Donna Howells reports in Investors Business Daily on retailer co-branded card strategies.

Late tonight, First Data Corp. issued a press release reporting that on Thursday, April 1, a hardware problem at FDC resulted in some Wal-Mart Visa and MasterCard transactions being erroneously posted three times.

Boston Globe columnist Steve Bailey laments life in a branch town now that Bank of America has merged with Fleet and Boston's no longer the corporate headquarters of a major bank.

In the end, Bank of America will be judged not by what it says, but by what it does. Shuttering a tiny Fleet unit that made a difference is a chilling beginning.

David Breitkopf reports in the American Banker on recent organizational shifts by Visa USA.

Visa U.S.A., which until last year considered MasterCard International its main rival in debit cards, is making internal adjustments in what is being viewed as a response to a now-bigger threat, First Data Corp.

MSNBC reporter Bob Sullivan writes about ecommerce fraud.

Ann All reports in ATM Marketplace on the industry migration to triple DES encryption.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has issued revised guidance for examiners, financial institutions, and technology service providers on the risks associated with retail payment systems. The new Retail Payment Systems booklet is available for download.

The BBC reports on RFID-based credit cards including a novel personal identification technique suggested by MIT Professor Ted Selker.

Sasha Talcott profiles Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis in this morning's Boston Globe. A separate column discusses the changes Bank of America is making in the early days following its merger with Fleet.

Anick Jesdanun of the AP reports in the Detroit News on phishing.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group and Tumbleweed Communications have issued a new threat advisory alert regarding a dangerous new form of phishing attack. READ MORE »

A executive email from Bill Gates reports on Microsoft's efforts to improve Windows security.

Keith Reed writes in the Boston Globe about how Boston remains a cash-only taxi fare city. READ MORE »

Tony Kontzer profiles MasterCard's Jerry McElhatton in Information Week.

Ruth Simon reports in the Wall St. Journal on an industry trend towards more aggressive credit card fee increases (subscription required) by US card issuers.

Michael Luo reports in the New York Times on a significant fare increase coming for taxi-riding New Yorkers -- along with a plan for all New York City cabs to accept credit and debit cards by November 2005.

Jon Udell examines some issues associated with forging emails with digital signatures. The use of digital signatures on emails from trusted parties has been proposed as an anti-phishing countermeasure.

Ivan Schneider reports in Bank Systems & Technology that Visa USA expects debit card transactions are going to represent 15 percent of all consumer payments in the US by 2007.

Kevin Laws shares his perspective on what's happened to mCommerce in the US.

The US carriers have tried to control mobile services and mobile commerce, and all they have succeeded in doing is killing it. The barriers to providing applications are so high that the content is just uninteresting and expensive.

This morning's Wall St. Journal Heard on the Street column (subscription required) reports on the large piles of cash held by major European banks and speculates that many of them will use the cash to make acquisitions.

Although share buybacks and dividend increases are a possibility, many predict a rush of deal-making over the coming year, as banks seek ways to boost earnings and help them compete against larger rivals. This could involve anything from small "bolt-on" acquisitions to bigger and riskier ones, with some banks even contemplating large, cross-border European deals.

MasterCard has filed its annual proxy statement with the SEC. Included in the statement is information about the directors of MasterCard as well as 2003 compensation details for the top five most highly compensated MasterCard executives.

Jennifer Bayot reports in the New York Times on American Express' plans to issue cards in China.

Unlike previous credit cards issued in China by foreign banks, the American Express and Citibank cards allow payment not only in dollars but also in Chinese currency. That makes the cards viable for ordinary consumers.

More on the story in this press release from American Express.

A new edition of Payments and Settlements News has been posted by the ePayments Systems Observatory at the European Central Bank.

Read Jeremy Wagstaff's post on the perils of autoresponse when you're away from your email -- and you might think twice about whether you want to continue to use it.

Jeremy Wagstaff blogs about Daniel McNamara's Code Fish site and his analysis of a new phishing trojan.

Phishing emails don't need to be sophisticated to lure the unwary. Indeed, there's some evidence those behind the more convincing looking emails masquerading as bank emails are also behind a spate of key-logging trojans, which use basic methods to fool the recipient into making them active.

Kelly Mills reports in The Australian on phishing attacks in Australia.

Ellen Messmer reports in TechNewsWorld on Microsoft's focus on two-factor authentication.

Lisa Haarlander reports in the Buffalo News on a recent theft of credit card receipts from a local retailer.

Forbes carries a Reuters story about the record $38 billion in remittances sent home to families last year by Latin American and Caribbean families working abroad.

The average cost of sending 200 dollars from the United States to Latin America was 7.9 percent, the IADB study showed. Ecuador was the cheapest at 5.4 percent and Cuba the most expensive, at 12.1 percent. Even though the cost is half of what it was five years ago, officials say it must be cut more.