Amex Bank of Canada and TD Bank Financial Group announced an alliance in which TD will transfer commercial and corporate clients to the American Express credit card from Visa. Financial details of the deal weren't disclosed, but a spokesman for Amex indicated the arrangement is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The move will involve about 300 corporate TD clients.

Michael Kanellos interviews National Semiconductor CEO Brian Halla.

What other projects is National working on? We have this vision that your smart card will have biometric information. It will have your bank account and your passport and your medical data--but only your thumbprint can activate it. So you shove it into a slot and it says, 'Yeah, this guy's passport is real. Or 'yeah, this guy's got the bank account to back this up.' Or maybe you just load it up with $50,000 and burn it off over time. But if you ever lose it, (the card) doesn't have your thumbprint so it's useless. We're working with a particular technology where you don't leave your thumbprint; you rub it. We've been working on that for around six months.

Lynn Cowan reports on successful strategies to turn call centers into profit centers through cross-sell of products.

Turning customer service centers into effective sales offices requires the kind of detailed personal data that credit card companies excel at -- past payment histories, spending habits and information about a customer's favorite stores. "Offers are individualized by looking at information like how customers are using their cards, their demographics and recent things we have offered them," said Steve Kietz, senior vice president of marketing in J.P. Morgan Chase Bank's credit-card business, which issues cards through its Chase Manhattan Bank USA subsidiary.