eBay held its annual Analyst Day today covering eBay, PayPal, and Skype. The presentations from today's event (PDF - 17.4 MB in size) are available for downloading from the eBay Investor Relations site.

Some of the more interesting PayPal-related slides include a couple of slides in Scott Thompson's portion of the presentation -- including page 164 that shows the additional data available to PayPal in making its fraud risk decisions and page 166 that shows the very positive effects in terms of reduced transaction loss rate vs. growth in PayPal transaction volumes. Thompson is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at PayPal.

US merchant acquirers might want to take a look at page 198 showing how PayPal covers the traditional merchant value chain with a more integrated and, presumably, attractive solution.

Dana Stalder's presentation on "Beyond Internet Payments" discusses PayPal's efforts to both broaden and deepen its markets with both financial and mobile products. Not much actually new here - but a concise restatement of those efforts. Stalder's closing slide speaks to an expanded purpose for PayPal - aspiring to step beyond its traditional mantra of "creating the new global standard for online payments." Stalder is Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Operations at PayPal.

The latest Nilson Report has arrived featuring an in-depth look at the general purpose cards in Canada (subscription only). Among other feature articles, this issue also has an interesting article showing the 2005 corporate revenues of the top card corporations along with some details on the new UBS card program (issued in partnership with Barclaycard US on both Visa and American Express-branded cards).

Helen Mirza of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank has written an overview article about the new bankruptcy law (PDF) that took effect last fall.

ACI Worldwide has announced the results of a Global Electronic Payments Market Study (PDF) conducted with Global Insight, Inc. finding that the annual number of electronic payment transactions, currently at approximately 210 billion worldwide, will double by the end of the decade and is growing at a compounded annual rate equal to four times the expected growth in real gross domestic product (GDP).

Cards&Payments has announced the results of its 2006 Annual Bank Card Profitability Study reporting that "U.S. issuers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in 2005 posted a collective after-tax return on assets of 1.99%, up from 1.59% in 2004. Total revenue among issuers of Visa and MasterCard consumer and commercial credit cards last year reached $109 billion, up 5% from $103.4 billion in 2004."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's John Cook reports from the Wireless Ventures conference in San Jose on a presentation by Text Pay Me's founder and CEO Philip Yuen in which he described his company's differentiation from PayPal Mobile.

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