We've been doing a bit of experimenting with "going wider" for our basic format here on Payments News. We sorta like the 16:9 ratio of the HDTV displays - and most of our readers (over 90 percent) appear to have displays on their PC's that will support this wider format.

If you're interested in seeing what Payments News might look like in "HD", click here! For the moment, only the Payments News home page is available in HD format. Please send us any comments/feedback that you might have about the new "HD" version of Payments News.

Bloomberg reports on a US Supreme Court decision today that affirmed that "joint ventures have broad power to set prices without violating U.S. antitrust laws." The case, TEXACO INC. v. DAGHER ET AL (PDF), involved oil company joint venture pricing decisions.   » Continue Reading

S1 Corporation has announced a strategic relationship with PassMark Security to integrate PassMark's risk-based authentication security system with its retail and small business online banking solutions to S1's nearly 1,000 financial institution customers.   » Continue Reading

Cardtronics and Info Touch have announced a hybrid ATM unit which is the result of combining a traditional, cash- dispensing ATM with a cash-accepting financial services kiosk.   » Continue Reading

J.D. Power and Associates has announced the release of their 2006 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study which concludes that, with transaction times of nearly three times faster than interacting with a branch teller, online banking is the preferred transaction method among banking customers.   » Continue Reading

Earlier this month, Global Payments posted an updated investor presentation (PDF) to their web site.

Capital One CEO Rich Fairbank gave a presentation on his company's strategy earlier this month. A copy of his presentation (PDF) is available online on the Capital One web site.

Earlier this month, Chase Card Services CEO RIch Srednicki spoke at the 2006 Credit Suisse Financial Services Conference. A copy of his presentation (PDF) is available online on the JPMorganChase web site.

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

• Top U.S. Bank and Technology Leaders Lay Out Contactless Payment Progress, New Initiatives at 16th Annual CardTech Conference
• Identity Security Advances, User Experiences on Agenda of 16th Annual SecurTech Conference
• Marriott Rewards(R) Debuts Premier Visa Signature(R) Card
• Western Union Partners with Mexican Government to Create Remittance Calculator
• Diebold to Acquire ATM Maintenance Unit of Genpass
• Habeas and VeriSign Help Verify Legitimate Email Senders Through Strategic Partnership
• San Francisco Chronicle: Google Payment Service A Threat To eBay?
• FT.com: Visa EU appoints new chief as scrutiny looms
• Fiserv Business Unit Personix Introduces Claims Payment Processing Solution for Healthcare Companies
• INSIDE Contactless Receives Frost & Sullivan Product Innovation Recognition for Breakthrough Advances in Contactless Smart Card Chip Technology
• SiliconBeat: Google's GBuy still coming...and what about Microsoft's?
• American Express launches wedding-related credit card option
• San Jose Mercury News: New Google service could compete with PayPal
• Jerusalem Post: Israel-focused credit card launched
• Thailand: Credit card business to grow at slower pace

In an article titled 'How Mastercard, Visa Seem To Be Strangling Ecommerce," Marketing Sherpa publisher Anne Holland writes about her company's recent experience with their merchant acquirer's ecommerce merchant risk management practices.   » Continue Reading

I attended a talk at Stanford this afternoon on "Data Privacy" given by Sachin Lodha of the Tata Research Development and Design Centre in Pune, India. The talk was part of Stanford's Security Seminar series.   » Continue Reading

Mercator Advisory Group has announced a new research report titled "Total Transaction Security: Best Practices in Limiting Fraud Exposure Online and Offline" that traces the lifecycle of fraud from theft to detection to identify strategies for protecting payment transactions.   » Continue Reading

Grant Thornton has announced the results of its thirteenth Annual Survey of Bank Executives, concluding that bankers are most concerned about their abilities to retain deposits in the face of increased competition, retain key employees, and attract new business.   » Continue Reading

