Amazon.com has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Zappos.com, a leader in online apparel and footwear sales. According to Amazon, "the acquisition brings together two companies who share a passion for serving customers and whose customers benefit from cultures of innovation and long term thinking." READ MORE »

PayPal's parent eBay announced financial results for the second quarter 2009 today. PayPal's revenue grew 11% year over year to $669 million. PayPal's purchase volume grew 12% to $16.7 billion. Active registered accounts reached 75.4 million, up 20% year over year. PayPal's revenue ("transaction revenue rate") was 3.77% with transaction processing expense rate at 1.15% and a transaction loss rate of 0.30%.

A presentation on the results is available online. In the presentation, PayPal's segment margin is reported as 16.1% for the quarter, down from 19.5% in the same quarter last year. Bill Me Later's volume was $200 million for the quarter with an outstanding portfolio balance of $553 million. Net chargeoffs in the BML portfolio were 11.1%, up from 8.95% in the prior quarter.

Bankrate has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired and taken private by funds advised by Apax Partners, a global private equity firm.

American Express OPEN has announced the OPEN Forum, a new online resource and networking site for business owners. According to Amex, "the site is designed to forge meaningful business connections and provide practical, actionable information and insights from influential bloggers, industry leaders, and savvy entrepreneurs. In addition, the site will aggregate relevant online small business conversations from Twitter." READ MORE »

MasterCard has announced that "the sporting goods retailer, Sports Authority, will begin accepting MasterCard PayPass contactless payments at all of its 450 store locations in the U.S. In addition to using traditional magnetic-stripe payment cards, customers can now tap their PayPass contactless cards or devices on electronic readers at check-out to make their purchases, enabling quicker transactions and more convenient payments." READ MORE »

In an article titled "Credit Card Disputes Tossed Into Disarray", Robin Sidel and Amol Sharma write for the Wall St. Journal about yesterday's decision by the American Arbitration Association to "stop participating in consumer-debt-collection disputes until new guidelines are established." Their decision followed an earlier one by the National Arbitration Forum to stop accepting new credit card arbitration cases.

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