At Glenbrook, we're fans of the work that Jim Bruene does with his Online Banking Report. Last week, he announced a new conference, FINOVATE 2007 to be held on October 2nd, 2007, in New York City. See Jim's NetBanker blog post for more background on the conference.

Jim has graciously extended a special discount offer to Payments News readers - use the code BLOGD1 when you register and save $100 off of the normal registration fee. If you register before the end of August, your cost to attend will be $395 vs. the normal $695 fee. This special offer is good for the first 25 Payments News readers to register. There are less than 100 seats remaining - so if you're interested in attending, be sure to register promptly!

Although branch banking still ranks first overall among consumer's usage, younger customers are continuing to choose the anonymity of their laptops over the human contact of a teller, according to a survey released today by the American Bankers Association.

"ONE Payment Alliance Corp., a collaborated payment processing service with ChinaPay, ECONTEXT, and INICIS, announced today it has launched an online payment processing service for China, Japan, and Korea market with a single interface, a single merchant service, and a single payment gateway to reach out to online consumers in the three largest economies in Asia. This alliance service is available to begin online payment processing services to many global merchants wishing to conduct online business in China, Japan and Korea immediately."

A new ABI Research study titled "Near Field Communication Semiconductors" concludes that "Near Field Communications (NFC), and its leading application, contactless payment, offer financial institutions a way to move small transactions out of the cash economy and into profitable credit-based systems. For consumers who hate to wait, they offer faster, easier checkout, just by waving a wireless phone near a point-of-sale reader. But the development of the market for the chipsets that underpin the technology has been slow. The main reason for this, according to ABI Research senior analyst Douglas McEuen, is security: the financial institutions and industry standards-setting bodies around the world can't yet agree on the appropriate levels and methods of data protection."

Visa USA has announced that "Shell stations are adopting Visa partial authorization, which allows drivers to more easily purchase gas at the pump using a Visa prepaid card. Shell is in the process of expanding this service at stations across the U.S."

The PayPal Developer Blog reports on PayPal's new logo.

Yesterday, Visa Inc. filed with the SEC Amendment No. 3 to the Visa Inc. Form S-4 Registration Statement. Visa filed its original S-4 on June 22, 2007.

Evan Schuman blogs on StorefrontBacktalk.com about PCI-DSS compliance, saying "PCI deployment isn’t perfect, but it’s quite impressive how far it’s come given the mammoth obstacles."

• ISTS Worldwide Named 25th Fastest Growing Private Company in America on the 2007, Inc. 500 List
• TSYS Collections and Recovery System Adds Commerce Bank of New Jersey to Customer Roster
• RemitPro, Vanco Services Join Forces to Help Companies Benefit From Check21 and Remote Deposit Capture
• Capital One Offers Disaster Planning Guidelines for Small Business Owners
• NetSuite Integrates with CyberSource