Over on our PaymentsViews.com blog, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson reflects on yesterday's announcement by the Federal Reserve of new rules prohibiting banks from charging overdraft fees on debit card and ATM transactions without first obtaining consumer opt-in. Carol speculates on what retail banks will do to deal with the potential loss of overdraft fee revenue that could result.

In an article in yesterday's American Banker titled "For Wal-Mart, No Bank Charter Is No Problem", Maria Aspan reported on how "not getting a bank charter two years ago may have been one of the best things to happen to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s financial services agenda." Indeed, Wal-Mart has been very successful "with products aimed at the growing market of underbanked and low-income consumers who are largely underserved by the banking industry."

First Data Corp. has reported its financial results for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2009 with consolidated revenue of $2.4 billion, up 13% - primarily driven by the new Bank of America Merchant Services alliance.

The Reserve Bank of India has published Payments Systems in India - Vision 2009-12, a report that outlines several major initiatives that the bank is undertaking with respect to the payment systems in India. Among them is India Card - a domestic card initiative.

Quoting from the report: "The concept of a domestic payment card (India Card) and a PoS switch network for issuance and acceptance of payment cards would be looked into. The need for such a system arises from two major considerations (a) the high cost borne by the Indian banks for affiliation with international card associations in the absence of a domestic price setter (b) the connection with international card associations resulting in the need for routing even domestic transactions, which account for more than 90% of the total, through a switch located outside the country."

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