People's Daily Online reports on the growth in ecommerce in China hitting a record 553.1 billion yuan (US$68.72 billion), an increase of 58 per cent over 2004.

The consumer-to-consumer market has become the fastest growing segment, with payments of 13.5 billion yuan (US$1.68 billion) -- triple the 2004 volume according to the study released yesterday by the China Internet Development Research Centre (CIDRC) under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

After 50 years as a cash-only business, Waffle House company-owned restaurants will finally give customers the option of paying with Visa or MasterCard.

Simon Hayes reports from Australia on some reactions in that country to eBay's recently introduced Safe Payments Policy that limits sellers to eBay-approved forms of payment for eBay auction purchases. See also the letters to Hayes from readers of his article.

Jill Treanor reports for The Guardian that the UK's Office of Fair Trading may be considering limiting the size of the late charges that credit card issuers assess cardholders when payments haven't been received by the due date. Treanor's article says that currently those charges are about £25 and the OFT's action would likely limit the maximum amount to £15 - which could cost the card issuers in the UK up to £400 million in lost revenues.

See this story from Karyn Maughan from South Africa about how floor limits in effect in that country failed to block credit card usage even though the cardholder had reported the card stolen.

With the implementation of Chip and PIN completed, Phil Muncaster reports on how banks and industry group APACS are turning their attention to how to better authenticate ecommerce purchase transactions - using either hardware displays keying off of the chip cards already in consumers hands or pressing expansion of the Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode schemes.

CRMToday reviews a recent TowerGroup research report on the effects that emerging technologies could have on consumer payments over the next ten years.

Hitesh Patel of KPMG Forensic takes a look at the benefits of the recent Chip and PIN implementation in the UK and predicts how fraudsters might evolve to alternative strategies.

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

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