Visa, MasterCard, and member banks respond to a European Commission's attack on their interbank fees, calling the charges crucial for spreading payment costs between consumers and sellers.

The ROA Group has published a for-fee report entitled, "The Future of Mobile Commerce in Japan". The 93-page report focuses on trends, players and consumer behavior in the mobile market of Japan.

CIO Today takes a first hand look at actual experiences deploying multifactor authentication.

There's no such thing as bulletproof security. But if done in layers and tied into fraud detection systems, multifactor authentication might make online banking safer than banking offline, experts say.

Customers mentioned include e*Trade, SolidPay, and StoneBridge Bank.

Bryan Keogh reports in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about major retailers changing how they account for revenue from gift cards and certificates.

Many firms are wrestling with how to account for so-called gift-card "breakage," industry jargon for cards and certificates that go unredeemed for years, piling up millions of dollars on a company's books. It's a delicate issue, in part because the unspent money is considered unclaimed property. Home Depot began declaring gift-card funds that go unspent for four years as revenue in early 2005, pocketing $43 million in extra income for the first quarter. Best Buy did the same later that year, but said it would only wait two years before claiming the unspent gift-card money as revenue.

The article has a nice table that shows how gift card policies vary widely among major retailers.

The Sunday Business Post in Dublin, Ireland reports that PayPal International made a profit of €38.7 million last year as its income almost tripled. PayPal International has subsidiaries in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, China and Canada -- and employees 717 people.

Carolyn Said of the San Francisco Chronicle writes about the cost of sending remittances to Latin America.

For years, wire transfers through market leader Western Union and its competitor MoneyGram were the main game in town for people in the United States sending remittances back home, other than informal channels such as asking a friend to carry money home. But in the past few years, increased competition from banks, credit unions and all kinds of new businesses has begun to chip away at the wire-transfer services' grip on the market -- and their prices.

In addition to this article, a related story in the Chronicle profiles the major players in the financial services industry that are rushing in to help immigrants send money home.

• Fifth Third Processing Solutions Signs Three New Merchant Services Contracts
• SecuGen Releases New Hamster Plus(TM) Fingerprint Reader That Automatically Detects Finger Placement

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