Earlier this week, we announced the publication of Professor Ronald J. Mann's new book "Charging Ahead - The Growth and Regulation of Payment Card Markets". Mann is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. We've had our hands on the book for a couple of days and thought we'd share some of our reactions to it here. All in all, we highly recommend Mann's new book!

The latest Nilson Report has arrived featuring a look at midyear results for general purpose cards in the US (subscription only). This issue also has articles discussing PNC's re-entry into the payment card business, a new service from Quake for mobile remittances, and Discover's recent network expansion deals.

Intuit held an Analyst Day yesterday. Of particular interest is the Small Business presentation given by Senior Vice President Brad Smith which includes some great insights into the small business market in the US along with Intuit's success with its Innovative Merchant Solutions merchant card acquiring business.

Discount retailer Dollar General Corporation, and Visa USA have announced that consumers will be able to use Visa credit and check cards at more than 8,000 Dollar General stores in 34 states, beginning tomorrow, September 22. Dollar General has been accepting PIN-based debit cards since 2003.

Jackie Crosby writes for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune about the University of Minnesota's plan to allow tuition payments to be made by credit card. According to Crosby, "students will be able to pay using American Express, MasterCard and Discover cards, but not Visa, which sought to collect higher fees to provide the service." The university will be charging a 2.75% convenience fee on the credit card payments it accepts.

The Payments System Research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has published a new working paper titled "Payment Industry Dynamics: A Two-Sided Market Approach" by Zhu Wang and James McAndrews. The paper explores the "micro-foundations of two-sided payment markets, and emphasizes the roles that consumers' income distribution and merchants' size heterogeneity play in adopting new payment devices. The findings suggest that both the increasing concentration of payment card networks and the growth of consumer income relative to card service costs may help explain the puzzles surrounding payment card interchange fees."

The Payments System Research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has published a new working paper titled "Payment Card Rewards Programs and Consumer Payment Choice" by Andrew Ching and Fumiko Hayashi. The paper "seeks to analyze the effects of payment card rewards programs on consumer payment choice by using consumer survey data."

Ecommerce malls are back. In the early days of ecommerce, there were some true believers who felt that the real-world shopping mall would transform into online malls. Some tried, most failed. Today, they're back. In the latest mall news, American Express today launched the Bonus Points Mall, "a new benefit that enables Membership Rewards enrollees to earn two points for virtually every dollar spent at more than 100 top
brand name online retailers."

Market Platform Dynamics recently interviewed YeePay CEO Bin Tang about the Payments Ecosystem Challenges and Opportunities in China and has posted it on their Paying with Plastic website. YeePay recently announced the completion of a round of financing led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DFJ Dragon and joined by Intel Capital China, WR Hambrecht and several other institutional investors

Darry Madden writes for the Brattleboro, VT Reformer about the city's just finalized plans to deploy a smart card-based parking payment system. Madden says "rarely does anything related to parking get characterized as "so cool." According to the story, initially the card will be a simple parking card available at convenient spots downtown. But eventually some would like to see it accepted at area businesses, like any debit card. "That way, in this cashless economy, anyone with a parking card could buy a cup of coffee, for example."

Melissa McGrath writes for the Idaho Statesman that WinCo Foods has started accepting debit cards - but not credit cards. McGrath quotes Mike Reed, a WinCo spokesman, who says "debit cards don't charge nearly as much as credit cards. The costs of (debit cards) are pretty close to check-handling fees." WinCo is, to some extent, following the strategy of Costco who only accepts PIN-debit or American Express cards. Other merchants try to "steer" consumers to PIN-debit transactions because of the cost savings vs. signature debit or credit cards. The settlement in the merchant litigation vs. Visa and MasterCard in June 2003 allowed merchants to accept either only debit cards or both debit and credit cards with those brands. Debit cards are also now clearly marked as being debit cards so merchants can quickly identify them.

Amazon Business Solutions has launched "Fulfillment by Amazon" and "WebStore by Amazon," which Amazon says gives "small and medium-sized businesses access to Amazon's order fulfillment, customer service, customer shipping offers, and underlying website technology to improve the experience they offer their customers."

GlobalCollect has announced the integration of Ukash and paysafecard, two prepaid solutions, into its online payment platform WebCollect. According to GlobalCollect, "cash is still the only purchasing power for those who do not possess a card or a bank account such as young online shoppers. These prepaid solutions are also targeting shoppers who do not want to disclose payment details online due to fears around identity theft and security or those who desire anonymity and discretion."

• CNNMoney: Stop 'n smell the gift cards
  
• Springbok Services, Inc. Launches 'ProKnow(TM)' -- A Data Mining and Analytics Product for Branded Prepaid Card Promotion
  
• FirstBank Opens Gift Card Division in Franklin; Community Bank Products Issues VISA Gift Cards Nationwide
  
• Majority of Workers Favor Health Benefits Over More Pay
  
• Mississippi Credit Union First in State to Deploy Diebold's Deposit Automation Solutions
  
• BancWest Corporation Announces Agreements with First Data Debit Services; Agreements Include Renewals and New Business with Bank of the West and First Hawaiian Bank
  
• Commerce Planet Partners With Premier Bill Pay Provider Payment Data Systems to Launch New Product
  
• Top-Five Global Bank Licenses Carreker's Fraud Manager(TM) Platform, Begins Testing Fraud Manager Deposit
  
• Alliance Data's Epsilon to Acquire CPC Associates, Inc., a Leading Provider of Data Products and Services
  

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Pedro Rangel has been named Group Head of Marketing and Paul Vandermoere has been named Head of Communications for MasterCard Europe. Rangel was most recently Senior Business Leader, Marketing, for MasterCard's Latin America and Caribbean Region, based in Miami. Vandermoere was most recently Director of Communications for Lufthansa.
  
• Keith D. Pierce has been named group executive of commercial card services at TSYS.
  
• Pascal Caillon has been named Director - Mobile Content and M-Commerce at SanDisk. Phone: +1.415.812.9555.