MasterCard has announced its financial results for the second quarter.

MasterCard's revenue grew 19% to $772 million and its net income grew 82% to $120 million or $1.20 per share on a basic and diluted basis from the same period in 2004.

I4 Commerce has introduced PayCapture (PDF), a new service for select retailers who are members of the Bill Me Later Network.

KeyBank has announced it will become the first bank in the nation to issue MasterCard PayPass Debit Cards.

First Data Corp. announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire Austrian Payment Systems Services GmbH (APSS), Austria's leading processor of cashless, card-based payment transactions. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Visa USA has released performance data for the second quarter of 2005 (PDF).

Sales on consumer Visa credit cards grew 8.6 percent over the same period last year. Sales on consumer Visa debit cards grew 18.2 percent. Consumer credit card transactions were 1.8 billion vs 2.7 billion debit card transactions. Fraud as a percent of volume was reported at 0.06 percent, up twenty percent (1 basis point) from last year.

Kevin Kelleher reports for TheStreet.com on PayPal's recent discontinuance of its bill payment service.

BusinessWeek Online carries an AP story about American Express' growth.

"American Express is taking share from Visa and MasterCard," said Fox-Pitt Kelton analyst Edwin Groshans in a report to clients. "The outlook for American Express is strong -- cards are growing, billed business has been growing, partnerships have been growing, capital is being generated, reinvested and returned."

Bloomberg reports that McDonald's is accelerating its rollout of MasterCard PayPass to many more restaurants.

The Oak Brook-based burger giant will offer MasterCard International Inc.'s Pay Pass service in more than 13,600 U.S. stores after introducing it in about 7,500, Cathleen Conforti, MasterCard's global Pay Pass product manager, said Thursday.

"We have actually gotten so much more interest from both the issuers' banks and the merchant side that we are going to be in many more markets than we expected to be in by the fourth quarter," Conforti said.

People's Daily Online reports on remarks by China UnionPay executive vice-president Liu Yong-chun in which he spoke of the growth in China UnionPay cardholders in Hong Kong and Macao.

• AmSouth Customers Receive Cash Rewards for Debit Card Purchases
• India: ICICI to offer credit cards free for life
• GlobalCollect Outsources Network Connectivity to TNS
• Digital Insight and BISYS Renew and Expand Strategic Partnership to Offer Banks Premium Lending Platform, Enhanced Corporate Banking Solutions