AP Business Writer Joe Bel Bruno reports on MasterCard's planned initial public offering scheduled for this Thursday.

Five of the nation’s leading retail banks, Bank of America, BB&T Corporation, JPMorgan Chase, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo together with First Data have announced they have agreed to form Early Warning Services, LLC, to bring together the fraud prevention expertise of the owners with the intellectual property and assets of Primary Payment Systems (PPS) and IDLogix. PPS and IDLogix are subsidiaries of First Data specializing in fraud prevention technologies.

Earlier today, MasterCard filed with the SEC Amendment No. 8 to its S-1 Registration Statement.

BitPass has announced an agreement with Entercom, one of the five largest radio broadcasting companies in the US, to enable subscription access to online broadcast content.

Debitman has announced the closing of an $8.7 Million Series B Financing from investors including HSBC Retail Services, a U.S. business unit of HSBC -North America, Cardinal Venture Capital and Selby Venture Partners. The company also announced it has received a notice of allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approving the company's patent for a system that enables the use of interoperable merchant-branded consumer debit cards.

The Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) has released the results of its semi-annual survey dedicated to measuring the American public's confidence in the security of the nation's digital infrastructure.

Payment experts at Auriemma Consulting Group (ACG) suggest that by mid-year, bankruptcies should settle back to 2004 levels, thus significantly lower than the 2005 experience. So much for the good news. The firm is also convinced that overall bad debt levels are unlikely to decline simply because of stricter bankruptcy tests.

The Allegiant Group has announced a strategic alliance with Loyalty Lab for Allegiant to provide program development, management and marketing expertise to Loyalty Lab clients and Loyalty Lab to provide its CRM platform to Allegiant's loyalty clients.

Marilyn Geewax reports for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about comments made at a financial services conference in New York yesterday by Jane Thompson, head of financial services for Wal-Mart.

In an article titled 'The Virtual Moneylender", Farhad Manjoo writes for Salon.com about Prosper.com, "a new Web site allows you to borrow money from strangers in cyberspace. It may even free you from credit card debt and the usurers at the local payday loan center."

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