Cornerstone Advisors' Terence Roche writes for Gonzobanker about the new raid on retail bank revenues coming from the likes of Capital One with its new "Capital One decoupled debit card" product and HSBC/Tempo's new CVS-branded debit card. Earlier this week, we noticed that Sheetz has begun working with Capital One on its new debit card program.

Both of these innovative debit card products ride the ACH rails into the consumer's bank checking account - there's no need for the consumer to switch banks - rewarding the cardholder in the process with a much richer rewards program stimulating higher usage and frequency on the new entrants' cards vs. the bank's own traditional (and most likely unrewarded) debit card. Meanwhile, the retail banker is left with the costs of servicing the ACH-based payment and earns no revenue on the transaction itself.

A time for concern? Seems to us that retail bank payments strategists may want to be updating their board presentations! Read Roche's article and decide for your self!

InComm has announced that the Mio Money Prepaid MasterCard and the Mio Now Card issued by BankFirst are now available to consumers with no monthly fees attached. When the card is used, consumers pay a fee - but there is no longer a monthly fee.   » Continue Reading

Mike Weiss reports for the San Francisco Chronicle an amazing story of how an identity theft victim came across the thief who had stolen her identity while having coffee at Starbucks and then chased her until she was captured by the police, tried and convicted. The victim, Karen Lodrick, a design consultant, has written about her experience on her personal blog, www.FightingBackNow.com.

In an article titled 'How to Cash In On 0% Offers For Credit Cards", Jane Kim writes for the Wall St. Journal about how some folks are taking advantage of those 0% interest solicitations from card issuers and using them to fund investments in high yield savings accounts - with one individual reporting he makes about $1,300 to $1,400 a year with this strategy. Kim says the strategy has been nicknamed "app-o-rama" on personal-finance Web sites where it's regularly discussed. She also points out that, for the strategy to work, you have to pay attention to the details - just one late payment could destroy the interest-free status on the account, for example.

David Wighton writes for the Financial Times about how Visa Inc. is approaching its potential litigation liability associated with various law suits pending against various Visa entities. He writes that Visa "plans to set up a litigation fund to protect investors in its forthcoming initial public offering from legal claims. Under the plan, Visa’s US member banks will take on responsibility for the outstanding legal actions and will contribute billions of dollars from their flotation proceeds to an escrow account to pay claims."

Gift cards go local - Ilana DeBare writes for the San Francisco Chronicle about how local merchants are now also selling gift cards. DeBare writes that "a small but growing number of neighborhood stores are starting to sell their own branded gift cards, spurred by advances in point-of-sale technology that make it relatively cheap and easy for them to process the cards."

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