Keynote Systems has announced new consumer research showing that Discover, American Express and Chase provide the best online experience for prospective card customers. A PDF summary of Keynote's findings is available online.   » Continue Reading

Pay By Touch has announced that Gary Bender has been named vice president of biometrics at Pay By Touch where he will oversee Pay By Touch's biometric technology applications.   » Continue Reading

TextPayMe blogs about the use of their new SMS-based mobile payment service for face-to-face transactions -- such as paying the seller when you're picking up goods you're purchasing from a Craigslist listing -- following mention of the idea in a Search Engine Journal post about Google Payments last Friday.   » Continue Reading

Burt Helm reports for Business Week on increasing concerns about click fraud on Internet advertising - and on plans by Fair Isaac, a company with considerable expertise in the area of financial fraud detection, to announce at this week's Search Engine Strategies Conference that it intends to help the online advertising industry better address the growing problem of click fraud.   » Continue Reading

David Wyss reports for Business Week on last week's release of the Federal Reserve's triennial Survey of Consumer Finances.   » Continue Reading

Business Day reports from South Africa on mobile banking applications, a recent study done by Arthur D. Little on prospects for and progress in mobile payments, and comments from mobile payments software developer Craig Saks, COO at Cape Town-based Fundamo.

According to Saks, "few people will deny that mobile banking will become pervasive - it is just a question of what form it will take."

David Breitkopf writes for the American Banker about Stan Paur's view of the future of the US debit card market. Paur has been president and CEO of Pulse EFT for years and is about to step up from that role to chairman following last year's acquisition of Pulse by Discover.   » Continue Reading

Mike Arrington's TechCrunch blog takes a deeper look at Google Base and Google Payments (with screenshots) in a post written by Nik Cubrilovic.

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

• Digital Transactions: How Interchange Wars Are Lending Impetus to Instant Issuance
• Wachovia Rolls Out International ACH
• Financial Express (India): Visa warns cardholders against phishing e-mails
• Excerpt From 'Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID'
• VeriFone Delivering 50,000 Payment Systems to ICICI Bank
• Truworths Becomes First African Credit Issuer to Adopt Fair Isaac's Strategy Science Technology; South African Retailer Joins Top North American and UK Card Issuers Using Analytics to Drive More Profitable Credit Line Decisions
• Brits not bothered by credit card debt
• Betfair and PayPal agree on online payments deal
• Eddie Bauer, Inc. Obtains a License Under the Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P. Patents
• Washington Post: Paying Taxes with Plastic May Not Be Rewarding
• Silicon.com (UK): IBM and Novell are expected to announce an open source response to Microsoft's forthcoming InfoCard identity management technology
• Carefree Brits lead 'spend now pay later' lifestyle
• SVC President and CEO Chris Haigh to Speak on Mobile Commerce at Intele-CardExpo

Phishing is already passé among global cybercriminals - according to Tom Zeller Jr.'s article "Cyberthieves Silently Copy as You Type" in Monday's New York Times.   » Continue Reading

This week's Business Week reports on a new category of personal finance blogs called "money bloggers" - where the authors discuss their personal financial situations, their goals and strategies, and share their financial results as they make their moves.   » Continue Reading

We recently received the a question about PayPal's revenues and the fees it charges to sellers:

I do have a question for you regarding Paypal's revenues. In your summary of PayPal's 2005 financial results, PayPal's revenues were reported as representing "3.67% percent of gross payment volume, up 10 basis points from 3.57% last year." It seems like that number is high.

