Neil posts on the Money.AU blog that the big four Australian banking groups are reviewing their overdraft fees "after their rival National Australia Bank (NAB) has decided to cease charging customers who end up overdrawing their bank accounts." The NAB said it will stop charging overdraft fees beginning October 1st.

On MasterCard's MasterCardNews Twitter feed this morning are several tweets from this morning's MasterCard quarterly earnings call about interchange fees. Included is a link to a MasterCard brochure titled "Benefits of Open Payment Systems and the Role of Interchange" that was originally released back in January.

In yesterday's Visa quarterly earnings call (from the transcript provided by SeekingAlpha.com), CEO Joe Saunders commented about plans for an "enhanced consumer platform" for online shoppers:

While we have a commanding 48% payment volume share on the net, our ultimate goal is for an ever-increasing number of consumers to recognize that the fastest, safest, and easiest way to transact online is with a Visa branded product.

To that end, among other upgrades, we are on the cusp of rolling out an enhanced consumer platform that will ultimately assist Internet shoppers in three ways. First, pre-purchase activities like a best price search capability; second, check-out activities like aliasing and auto form fill; and third, post-purchase capabilities like tracking and shipping.

Saunders said he'd "have more to say about this in the coming months."

In yesterday's Visa quarterly earnings call (from the transcript provided by SeekingAlpha.com), CEO Joe Saunders commented about the growth opportunities ahead in the prepaid market:

In the U.S., we believe this is a $1 trillion potential market while globally it could be as high as $3 trillion.

Stacked up against worldwide Visa payment volume for the 12 months through March of $2.7 trillion, it’s easy to see that even a nominal penetration of this market could be needle moving for us.

The largest opportunity globally is penetrating the under-banked segment with general purposed reloadable cards.

USA Technologies has announced the signing of an amendment to its existing agreement with Visa to expand the deployment of its ePort cashless payment solution for vending machines by another 2,500 terminals, for a total of up to 4,000 terminals, that are expected to be installed in markets nationwide. READ MORE »

MasterCard has announced financial results for the second quarter of 2009.

MasterCard reported net income of $349 million, up 26.4% year over year. Net revenue was $1.3 billion, a 2.7% increase.

MasterCard’s gross dollar volume was down by 0.6% on a local currency basis, versus the second quarter of 2008, to $595 billion. Worldwide purchase volume during the quarter was down by 0.7% on a local currency basis, versus the second quarter of 2008, to $450 billion. US purchase volume declined 8.8% - reporting the largest decline of any of MasterCard's regions.

A webcast and accompanying presentation are available online.

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