ MORE »

Eight top US bank CEOs are in Washington today at a full committee hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on the subject of "TARP Accountability: Use of Federal Assistance by the First TARP Recipients." The hearing will be webcast.

Participating are (click links for their prepared testimony):

• Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Goldman Sachs & Co.
• James Dimon, Chief Executive Officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
• Robert P. Kelly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of New York Mellon
• Ken Lewis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America
• Ronald E. Logue, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, State Street Corporation
• John J. Mack, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Morgan Stanley
• Vikram Pandit, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup
• John Stumpf, President and Chief Executive Officer, Wells Fargo & Co.

According to Litle & Co., a provider of payment processing solutions for card-not-present merchants, "payment processing is an often overlooked source of revenue creation and marketing intelligence, two of the most important concerns for merchants facing the current economic conditions. By looking at payments and processing as an opportunity to improve operations, merchants can increase their revenue by reducing declined authorizations, offering the right mix of payment options and focusing attention on their most profitable customers." READ MORE »

INSIDE Contactless has announced that it is working with Qualcomm to accelerate the growth of the Near Field Communication (NFC) handset market by jumpstarting the product development cycle, speeding time to market and significantly reducing development costs. As part of the collaboration, the two companies will develop two 3G handset reference designs-one each for UMTS and CDMA2000 networks-that combine Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem chipsets with INSIDE's MicroRead(r) multi-standard NFC chip. READ MORE »

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