Glenbrook just wrapped up our latest public Payments Boot Camp, held in Santa Clara, California. Forty-five payments professionals, from banks, payments processors, technology companies, service providers, and analytic firms spent a lively and intense two days picking apart the U.S. payments systems and looking at their many moving parts.

As always, the section on "emerging payments" was very popular (with particular interest on the evolving pre-paid card infrastructure and on the long term significance of Google Checkout), but the group was also very interested in new uses of the ACH, and the "horse race" underway between check image clearing and check-to-ACH conversion.

We finished with a short poll on preferred form factors for face-to-face purchases such as groceries or gas. The winner? Mobile phones (43%), followed by "cards as they exist today" (31%), fingerprint (14%) and keychain fob (11%) .

Our next Glenbrook Payments Boot Camps are in Atlanta (March 13th and 14th) and New York City (April 24th and 25th). We're also offering our first ever Merchants Payments Boot Camp - tailored specifically for merchant payments professionals - on March 21-22 in Santa Clara, CA.

A few weeks ago, Bill Tancer from Hitwise posted some traffic details on Google Checkout - including a list of the top 10 sites using Google Checkout. Number 1 was ToysRUs.com - who also accepts PayPal and Bill Me Later.

MasterCard this morning reported its fourth quarter financial results, reporting net income of $41 million, or $0.30 per share. Excluding the impact of litigation settlements, net income for the quarter was $42 million, or $0.31 per share. An accompanying presentation is available online.   » Continue Reading