Executives from Chase, Peppercoin, TYS, and Visa plan to hold a Small Payments Webinar on July 19th. Moderated by Jeff Green of Card & Payments Magazine, the session will cover contactless payments, card acceptance in the everyday spending market, and emerging loyalty requirements. Jeff Gordan, an Arby's Roast Beef franchise operator, will provide the merchant perspective. Peppercoin will also be unveiling new Ipsos-Insight data on the growth and obstacles facing the contactless payments adoption, as well as which markets have the greatest potential.

As a follow up to the news that Jeff Jordan, president of PayPal, plans to leave the company in the fall, Rachel Rosmarin steps back in Forbes.com to look at key employee resignations over the last several years. While mostly balanced, there are a few jabs:

"There's brain drain at PayPal, and it reflects how things are going over there," says Eric Jackson, a former interim vice president of marketing at PayPal who left the company in 2003.

Margarita Bauza of the Detroit Free Press writes about the use of payroll cards. "Payroll bank cards, popular with people who do not qualify for bank accounts or those who are more likely to use expensive check-cashing services, account for 21% of all consumer transactions. That translates to a $2.7-billion business in the United States alone. Boston-based consultant Aite Group says payroll card use is expected to grow to $27.1 billion in spending by 2009."

In a bid to realign its business footing, ChoicePoint announced plans to sell its direct marketing, forensic DNA and shareholder services businesses units. As part of the realignment, the company also announced that it is buying some of the assests of ePolicy, including one of the company's software products for the insurance industry.

MasterCard has announced a new system upgrade to its global processing platform that lets all MasterCard issuers around the world processing authorization transactions via a single, common interface.

"We are taking significant steps to make it easier, for example, for banks in say, Britain or Brazil to expand their card operations into Dallas or Dubai," said W. Roy Dunbar, president of MasterCard Global Technology and Operations. "Banks also will be able to pilot innovative, breakthrough payment technologies like SecureCode, PayPass and Chip/PIN cards without having to go through the trouble of making substantial changes to their own infrastructure to test these technologies."

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The US General Accounting Office has released testimony entitled "Industrial Loan Corporations: Recent Asset Growth and Commercial Interest Highlight Differences in Regulatory Authority".

The ILC industry has experienced significant asset growth and has evolved from once small, limited-purpose institutions to a diverse industry that includes some of the nation's largest and more complex financial institutions. Between 1987 and 2006, ILC assets grew over 3,900 percent from $3.8 billion to over $155 billion. In most respects, ILCs may engage in the same activities as other depository institutions insured by the FDIC and are subject to the same federal safety and soundness safeguards and consumer protection laws. Therefore, from an operations standpoint, ILCs pose similar risks to the bank insurance fund as other types of insured depository institutions.