We're taking a look back at the major payments-related news stories for 2005. We've examined our archives month by month and have culled the the most important and interesting highlights.

Here are the Payments News highlights from June 2005.

Over the Christmas holiday weekend, I happened to notice that PayPal had some consumer-focused advertising up on the Boston Globe's website - in the right sidebar of the Globe's Business section- note that PayPal's ad is in an ad rotation and you may not see it unless you refresh the page several times. This is the first time that I recall seeing this kind of consumer-focused advertising from PayPal.

Shuchi Vyas reports to India's Economic Times on mobile payments and the expected growth in mobile commerce in India. The article says that mobile commerce is considered to be the next killer application for mobile phones.

Valerie Miller reports for the Las Vegas Business Press on casino operator perspectives on "new-fangled payment systems."

Stephanie King reports for the Wall St. Journal on an optimistic report from MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse retail data service that concludedholiday spending rose 8.7 percent.

Huang Tien-lin, a national policy adviser to the president of Taiwan, writes an op-ed piece for the Taipei Times on the problems of excessive credit card debt in Taiwan.

In Singapore, NEC has announced the launch of a first-of-its-kind RFID-enabled customer card that will store relevant details of customer's purchase, warranty programme and service records.