Mercator Advisory Group has published a new report, End-to-End Encryption: The Acquiring Side Responds to Data Loss and PCI Compliance that "explores end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in the hands of merchants, payment service providers and processors. In the face of the three bogies of PCI DSS compliance and penalties, reputational risk and direct financial loss, the acquiring half of the payments process is evaluating options for eliminating cleartext cardholder data from their systems. Tokenization (the subject of a recent Mercator report) and end-to-end encryption are the leading candidates. This report examines the complexity of E2EE within payments and enterprise security." READ MORE »

Today's Heard on the Street column by Peter Eavis in the Wall St. Journal takes a look at American Express. Eavis writes: "The dilemma for AmEx is deciding how big its pure credit-card book, as opposed to classic charge cards, should be."

Gemalto has announced commercial launch of the Ezio Optical TAN, a unique optical authentication reader for online banking access that is specially designed for the German market. According to the company, "the reader, the size of a credit card, fits in a wallet along with the banking card. Users present the device in front of their computer screen and optical sensors capture the data they would normally enter from the reader keypad to carry out and sign online transactions. No software needs to be installed to use the device." READ MORE »

• WSJ.com: Credit-Card Industry Woes Will Cost Consumers
• FinReg21: Antitrust Exemptions for Merchants’ Empty Promises? - by Shawn Miles, MasterCard Group Head, Global Public Policy
• Los Angeles Times: JPMorgan to Charge 5% on Card Balance Transfers, Cash Advances
• Capital One Survey of High School Seniors Reveals Gender Gaps in Financial Literacy
• The Wallet - WSJ: Sending Cash With Text Messages, Cellphones And Email
• Reuters: Visa Brazil affiliate bans 19 brokerages from IPO
• Digital River Debuts Limited Edition E-Commerce Solution
• Global Contactless Smart Cards Market to Cross $2.35 Billion by 2015, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts
• New York Times Editorial: Real Consumer Protection
• NetBanker: New Online Banking Report Published: Online Account Opening
• StorefrontBacktalk: TJX Agrees To Pay States Almost $10 Million For Data Breach
• Americans Make Staying Close to Hearth and Home a Money-Saving Priority, According to a Huntington Bank Survey of 1,000 Consumers