GTCR has announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell TransFirst to Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe for $683 million. TransFirst is a provider of transaction processing services and payment enabling technologies. The company currently processes approximately $25 billion in annual sales volume for more than 155,000 merchants and 965 financial institutions. Originally founded as ACS Merchant Services in 1995, GTCR partnered with TransFirst CEO Thomas Rouse to re-capitalize the company in 2000.

Mercator Advisory Group has announced the availability of a new report titled "U.S. B2B Payments: State of the Market." According to Mercator, this report "delivers a B2B payments growth forecast, an overview of Business-to-Business (B2B) payments, how businesses communicate their payments and information, major payments network basics, and leading bank processors."

In an article titled 'Startup aims to link cash economy with online retail", Francine Brevetti, Business Writer for InsideBayArea.com takes a look at Oakland-based Retail Expansion Network and its PaidByCash service.

Dave Birch blogs about the rapidly growing prepaid card market in Europe - which MasterCard Europe recently forecast would grow to "$164 billion in three year's time."

Coinstar and First Data Corp. have announced an agreement between Money Network Financial LLC, a First Data company, and Coinstar E-Payment Services Inc., a Coinstar company, to offer the Money Network Pay Card through select Coinstar kiosks.

Visa International has announced that total volume for Visa consumer debit and prepaid programs, including cash transactions, grew by 17.0 percent in 2006, reaching US$2.68 trillion as compared to US$2.29 trillion for the same period in 2005. Debit and prepaid now account for 60 percent of Visa global total consumer volume and over 67 percent of the number of Visa transactions, based on total consumer volume of US$4.4 trillion and 59.9 billion total transactions.

Obopay has announced the availability of a new AIM Obopay plugin for users of AOL's AIM service, the largest instant messaging community in the U.S. According to the company, "this new plugin allows eligible AIM users to launch Obopay and use it to make payments directly from the AIM Buddy List feature. Users can sign up for Obopay and download the free AIM Obopay plugin at http://www.obopay.com/aim."

• Solupay and ECHO to Offer New Grocery Electronic Check Conversion Payment Solution for Merchants
• OTI and ST Introduce the First Fully Certified Product Device to Support Both MasterCard and Visa Contactless Programs on a Single Chip
• Viewpointe Archive Reaches 100 Billion Images in Six Years
• Hypercom Executives to Present at CardTech SecurTech
• Global Cash Access (''GCA'') to Provide State-of-the-Art Cash Access Services to Patrons of France’s Largest Casino Operator
• CPI Card Group Launches Contactless Initiative for New MasterCard(R) Issuers
• Discover Card Wedding Shopping Survey Reveals Groomsmen Spend More than Bridesmaids on Pre-Wedding Festivities, Gifts, Travel
• MasterCard Worldwide and The Home Depot Announce ``$100,000 Backyard Retreat'' Sweepstakes