Yesterday and today, the Seattle Times ran a two part series about its former home town bank Washington Mutual titled "Reckless Strategies Doomed WaMu". In a word (actually two words!), it was the: Option ARM.

A consumer survey commissioned by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and undertaken by the Opinion Research Corporation earlier this month revealed widespread misunderstanding of general purpose gift cards. According to the CFA, "only 33 percent of a representative sample of 1004 adult Americans know how much these cards cost to purchase, and only 54 percent are aware that “six to twelve months after purchase, some of these gift cards charge a monthly fee.” READ MORE

Earlier this year, the Bundesbank published its findings regarding the payment behavior of consumers for retail purchases in Germany.

From the press release: "The majority of those surveyed stated that how they chose to pay was determined by the amount of cash they had available to them and the amount to be paid. Measured by the value of the transactions, cash accounts for a share of 57.9%, girocards for 25.5% and credit cards for 3.6% of all purchases. In terms of the number of transactions, cash accounts for a share of 82.5%, with girocards and credit cards accounting for 11.9% and 1.4% respectively. This is due to the fact that mainly small and medium-sized payment amounts are paid in cash."

The full study is available for download here.

Zenius Solutions has announced the integration of its software to an NFC add-on for GSM phones - offering the ability to enable interactive NFC capability on current mobile phones. NFC payment capability is achieved by adding a BLADOX Waver product running ZeniusMobilePay software to supported GSM phones, enabling secure Mastercard PayPass, Visa payWave, American Express ExpressPay and Discover Network Zip EMV and non-EMV Contactless transactions. READ MORE

INSIDE Contactless has introduced the MicroPass 6000 dual-interface intelligent payment processor, designed as an EMV-compliant platform providing both contact and contactless operation. READ MORE

As part of an agreement with the European Commission announced today by ING to separate its banking and insurance operations, ING announced that it plans to divest itself of its ING Direct USA operation by 2013. ING said that it "regards the operation as a very strong franchise and the US market offers potential for growth. It is anticipated that a divestment will take several years and will not be completed before the end of 2013. In the meantime, ING will ensure that it continues to grow the value of the business and offer a superior customer experience."

Over the last few years, we've been watching various acceptance environments abandoning cash and moving to only card-based payments. Perhaps the best examples are the airlines - who moved over a relatively short period to eliminating cash acceptance for meals and drinks purchased in-flight. Now comes word from the Miami Herald in south Florida that Florida's Turnpike is being turned into a cashless toll road. "By February 2011, all cash collection on the Turnpike's southernmost stretch will end, and crews will begin tearing down every toll booth."

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