Eric Bangeman writes for Arstechnica about Google's Friday update on its payment plans, explores the potential implications for eBay and PayPal (Buy It Now listings seem most at risk from a Google Base/Payments combo), and asks, in a year or so, whether people will be saying "Googling me the money" instead of "PayPaling" it like they do today.   » Continue Reading

In his article "Your Call Should Be Important to Us, but It's Not," William C. Taylor writes for the Sunday New York Times about how silly it is that companies who could be learning so much directly from their customers use technology to attempt to deliver customer service without even listening.   » Continue Reading

Marilyn Gardner writes for The Christian Science Monitor about the personal savings rate of Americans hitting a new low last year (actually a negative number -0.5%) for the first time since the Depression era 1930's.   » Continue Reading

Kathleen Pender writes for the San Francisco Chronicle about how most bank savings accounts, including her daughter's at Wells Fargo, are paying out very low rates of interest and she urges examining several better alternatives.   » Continue Reading

Sonja Ryst reports for Business Week the for many young adults in the 25-to-35 age group, credit-card debt can seem insurmountable. Her "Five for the Money" column lists five specific steps to follow to get control of credit card spending and reduce credit card debt.

Oprah Winfrey has announced America's Debt Diet, a multipart series on The Oprah Winfrey Show focused on helping Americans get out of debt.   » Continue Reading

Dan Fost reports for the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle on PayPal co-founder and Slide.com founder Max Levchin.   » Continue Reading

Stef Donev of Interest.Com writes for the Orlando Sentinel about some of the "odd" aspects of how FICO credit scores are calculated - in particular, on the notion of credit utilization. For example, your credit score will fall if you cancel credit cards with large credit lines but low or no outstanding debt on them and leave open other credit card accounts which are closer to being maxed out.   » Continue Reading

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

• UK: Card Hoppers Beware!
• Citibank to open at least 20 more branches in Mumbai, India

I just stumbled across a posting from late January on the MobileRadicals Blog (from a a collection of mobile researchers based at the Department of Communications at Lancaster University in the UK) titled Mobile Payments - Six Years After WAP.

Adam Bell of NEWS.com.au reports from Australia on the move by Qantas Holidays increasing its so-called service fee on credit card payments from one to 1.4 percent.   » Continue Reading

M.P. Dunleavey writes for the New York Times about those small recurring payments that sometimes inch their way onto our credit card bills -- soon to be overlooked or forgotten. She calls them "stealth expenses."

Google has posted a Terms of Service for Buyers. The terms of service are between Google users (buyers) and Google Payment Corp. (GPC), apparently a separate corporate entity setup by Google for processing payments.   » Continue Reading

A friend sends word this morning about another payments-oriented blog out of the Netherlands called Linkdump on Payments. I can't find anything about the author on the site - but the coverage seems to be mostly on European payment-related topics.

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

• San Jose Mercury News: Travelers are packing plastic, not checks
• Providence Business News: Citizens rolls out ‘Tap N Go’ cards to make purchases
• Columbus, OH: Four suspects in credit card theft charged

Google staffers posted an update on their payment-related activity on the Google Blog earlier today. The post pointed to another post on the Google Base Blog about how buyers with Google Accounts will be able to use the credit card they've registered with their Google account to purchase Google Base items.   » Continue Reading

MSNBC's John W. Schoen answers a reader's question about what the impact might be if (dream on!) every consumer in the US paid of any outstanding credit card balances - all at one. As I recall, doing so would require consumers having access to something like $700 billion (the approximate level of outstanding revolving consumer debt). Guess where they actually have that kind of money? In home equity - but, of course, that's not evenly distributed across where the outstanding credit card balances actually are!

First Data Corp. today filed a number of documents with the SEC. Included was the company's 10-K Annual Report for 2005 with a number of exhibits including a description of the CEO and EVP Salary and Bonus Targets for 2006, the Retirement and Consulting Agreement between the company and former chairman and CEO Charlie Fote, and the Letter Agreement between the company and CEO Ric Duques for his employment beginning November 26, 2005.

