Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes:

Our revised and updated Payments Boot Camp curriculum has an extensive focus on what's happening in mobile payments as well as the new debit, ACH and prepaid products, opportunities and challenges. We've also added new coverage of the emerging arena of social payments.

Stay current! Sign up now for an upcoming session of our Payments Boot Camp:

• December 8-9, 2009 - San Francisco Bay Area
• January 20-21, 2010 - San Francisco Bay Area
• February 10-11, 2010 - New York City
• March 10-11, 2010 - San Francisco Bay Area
• May 19-20, 2010 - San Francisco Bay Area

New! Are you an Accredited ACH Professional? Glenbrook’s Payments Boot Camps are now accredited for over 15 hours of AAP continuing education credits.

See our Payments Education website for details and online registration, or contact Glenbrook Partner Carol Coye Benson with questions.

In an article titled "Barclaycard U.S. Taking Baby Steps into Public Eye" in today's American Banker, Maria Aspan writes about BarclayCard's US unit - and how it's trying to make US consumers aware of its name "in a really subtle way".

Visa Inc. has announced financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year of 2009 ending September 30. Visa's payments volume growth through June 30, 2009 was a negative 2% over the prior year at $687 billion. Total volume, on a nominal basis and inclusive of cash volume, was $1.1 trillion, a 3% decline over the prior year. Total cards carrying the Visa brands rose 5% worldwide over the prior year to over 1.7 billion. Total processed transactions, representing transactions processed by VisaNet for the three months ending September 30, 2009, totaled 10.5 billion, a 9% increase over the prior year. Visa also announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a $1 billion share repurchase plan.

A presentation on Visa's financial results is available online.

Chase Paymentech has announced a joint initiative with VeriFone and Semtek to provide end-to-end encryption technologies for merchants to combat threats to security. The companies said they "will work together to market and distribute VeriFone’s VeriShield Protect solution to the Chase Paymentech base of retail merchants. The end-to-end encryption solution is designed to help merchants reduce the costs to comply with Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements and associated security risk by protecting card information from the point of swipe to the Chase Paymentech authorization host." READ MORE »

In an article titled "Credit card giants create debit havoc", Dana Flavelle and Rita Trichur write for the Toronto Star about small merchant reactions to the introduction of Visa and MasterCard debit products into Canada.

• Hypercom and Voltage Security Team to Defend Payment Card Data and Merchant Brand Reputation with End-to-End Security
• Voltage Security Opens End-to-End Encryption to POS Vendors With Zero-cost License
• Online Spending Projected to Grow 24 Percent Compared to Q3 2009
• Cellufun Launches First Global Virtual Goods Currency For Mobile
• Visa renews Olympic Games sponsorship through 2020
• Travelex Global Business Payments Continues Expansion in Global Financial and Legal Sectors
• INSIDE Contactless and Dynamic Card Solutions Team on Instant In-Branch Issuance
• Hypercom Steps Up Payment Card Industry's Attack on Card Data Fraud to Protect Businesses Globally
• Intuit App Center Brings Innovative Web Apps to Small Businesses
• NEACH Presents Payment Insights 2009 - “Mastering the Winds of Change”
• BBC News: Credit card terms 'to be curbed' (UK)