PayPal's parent eBay announced financial results for the third quarter 2009 today. PayPal's revenue grew 15% year over year to $688 MM. PayPal's purchase volume grew 19% to $17.7 billion. Active registered accounts reached 78 MM, up 19% year over year. PayPal's revenue ("transaction revenue rate") was 3.67% with transaction processing expense rate at 1.16% and a transaction loss rate of 0.25%.

A presentation on the results is available online. Bill Me Later's volume for the quarter was $200 MM, essentially flat with the prior quarter. BML's outstanding portfolio balance was $561 MM. Net chargeoffs in the BML portfolio were 11.5%, up from 11.1% in the prior quarter.

A transcript of today's eBay conference call is available from SeekingAlpha.com.

Annually at the Web 2.0 Summit for the last several years, Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker has given a presentation on her views about the market as well as the most interesting trends in technogy, Internet, etc. This year's presentation was given yesterday in San Francisco and is available online. If you're at all interested in what's happening with mobile, Meeker's slides are a must read!

We recently had an email from a long-time Visa colleague of ours that brought back memories of some of the early work that Visa did on smart cards back in the late 1980's-early 1990's. The most famous of those was the Visa Super Smart Card.

Paul Steger runs a web site that collects lots of information about Visa (and Mondex) smart cards - for us that's like a trip down memory lane!

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report, "Credit Cards: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act Could Better Reflect the Evolving Debt Collection Market Place and Use of Technology".

The GAO said it was asked by Congress to examine (1) the federal and state consumer protections and enforcement responsibilities related to the credit card debt collection; (2) the process and practices involved in collecting and selling delinquent credit card debt; and (3) and issues that may exist related to some of these processes and practices.

Ingenico has announced the launch of the Payment Personal Digital Assistant (PayPDA), the Ingenico iPA280. According to the company, by "combining secure card payment and PDA functionality, the unique Ingenico device transforms the sales environment into a mobile POS, offering superior quality of service and a complete purchasing experience. This includes secured payment through instant access to online value added applications - from online databases and web based business applications to stock and timetable queries, GPS location services, order processing and even lottery sales." READ MORE »

The Payment Systems Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia has published its Annual Report 2009. The report contains lots of interested data and graphs on payments behavior, interchange fees, merchant service fees, etc. in Australia.

INSIDE Contactless has announced a partnership with ADELYA, a Software-as-a-Service company specializing in contactless and mobile loyalty and relationship programs, to enable consumers to conduct retail loyalty, ticketing, low-end ID and other transactions using the mobile phones they already have. INSIDE Contactless is providing ADELYA with PicoPass contactless stickers to transform mobile phones into contactless loyalty cards. More than 300,000 loyalty cards embedded with contactless stickers have already been deployed throughout France to customers of a children's clothing retailer. READ MORE »

• AP: A look at the Consumer Financial Protection Agency
• Huffington Post: Eva Norlyk Smith, Ph.D.: Credit Card Companies Are Sending Out Early Holiday Gifts
• Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: PayPal Hopes Open Platform Will Spur Innovation
• Finextra: ATM card capture crime soars in EU; pressure grown on US to move to EMV
• Digital Transactions: ‘A Major Pivot’ for Revolution Money As It Shifts Its Focus to Issuers
• The Financial Services Club's Blog: Barclaycard contactless strikes again
• Visa Inc. Declares Quarterly Dividend, Increases Dividend Rate 19%
• Comdata Corporation Announces Launch of New Point-of-Sale Solution
• Amazon Payments Blog: Announcing Alternative Payment Method from Checkout by Amazon
• New Aite Group Report: In Banks We Mistrust: Something the French, Americans and British Agree Upon
• New Juniper Research Report: Mobile Money Transfer & Remittances - Markets, Forecasts & Strategies 2009-2014