Jim Bruene writes on the Financial Marketing Weekly blog about the 2006 results for Prosper.com - suggesting that Prosper.com's revenues for 2006 were in the range of $300,000 - based upon a 1 per cent origination fee charged on almost $30 million of loans originated. Obviously, they'll need to grow that revenue number by a couple of orders of magnitude for this person-to-person lending business to be considered economically viable.

Thomas J. Smedinghoff writes us with news about a new paper he's written titled "Where We're Headed — New Developments and Trends in the Law of Information Security" that's available online. Smedinghoff is a partner at the law firm of Wildman Harrold, in Chicago, and a member of the firm's Privacy, Data Security, and Information Law Practice. In the paper, he writes that "three legal trends are rapidly shaping the information security landscape for most companies." These include a continuing expansion of the duty to provide security, the emergence of a legal standard for compliance - a definition of "reasonable security", and the imposition of a duty to warn.

Robert Guy Matthews writes for the Wall St. Journal about the state of online banking authentication - post the 12/31/06 compliance deadline imposed by the FFIEC in the fall of 2005.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has announced its seventh annual payments conference, "Competitive Forces Shaping the Payments Environment: What's Next?", to be held in Chicago on May 10–11, 2007.   » Continue Reading

One of the most important US banking regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury, has published its Fiscal 2006 Annual Report (PDF) - noting that 2006 was the second consecutive year in which no national bank failed.

Constantine Cannon, lead counsel for United States merchants in the Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation, CV 96-5238, has issued a press release reminding merchants of their rights under the settlement - including noting that one requirement was that all Visa and MasterCard debit cards be reissued by January 1, 2007, to clearly add "Debit" on their face - and telling merchants to contact Constantine Cannon "if you find that cards are being presented for payment that may be Visa and MasterCard signature debit cards lacking proper visual and/or electronic identification" or if they "encounter any problems obtaining BINs from your processor."

Online Resources Corp. has announced the launch of a mobile banking and bill payment service - "a hosted application that enables financial institutions to provide their consumers with a full range of online services via mobile phones and other wireless devices."   » Continue Reading

CheckFree has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Carreker Corporation for a total purchase price of approximately $206 million on a fully diluted basis.   » Continue Reading

Jenn Abelson reports for the Boston Globe on one college freshman's life with gift cards - having received seven cards for Christmas and needing a second wallet to hold them all. She quotes Brian Riley, an analyst with Tower Group, who says that "merchants love gift cards because they help cut back on costly returns and exchanges, and because about 55 percent of people redeeming a gift card wind up spending more than the gift card value." Abelson's article includes a link to a good graphic showing the growth in gift card sales and unredeemed value over the last few years.

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