Former Bank of America Merchant Services executives, Sonny Martin and Mitzi Gilligan have formed a new consulting company, The Sonny Martin Group, LLC. Martin and Gilligan have been in the merchant acquiring business since 1969.   » Continue Reading

The Federal Reserve has released its latest Recent Survey of U.S. Family Finances (PDF) based upon 2004 data and draws comparisons back to is previous survey conducted in 2001. The survey was written by Brian K. Bucks, Arthur B. Kennickell, and Kevin B. Moore, of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Research and Statistics, prepared this article with assistance from Gerhard Fries and A. Michael Neal.   » Continue Reading

Cornelia Wels-Maug of Ovum (UK) reports on the launch of Giropay, a new online ecommerce payment service created by the German savings banks, credit unions and Postbank that will be used initially by PayPal. The service will be supported by the three IT services providers behind Giropay - Starfinanz Software, Fiducia AG and GAD.   » Continue Reading

The NACHA Internet Council's next meeting is being held next week, February 28 - March 1, 2006, at Dana Point, California and will focus on multifactor authentication requirements and solutions as its theme. In preparation, it's prepared a "5-Stage Authentication Road Map" (PPT). See the General Internet Council Meeting Agenda (DOC) for a complete list of topics and speakers.

comScore Networks has announced that its annual e-commerce sales trends for 2005 varied by less than one percent from those published by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The comScore e-commerce data were available to comScore clients and widely published in early January 2006 -- a full six weeks before the U.S. Department of Commerce issued its estimates on February 17, 2006.   » Continue Reading

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

• InComm Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire PRE Holdings, Inc. - Acquisition will solidify InComm as the clear leader in the prepaid industry
• Family Finances: Parents should watch students' credit card use
• Catuity Launches Lift Card for 70-Store Chain; Nick-N-Willy's Sees Competitive Advantage To Accelerate Growth

Bruce Schneier recently linked to this detailed analysis of a recent Verified by Visa phishing attack. As he said, it's a great example of how the sophistication of these attacks is ever-increasing. This particular attack combined several features -- all designed to improve the chances of enticing a cardholder to hand over important card information.

From time to time, we at Glenbrook come across companies doing new things we think are pretty cool. When we do, we'll profile them in this new "Who We're Watching" section here on Payments News.

This morning, Glenbrook's Russ Jones writes about his latest discovery: Garanti Bank in Turkey.   » Continue Reading

The Federal Trade Commission has announced that CardSystems Solutions, Inc. and its successor, Solidus Networks, Inc., doing business as Pay By Touch Solutions, have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that CardSystems' failure to take appropriate security measures to protect the sensitive information of tens of millions of consumers was an unfair practice that violated federal law.   » Continue Reading

In a speech today at the California Identity Theft Summit being held in Los Angeles by the California Department of Consumer Affairs, FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras spoke on "Teaming Up Against Identity Theft" (PDF).   » Continue Reading

Standard & Poor's Isabelle Sender reports for Business Week on how global banks are rushing to increase their presence in India.   » Continue Reading

Over the last few days, Skype has announced the addition of new payment options for Skype users. Skype says "it has never been easier, quicker or more convenient for customers to buy products from Skype.com." Customers wanting to top up their Skype Credit to pay for Skype's offerings can now take advantage of online payment methods, special vouchers and scratch cards bought from high street stores.   » Continue Reading

GlobalCollect has announced it has been selected by Skype to process payments for its premium offerings. For Skype, GlobalCollect will process local bank transfer payments in local currencies worldwide, including real-time online bank transfers in countries where this payment method is available.   » Continue Reading

Kathleen Day reports for the Journal News on Wal-Mart's request to obtain a banking charter for an industrial loan corporation in Utah. Wal-Mart's competitor Target has owned Target Bank, an ILC, since 2004.

