Starbucks has announced a new customer loyalty card program called My Starbucks Rewards, which will launch on Dec. 26, 2009 in all U.S. Starbucks stores. Consolidating its two current programs, Starbucks Card Rewards and Starbucks Gold card, the new program "delivers value with no annual fee, allows members to use one registered card (any Starbucks Card) and provides customized rewards that increase with frequency of use." READ MORE »

In an article in today's American Banker titled "Return of an Interchange Firebrand", Maria Aspan interviews Lloyd Constantine, the lead attorney who represented Wal-Mart and other merchants in the largest class action settlement in history involving debit card interchange fees.

Constantine's new book, Priceless: The Case that Brought Down the Visa/MasterCard Bank Cartel, was recently published by Kaplan and has been on the must read list for payments geeks like ourselves!

Aspan writes that Constantine finds current interchange-related lawsuits to be "lawyer-driven cases" - while his wasn't. As for the current legislative efforts in Congress to reform interchange, Constantine says he thinks those efforts are "well founded."

Congressional proposals to rein in abusive overdraft practices are long overdue, Center for Responsible Lending executive Eric Halperin told the House Financial Services Committee today (full testimony). Halperin, who is director of CRL's Washington office, gave full support to legislation aimed at reforming bank overdraft programs, which cost consumers $23.7 billion last year and are among the most predatory lending products on the market.

"Charging people a $35 fee for a small, debit card transaction is unacceptable," said Halperin, director of CRL's Washington office. "It doesn't save them bounced check fees, it simply skims money from their account and puts them in a bind."

On November 2, the European Payments Council (EPC) launches the SEPA Core Direct Debit Scheme and the SEPA Business to Business Direct Debit Scheme. The SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) Schemes enable bank customers – for the first time ever - to make and receive direct debits within and across 32 European countries collectively known as the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). READ MORE »

Sears has announced new benefits and new features to provide more retail value to Sears card customers, including Credit Score Access (Sears is the first major retailer to offer its cardholders access to their credit score at no additional cost), Monthly Cardholder-only Sales and a new Sears Platinum MasterCard with a new Sears Choice Rewards program. READ MORE »

Google Checkout has introduced a new feature that allows merchants based in the U.S. to create and to run their own Checkout promotions at any time. From the Google Checkout blog: "Starting today, you can sign in to your Checkout merchant account, go to the 'Tools' tab, and click the 'Promotions' link to create a Checkout promotion in less than a minute. You'll be able to specify the date and time you'd like the promotion to run, as well as choose from a variety of dollar-off discounts to offer your buyers."

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