US Bank says that "businesses that are looking for ways to add to their bottom lines now have a new way to save and earn rewards while managing expenses with the U.S. Bank Cash Rewards Business Platinum Card. Cardholders can enjoy savings on the business purchases they make most, earning three percent cash back on cellular, gas and office supply purchases and one percent cash back on all other purchases." READ MORE

This week the Prepaid Expo is being held in Orlando. If you're into Twitter, you can following along with some of the news by following @prepaidexpo - among others. They'll be using the hashtag #prepaid for their tweets from the show. If you're at the Expo and also tweeting away, tell us your Twitter ID in a comment to this post!

The Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) has announced research results finding that "80 percent of polled prepaid industry executives see underbanked consumers as important or very important to the future growth of the prepaid industry, according to its latest survey of prepaid industry executives. Survey results are detailed in a new white paper, “The Industry Forecast for Prepaid Cards, 2009,” released today at the Prepaid Card Expo." READ MORE

GlobalPlatform, the international specification body for smart card infrastructure, has announced that PayPal has become its latest member. According to the organization, "PayPal, the leading global online payments service, will bring its expertise to GlobalPlatform and contribute to the ongoing development of standards to ensure interoperability across the payments industry." READ MORE

Mocapay has announced that ink! Coffee, a specialty coffee retailer with multiple stores throughout the greater Denver metro area and Aspen, has selected Mocapay to implement and operate its mobile gift program. ink! Coffee currently offers plastic gift cards at all of its locations and expects to "go live" with Mocapay's mobile gift in the second quarter of this year. READ MORE

Web.com has announced an agreement with Chase Paymentech to offer merchant payment processing solutions to small and medium-sized businesses Web.com customers will have access to multiple secure payment processing services including all major credit, debit and customizable gift cards. READ MORE

Peter Burrows reports for BusinessWeek about eBay's upcoming annual analyst meeting scheduled for this Wednesday, March 11. Burrows quotes PayPal senior Vice-President Jack Stephenson: "We're going to give more visibility than we ever have on our sources of revenue, and our growth opportunities."

Despite regulatory challenges and the financial crisis, policymakers are embracing mobile banking as a means of providing financial access to the unbanked poor. More than a billion people worldwide lack bank accounts, but do have mobile phones, providing a dramatic opportunity to achieve greater financial inclusion, according to officials meeting near London today. READ MORE

TransUnion.com has released the results of its analysis of trends in the credit card lending industry for the fourth quarter of 2008. "The report is part of an ongoing series of quarterly consumer lending sector analyses focusing on credit card, auto loan and mortgage data that may be found on TransUnion's Web site. Information for this analysis is culled quarterly from approximately 27 million anonymous, individual credit files, providing a real-life perspective on how U.S. consumers are managing their credit health." READ MORE

The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association (NBPCA) has released a white paper: Abandoned Property Laws and Network Branded Prepaid Cards: Questions and Concerns Raised When Trying to Fit Cards into the Existing Abandoned Property Legal Framework. READ MORE

• Intuit Bringing Its Popular Online Payroll to Accountants, Mac Users and Financial Institutions
• Prepaid Expo: Meta Payment Systems® and NetSpend® Announce iAdvanceSM Partnership
• Union Bank: Survey: California Small Businesses Report Declining Profits, More Layoffs and the Need for Government Help to Weather 2009
• IBT Experiences Growth of Almost 70 Percent in 2008
• Ground Labs Releases Solution to Reduce Credit Card Data Theft
• CreditMattersBlog.com: The Mechanics of Converting And Combining Your WaMu And Chase Cards -- A Primer
• NovoPayment and Interbank Group Establish Joint Venture to Develop Prepaid Card Programs in Peru
• Capital One cuts dividend 87% to preserve capital
• Barclays goes contactless on debit cards
• New US House Report Critical Of Banks' Use of TARP Funds
• Financial Page: The New Yorker: House Of Cards
• AdWeek: Ready, Set, 'Go' for Visa
• Springbok Increases Prepaid Card Fulfillment Capacity Three-Fold
• Galileo Processing Launches Galileo Analytics
• Orange and Barclaycard team up for mobile payments