JCB has announced that Transcard AD, Bulgaria's largest credit card issuer and acquirer, will roll out the JCB branded TRANSCARD JCB card in March. This will mark the first time for a JCB card compliant with EMV to be issued in Europe, and will bring the number of countries in which JCB cards are issued to 20.   » Continue Reading

Gregg Keizer reports for Information Week on Charles Schwab's announcement yesterday that the online broker will provide a guarantee against any and all losses from unauthorized account access. Called the Schwab Security Guarantee, it is an effort intended to help calm customer concerns about phishing and identity theft.   » Continue Reading

Reuters has announced an agreement with MasterCard Advisors LLC, the global professional services organization of MasterCard International, to provide a U.S. retail economic service exclusively to Reuters clients. The service, known as SpendingPulse, provides granular measures of the U.S. retail economy, both nationally and regionally, with a degree of speed and a level of detail surpassing spending data estimates from traditional sources.   » Continue Reading

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

• Global Payments Inc. Renews Payment Processing Agreement with Kaiser Permanente
• Corillian and StrikeForce Partner to Fight Fraud by Strengthening Online Authentication for Financial Institutions
• RetailWire Webinar: Getting Real with RFID

A new report titled "Micro-Payment Systems and their application to mobile networks" (PDF) commissioned by the Information for Development Program (infoDev), in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the GSM Association, found that mobile-enabled commerce, or m-Commerce, can address a major service gap in developing countries that is critical to their social and economic development.   » Continue Reading

Greg Sandoval reports for CNET News.com that "the FBI has expanded its investigation into a debit card fraud that has mostly affected 200,000 consumers in the Western United States, saying that the case might be linked to other debit card thefts around the country."

Mercator Advisory Group has announced a new research report that covers a variety of strategies for credit card issuers to improve portfolio returns by delving more deeply into improving and expanding the uses of portfolio analytics across the account lifecycle.   » Continue Reading

The NFC Forum has announced that its member roster now includes more than 70 organizations worldwide.   » Continue Reading

Metavante has announced that it has expanded its Healthcare Payments Solutions division with the addition of the recently completed AdminiSource acquisition that provides healthcare payment distribution services to insurance carriers and healthcare organizations. In addition, Metavante has named John M. Reynolds as president of its Healthcare Payment Solutions division. Reynolds is a 20-year banking industry professional who previously served as senior vice president and business director for Health Benefits Services at Wells Fargo Institutional Trust Service.   » Continue Reading

The European Central Bank last week released the 4th Progress Report “Towards a Single Euro Payments Area” (PDF) discussing the so-called SEPA initiative.   » Continue Reading

Click&Buy has announced that Skype is now accepting Click&Buy as an online payment option for Skype users. Click&Buy reports that over five million consumers and 4,000 online merchants are successfully using Click&Buy worldwide. Last month, Click&Buy's owner WebPay AG announced completion of a $23 million financing round led by 3i.   » Continue Reading

First Data Corp. has announced it has signed a three-year global merchant processing agreement between its affiliate OmniPay, an international merchant acquiring platform, and HSBC.   » Continue Reading

Sasha Talcott reports for the Boston Globe on plans expected to be announced today by Providence, RI-based Citizens Bank to add contactless payment capability based on MasterCard's PayPass technology to all of its debit cards by June.   » Continue Reading

Intuit has announced a new simplified credit card processing solution designed for small businesses that don't need a full accounting package or a high end merchant account service. The QuickBooks Credit Card Processing Kit, priced at $39.95, delivers credit card processing for small businesses handling less than $5,000 in credit card transactions each month.   » Continue Reading

Carol Hymowitz and Elizabeth Bernstein report for the Wall St. Journal about concerns about automated payments that, while increasingly being used by consumers to conveniently pay recurring bills, are often too difficult to have stopped when you actually need them stopped.   » Continue Reading

Siemens Communications has announced that Nova Southeastern University (NSU), the nation's seventh largest private university, has chosen Siemens to deploy, service and integrate multi-functional smart card solutions using a new generation of contact and contactless smart card technologies.   » Continue Reading

Steven Lemongello reports for The Jersey Journal on how the implementation of new fangled parking lot pay stations is leaving some drivers puzzled. Amazingly, the new pay stations are still cash-only acceptance devices.   » Continue Reading

