Visa USA announced this morning that it has established a new department headed by Paul Musser intended to facilitate direct merchant connectivity to VisaNet.

"Merchants are constantly looking for affordable ways to improve their customers' buying experience at the point of sale," says Musser. "Direct Exchange enables merchants to securely and reliably increase throughput at the checkout counter using a direct connection to VisaNet. It can also decrease operating costs for merchants by improving processing efficiencies."

Tom Smith reports on Wells Fargo's implementation of WebMethods Integration Platform for its commercial banking Payment Manager services.

Katherine Burger compares today with her earlier involvement with the banking industry over ten years ago.

That leaves culture, which remains by far the biggest obstacle to the ability to sell, much less cross-sell, financial products and services in banking organizations. ... It remains to be seen whether the statement "Bankers can't sell" is an immutable fact of life or a concept whose time has not yet come.