The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has sent out a reminder to CEOs of national banks in the US reminding them that, effective August 22, 2010, banks must conduct the periodic reviews required by theCredit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 on any accounts on which the APRs were increased on or after January 1, 2009. To fulfill their obligations, banks "must maintain and have available such information concerning APR increases for such accounts as needed to enable them to conduct the required reviews."

In yesterday's MasterCard quarterly earnings call (from the transcript provided by SeekingAlpha.com), MasterCard CEO Bob Selander commented on MasterCard's processing opportunities - saying that "globally out of 100 transactions done with our cards, we’re still only processing about 40 out of those 100." He noted that "the ones that we don’t process are generally those domestic transactions that are handled by the bank formed consortiums or other domestic processing entities."

Google Checkout has introduced the Google Checkout store gadget, a new Google Labs-developed feature that allows online sellers to "create an online store that's powered by Google Checkout and has inventory managed in a Google Docs spreadsheet." You can embed your online store anywhere you'd like -- on Google Sites, Blogger, or your personal website. Signup for it here.

In yesterday's MasterCard quarterly earnings call (from the transcript provided by SeekingAlpha.com), MasterCard CEO Bob Selander early on commented directly on the pending interchange-related legislation in the US Congress. He spoke about "the extraordinary value merchants receive, when they accept payment cards" noting that "the average consumer credit charge-off rate as a percentage of point of sale transaction volume is multiples higher than the average consumer credit card interchange rate in [our] system."

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