PayPal has announced plans "to open its payment platform to third-party developers with the release of new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow developers to embed PayPal’s secure global payment system into their applications and platforms. In opening up the PayPal platform, developers can now create new ways to send and receive payments for services beyond traditional e-commerce. According to a recent McKinsey report, the global payments market represents a $30 trillion opportunity." READ MORE »

American Express has announced financial results for the second quarter 2009 reporting that income declined 48% from the same quarter in the prior year to $342 million. Amex's billed business declined 16% on a worldwide basis to $151.4 billion. Average cardmember spending declined 15% to $2,712. Amex's merchant discount rate declined slightly to 2.55%.

Consumer Health Technologies and TSYS Healthcare have announced an agreement that "extends streamlined payment solutions to consumers, enabling easier, more convenient and cost effective healthcare purchases. TSYS Healthcare’s payment card solution offers end-to-end functionality with greater automation, refined reporting and smoother reconciliation capabilities, resulting in minimal error rates. The TSYS Healthcare system will be integrated into BenefitSpan™, CHT’s award-winning total benefit administration platform for managing HRA, FSA and HSA accounts." READ MORE »

In an article titled "Keeping Employees Creative in a Downturn", Reena Jana and Damian Joseph write for Business Week about MasterCard's approach using a company-wide webcast tomorrow to help ensure employees stay creative and suggest ideas for new products, services or internal processes.

J.P. Morgan has announced the launch of Total Settlement, an electronic payment solution that helps businesses simplify the payment of supplier invoices and lay the foundation for complete order-to-pay automation. According to the bank, "Total Settlement consolidates Automated Clearing House (ACH), commercial card, wire, and standard paper check payments in a single file, eliminating the extra effort in accounts payable involved with processing multiple payment types. A self-service web portal for suppliers provides valuable payment status information, remittance details and allows suppliers to maintain their own contact and payment-related information." READ MORE »

In an article titled "EBay Plans to Ride PayPal Business to Greater Profit", Claire Cain Miller writes for the New York Times about eBay's plans to open up the PayPal platform to developers "who want to build applications that use PayPal’s technology." PayPal is scheduled to unveil its platform plans later today.

TxVia has announced it has raised $15.5 million in Series C financing, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Also participating were all current institutional investors, including Espírito Santo Ventures, High Peaks Venture Partners and Village Ventures. New York City Investment Fund joined as a new co-investor.

According to the firm, "the funding follows important milestones for TxVia, including successful large-scale client deployments of the company’s groundbreaking platform-as-a-service (PaaS) delivery model for prepaid card processing. Today, TxVia has more than five million reloadable and nonreloadable cards on file in both B2B and B2C prepaid applications." READ MORE »

That's what Peter Applebome writing in the New York Times called the news about Visa's programming error that resulted in more than 12,000 Visa cardholders getting charges in the quadrillions posted to their accounts as the result of a "temporary programming error". "A quadrillion here and a quadrillion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money."

• CyberSource Announces Second Quarter 2009 Financial Results
• Turiss adds Former First Data CISO Phil Mellinger as Chief Technology Officer
• Consumer Law & Policy Blog: Consent Decree in Minnesota v. NAF
• Citi's ThankYou Network Celebrates 5th Birthday By Rewarding Millions of Members with Sensational Offers
• NetBanker: Pitney Bowes Goes After Remote Deposit Capture Market with Email to Postage-Meter Clients
• The Dangers of Doing Your Own Internet-Based Background Checks
• Seeking Alpha: eBay Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
• ZDNet.com: Bill.com hits the banks when they're down