Mark Rasch writes for SecurityFocus about a recent lawsuit in Minnesota (PDF) in which a victim who was included in a data breach of a financial service provider's 550,000 customer database sued the company for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and negligence.   » Continue Reading

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

• UK: Clothing retailer speeds up credit card transactions (DSL @ POS)
• Washington Post: Alarming Phishing Trends
• Guardian: Barclaycard sets aside £1bn for bad debts
• Taishin says Taiwan card-loan problem to "cool down"
• Illinois: Expirations on gift cards closer to being eliminated
• Hong Kong Seeing Benefits of Positive Data in Credit Reporting - TransUnion Says

We received the following Ask Glenbrook question earlier today:

My question to you is about Remote Deposit Capture. There is a project I have to complete and you can help me in finding out by website, who has this feature is this question and how much would customers pay for this service?

Mercator Advisory Group has announced a new report: The Payments Industry M&A Report - Q4 2005. The report provides comments and analysis on major deals announced within the fourth quarter of 2005, summary information on the payments industry related M&A deals, contact person(s) related to each deal, and an M&A activity table that summarizes the highlights of each deal. For more information, see: www.mercatoradvisorygroup.com.

MarketingSherpa.com reports on ecommerce merchant Big Al's experience adding e-billing (paying via online banking bill payment) to its suite of payment choices for consumers. Roughly 6% of all Big Al orders now chose the eBill option. The e-bill solution used is provided by ModaSolutions.

I4 Commerce has announced that its ShopBillMeLater.com website activity grew 580 percent over Q4 2004 activity. The ShopBillMeLater.com web site provides a directory of merchants who accept I4's Bill Me Later payment service along with special offers from participating merchants.

"Retailers that participated in the website, correspondence, offers and email programs reported that they grew sales during the holiday season. Significantly, analysis indicates 33 percent of these were incremental, coming from new customers to the retailers."   » Continue Reading

Prosper, highlighted earlier here on Payments News when they "soft launched" their web site, officially launched today calling themselves America's first people-to-people lending marketplace and comparing Prosper's approach to lending to that of eBay - a marketplace.

"Until now, financial institutions have controlled who is able to obtain credit and the rates people pay," said Chris Larsen, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Prosper. "Over time, this one-sided control has bred inefficiencies and excessive margins -- leading to higher rates for borrowers, and restricting people who have money to lend from entering and generating income from this vital and lucrative market."

Texas Instruments has announced that its high-frequency ISO/IEC 14443 microprocessor- based payment card inlay has achieved certification from MasterCard International for use in its PayPass contactless payment program in North America.   » Continue Reading

Adjoined Consulting has announced a strategic partnership with Proximities, Inc. that takes advantage of Proximities RFID wristbands to enable consumers to gain access to public events, make purchases, and verify their age.   » Continue Reading

Clayton Park reports for the King County Journal (WA) on Coinstar, the Bellevue, Washington-based company perhaps best known for their coin counting machines in supermarkets (which, by the way, count about $2 billion in coins a year).   » Continue Reading

In a follow-up to Waffle House's decision to begin accepting credit cards, Sue Stock reports for the Raleigh, NC News & Observer on the story. According Bryson McKinney, a Waffle House franchisee, "Pretty much everybody's come to the conclusion that you have to take them."   » Continue Reading

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

• Wachovia Ranks No. 1 in Customer Satisfaction Survey for Fifth Straight Year
• BofA revs up NASCAR deal - Bank now tied to tracks in L.A., Kansas City, Phoenix, Watkins Glen
• Pay By Touch Gains Momentum for New Online Initiative at Two Industry Conferences
• New York Times: New at PATH Stations: Wave, Don't Swipe
• VeriFone's Vx Solutions Certified for China's EMV Payment Standard; Will Support China UnionPay Brand Chip Cards in China and Globally
• Cybertrust Named PCI Qualified Data Security Company by Visa USA
• Bankrate.com: Choosing a college fund rewards card