In tomorrow's Washington Post, V. Dion Haynes reports on today's Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing that "heard debate on a measure that would wipe out credit card debt for people in bankruptcy." According to the article, "the [proposed] bill would apply to companies that raise rates higher than 15 percent plus the current yield on the 30-year Treasury bond. That combined rate currently is 18.5 percent."

The "Stop Sticking It To Us" Coalition, representing over 200,000 Canadian businesses, small, mid and large, says it is gathering in Ottawa this week to combat overcharging by VISA and MasterCard. Speaking on behalf of the Coalition, Retail Council of Canada President, Diane J. Brisebois said, "The credit card companies are pushing to take over debit transactions and hike credit card service charges. That's bad for merchants, and bad for consumers. At a time when governments are asking Canadians to stimulate the economy by spending on goods and services, credit card companies skimming more off the top is not helping our economic recovery." READ MORE

The Federal Trade Commission today told the U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that the FTC will continue protecting consumers from predatory lending and other illegal practices through all stages of the credit life-cycle, from advertising of credit through collection of debt. The FTC also recommended legislative and other remedies to enhance the agency’s effectiveness. The text of the prepared testimony is available online. READ MORE

The US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts held a hearing today on "Abusive Credit Card Practices and Bankruptcy". See this Wall St. Journal story for more coverage of the hearing. A webcast of the hearing is also available (1 hour 45 minutes long).

This tax season, MasterCard is working with both H&R Block and TurboTax to provide discounts to its cardholders on the purchase of online tax preparation services:

• For H&R Block's TaxCut Online, consumers purchasing with their MasterCards can save 35 percent when they purchase using the http://hrblock.com/goto/mastercard website.
• For TurboTax Online, consumers purchasing with their MasterCards can save 20 percent when purchasing at the Official Payments website http://www.officialpayments.com/turbotaxmc. For detailed terms and conditions on both discounts, see the MasterCard Tax Payments web site.

Link2Gov has announced that it now offers Bill Me Later as a payment option for qualified taxpayers. Taxpayers can now log onto BML.PAY1040.com, powered by Link2Gov, to pay their individual or business federal taxes. Bill Me Later offers customers credit for single transactions at the point of payment online, and provides authorization for approved customers within seconds. In addition to federal taxes, Link2Gov plans to add Bill Me Later as a standard payment option along with the card-based and electronic check payment solutions it provides to non-IRS government agencies of all sizes. READ MORE

Western Union and U.S. Bank have announced an agreement to offer the Western Union global money-transfer service in 2,791 U.S. Bank branch offices across 24 states. The agreement will connect consumers to more than 334,000 Western Union Agent locations worldwide. READ MORE

Philip Lowe, Assistant Governor (Financial System) at the Reserve Bank of Australia, spoke today at the Cards & Payments Australasia 2009 conference being held in Sydney, Australia. In his speech, he addressed "firstly, the recent reforms of the ATM system; secondly, the conclusions of last year’s review of the reforms to the card payment systems; and thirdly, the architecture and governance of Australia’s bilateral systems." In his discussion of the reforms, he comments, in particular, about online payments:

The Bank’s recent focus on online payments reflects a couple of considerations. One is that in many situations, consumers wishing to buy goods online have few payment choices other than to use a card issued by the international schemes. This lack of choice weakens competition, and is likely to become a bigger issue as online commerce continues to grow.

Another consideration is that fraud rates on online transactions appear to be steadily increasing. Almost half the fraud on credit cards occurs in situations where the merchant does not physically see the card, with the fraud rate increasing by around 50 per cent over the past year. If this trend were to continue, it could undermine consumer confidence in transacting online which would have obvious costs.

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