The New York Times reports that "Citigroup has agreed to buy Ecount, a privately held provider of prepaid cards, expanding its presence in the fastest-growing part of the payment industry, according to bank officials." According to the Times, the official announcement is expected to be made tomorrow.

Visa USA has announced an agreement with 7-Eleven to "introduce Visa ReadyLink, Visa's prepaid load network, to its U.S. convenience stores. 7-Eleven, the world's largest convenience store chain and one of the nation's largest independent gasoline retailers, will work with its Visa member acquiring financial institution to implement the service. This service will allow consumers to add funds to eligible Visa reloadable prepaid cards at the nearly 5,350 stores that 7-Eleven operates and franchises in the contiguous U.S."

MasterCard's 10-K annual report for 2006 was filed today with the SEC and is available online. Included were various exhibits including updated Bylaws, as well as copies of amended business agreements with HSBC and Bank of America (both redacted to remove confidential financial information).

In a post titled "Pincer Movement" on the Digital Money Blog, Dave Birch writes about the recent story we posted here on Payments News earlier this week about NTT DoCoMo and McDonald's getting together for contactless mobile payments in Japan.

Dave asks "isn't this a nightmare come true for the payments guys in banks? The retailers and the mobile phone operators getting together to provide a new solution to a problem that is not central to either of them but as a byproduct of achieving some other goals -- perhaps customer intimacy or reduced churn -- and chips away at legacy payment systems provided by banks..."

PayPal's Online Merchant Network is holding a webinar on March 7th beginning at 10 AM Pacific time on the topic of alternative payments. According to the announcement, "Jim Hunt, Director of Merchant Relations for PayPal, identifies the pros and cons of the available forms of alternative payment methods and what to consider when choosing which to implement. In addition, a panel of current mid-sized PayPal merchants will be available to give their perspective and answer questions."

Prepaid Media has announced the winners of the 2007 Prepaid Card Awards - naming Blackhawk Network as the Most Innovative Product or Service. Other award winners include the Wal-Mart Prepaid Visa, Brinker International for its payroll card program, and the American Red Cross for its disaster relief card program.

The PULSE EFT Association has announced results of its 2007 Debit Issuer Study - concluding that "U.S. debit card-issuing financial institutions experienced debit card transaction growth of 18 percent in 2006 and expect continued strong growth in 2007."

Citi has announced an agreement with Obopay to pilot an "innovative, real-time Person-to-Person mobile payments service later this year. The service will be offered to new and existing Citi credit and debit card customers. Further details, including cities for the consumer pilot, are to be confirmed and announced at a later time."

Digital Transactions reports on changes MasterCard is making to its interchange rates effective April 1, 2007 - saying that "Internet retailers will see their acceptance costs decline for some MasterCard credit card transactions but rise for others." MasterCard's full interchange rate tables are available online.

Heartland Payment Systems has announced that forty-six state associations now support its "Merchant Bill of Rights, a major initiative to help owners of small and mid-sized businesses manage the cost and complexity of credit and debit card acceptance."

US Bank's Elan Financial Services has announced it has partnered with Sapphire Mobile Systems to conduct a mobile banking and payments pilot, integrating with the Phire Mobile Debit Network to provide customers with "highly secure, instant access to their PayCard accounts via any mobile handset."

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