Jonathan Krim reports for the Washington Post on 2005, the "year of the data breach."

"We've used weak practices for some time," said Chuck Wade, an Internet security and commerce consultant. "The vulnerabilities are well known, and we have not been improving the security measures . . . as we should have been."

Morgan Stanley announced quarterly earnings results this morning for the quarter ending May 31, 2005 -- including results for its Credit Services unit which is primarily made up of Discover Card. Financial details were included in the Financial Supplement (PDF).

Discover reported 45.9 million accounts of which 19.3 million were active. Transaction volume increased 4 percent year over year to $25.4 billion and 314 million transactions for the first quarter at an average ticket of $80.89. Merchant, cardmember and other fees were $486 million, up 4 percent.

Managed credit card loans remained flat at $46.8 billion while net interest income fell $108 million due to a narrower interest rate spread. Average receivables per active account were $2,426, up 4 percent. Payment volume per active account was $1,306, up 8 percent. Net credit chargeoffs were the best in four years declining to 4.94 percent from 6.48 percent.

Credit Services also reported 452 million Pulse PIN debit transactions for the quarter.

Eric Dash reports for the New York Times on an investigation begun last week by the Federal Financial Institutions Examining Council into the security breach at CardSystems Solutions.

Visa USA has announced the launch of its Hispanic Financial Education Campaign, a new program aimed at providing Hispanic consumers with tools for financial decisions.

Union Bank of California has become the first west coast bank to offer its business customers the Universal Payment Identification Code (UPIC).

Developed by the Electronic Payments Network, the ACH business of The Clearing House Payments Co. L.L.C., a UPIC is a unique bank account identifier that allows companies to receive electronic payments without divulging their sensitive banking information. UPICs are for credit payments only and are portable from one institution to another.

Tony Adams of the Columbus, GA Ledger-Enquirer profiles TSYS' risk management efforts.

At his company's annual meeting in April, TSYS Chief Executive Officer Phil Tomlinson bluntly told shareholders the credit-card processor fends off 100,000 hacking attempts each week.

Here's a recent Ask Glenbrook question we received:

Q. How can you pay for AOL on your phone bill?

A. AOL does offer its customers the option to pay for their monthly subscriptions on their phone bills if they do not have credit cards, debit cards, or checking accounts available to pay them directly. Due to the additional processing cost involved, AOL charges an additional $5.00 per month for this service, which they obtain through a processor called PaymentOne.

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• June issue of Smart Card Talk from the Smart Card Alliance