Scot Paltrow reports for the Wall St. Journal on plans that could enable credit unions to offer international money transfer and remittance services.

Credit unions are bound like other financial institutions to obey anti-money-laundering laws, and to report suspicious activity. But the task may be easier for them. Banks say the federal laws are burdensome because they mean the banks have to keep a close eye on the independent money-transfer firms that hold accounts with them. But credit unions have no such burden because they are the money-transfer agents themselves.

Sarah Ryle reports for Guardian Online about moves that GE is making in the UK to become a direct consumer provider of multiple financial services products.

'Once we have customers in through the credit and store cards we want them to use us for their other financial services,' said UK GE Capital boss Brad Cooper. 'We have been providing finances to those customers via retailers and other intermediaries and now we will rebrand as GE Money and become a direct provider.'

Bob Keefe of Cox News Service writes about RFID-equipped proximity payment cards.

Bruce Cundiff, an analyst at technology research company Jupiter Research, doesn't give the new contactless cards a much better chance than those chip-embedded cards in the United States.

The biggest problem, Cundiff said, is convincing merchants to shell out millions to add new payment terminals to their stores. So far, he said, the card companies have typically helped pay for new equipment at partner merchants. "It's just going to take a lot of money, and it's not going to come from the merchants, because they don't really need this," Cundiff said.