SwissInfo.com reports on a deal between Switzerland's competition watchdog and the issuers of Visa and MasterCard cards that will both reduce interchange fees to merchants and eliminate existing non-discrimination restrictions on merchant card acceptance.

MODASolutions Corporation has announced SECURE-eBill, a new way to pay online that avoids revealing any personal financial account information to online merchants. The new service sends an email bill to the consumer which is then paid by the consumer using their online bank's bill payment service. The approach is reminiscent of NACHA's earlier Project ACTION initiative which ultimately wasn't developed as a production service.

The US federal bank and thrift regulatory agencies today announced the publication of a compliance guide for the Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards (Security Guidelines) (PDF). The compliance guide summarizes the obligations of financial institutions to protect customer information and illustrates how certain provisions of the Security Guidelines apply to specific situations.

MasterCard has announced the results of a new survey that shows that small business owners around the world are optimistic about the future of their businesses. Specifically, 60 percent of small business owners worldwide say the future outlook of their business is promising and over half are confident that they will meet their financial goals in 2006. Sixty-five percent say they would tell a friend to start a small business now, rather than to wait another year.

Shopping.com has announced its latest holiday demand data showing that Black Friday (11/25) and Cyber Monday (11/28) showed traffic increases of approximately 30 percent.

Nicolas Mokhoff reports for EE Times on the first large-scale test of next-generation mobile phone applications in North America using near-field communication at Philips Arena in Atlanta. The trial for mobile phone applications includes "contactless payments," mobile content and premium arena services.

99Bill Corporation has announced that it has reached an agreement with Bokee, one of the largest Internet blog websites in China, to provide secure and convenient online payment platform to serve millions of blog users.

Experian has announced the acquisition of PriceGrabber.com, an online comparison shopping services. PriceGrabber.com will become part of Experian Interactive, a group of Internet marketing businesses that includes LowerMyBills.com, MetaReward, Affiliate Fuel, ClassesUSA.com and Experian Consumer Direct.

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.

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