Simon Hayes reports in Australian IT on plans by the National Australian Bank to use SMS to send a one-time PIN to the bank's customer a logon time to thwart phishing attacks.

Under the new security regime, which will be piloted in September and rolled out at the end of the year, National's one million internet banking customers will be offered the option of registering their mobile phone number with the bank, which will SMS a unique PIN to the phone during each transaction. Customers will then enter the PIN on the website to confirm the transaction.

The Federal Reserve has released its annual report to Congress on the profitability of credit card operations by banks showing pre-tax net earnings of 3.66% of outstanding balances in 2003, up from 3.28% in 2002 and 3.24% in 2001. READ MORE »

Jennifer Coleman reports in the San Francisco Chronicle on plans by banking industry groups to appeal yesterday's dismissal of a lawsuit attempting to block California's new financial privacy law from taking effect today.

The bankers contend the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, passed by Congress in 2003, pre-empts California's restrictions on how affiliated companies can share customer data.

"The court has ignored Congress, has ignored the FACT Act, and has used outdated cases to justify a poor decision," said Joe Belew, president of the Consumer Bankers Association. "We are confident that this flawed district court decision will be overturned on appeal."

Arik Hesseldahl reports in Forbes on near field communications and opportunities for contactless payments.

The Clearing House, SVPCo and affiliated payments businesses have been merged into a single payments company, the Clearing House Payments Company.

This reorganization involves: The Clearing House, Small Value Payments Company (SVPCo), Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS), Electronic Payments Network (EPN), Electronic Clearing Services (ECS), and National Check Exchange (NCE). Together, these companies represent the entire spectrum of clearing and settling payments -- from paper to electronic.

Last week's Economist explored the state of the banking industry in Iraq.

Christopher Oster reports in today's Wall St. Journal on a rogue mutual fund site (subscription required) recently shut down by the SEC. READ MORE »

The US Public Interest Research Group has issued a white paper on errors in consumer credit reports. It concludes that 25% of credit reports it surveyed contained serious errors that could result in the denial of credit and that 79% of the credit reports surveyed contained either serious errors or other mistakes of some kind. The paper is available online (PDF).