Albertson's has announced that it is implementing Pay By Touch biometric payment systems in its Jewel-Osco stores throughout the Midwest. The rollout, which began in the Chicago area early this year and is expected to be completed in all 204 Jewel-Osco stores this month, follows a successful year-long test of the technology at Albertsons stores in the Portland, Oregon area.

USA Technologies has announced research results showing that consumers spend 50% more on average at vending machines when they can make purchases using their credit or debit cards.

Even though gift card programs are still relatively new to the restaurant industry, consumers are quickly adopting them as appealing gift-giving options. Recent consumer research conducted by Technomic found that 35 percent of consumers reported giving restaurant gift cards over the past holiday season, while 43 percent received them.

MobileLime has announced the completion of a $10 million venture capital financing led by Oak Investment Partners. Ignition Partners and SeaPoint Ventures, which participated in the initial seed financing for MobileLime, also participated in this round.

Small business owners are increasingly adopting and are more satisfied with business payment cards as a tool for managing their business, according to a new Visa USA survey.

Brendan McCarthy writes for the Chicago Tribune about Debtors Anonymous and its 12-step program to help consumers overburdened with credit card debt.

Dan Ilett reports for SIlicon.com (UK) on PayPal including comments from PayPal's European CEO Geoff Iddison about PayPal's future growth plans in the areas of mobile payments and offline transactions.

Bill Virgin, columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, asks whether you need a checking account (yes) and, if so, do you actually need paper checks? "Instead of talking about "free checking" accounts, maybe what we ought to be discussing is "check-free" accounts."

Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine write for MarketWatch about how banks are using gift cards as incentives to woo new banking customers. "But to get one, and you may need to jump through unexpected hoops."

On iAfrica.com, Bruce Whitfield interviews Visa's Nick Essame about new technologies to protect against credit card fraud. "These credit cards Nick, lets face it, as they are, at the moment are hugely vulnerable to fraud."

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