Is the best use of mobile devices by financial services players to use them for securing online banking access? Rob McMillan writes for PC World about Bank of America's SafePass announcement yesterday. Or, is two-factor authentication in the US market just a zero sum game between the bank and the consumer?

MasterCard and Orbiscom have announced an agreement to create MasterCard inControl - what the companies call an "innovative platform that offers an array of advanced authorization, transaction routing and alert controls designed to enable issuers to more quickly and cost-efficiently introduce new and enhanced products."

Taking on an expanded role, the PCI Security Standards Council has announced that it has also assumed responsibility for the PIN Entry Device (PED) Security Requirements that were previously administered under the auspices of JCB, MasterCard International and Visa International.

Jim Bruene and Brandon McGee blog about Chase Mobile, an SMS-based mobile banking service from JP Morgan Chase.

In a discussion about mobile security, Chase says that "Chase Mobile is not a mini-version of Chase Online. Rather, it's a text messaging service from Chase that gives you 24-hour access to view your balances, transaction history, credit card payment due date and amount without having to log on." It goes on to say that Chase Mobile will not allow you to complete transactions over your mobile device or cell phone. The emphasis is on ease of use (e.g., no logon) for information access only.

Sybase 365 has announced new research report titled "Mobile Opportunities for the Financial Sector" concluding that "U.S. consumers are obsessed with managing their personal finances. More than a third of U.S. consumers, dubbed 'nano-economists,' are able to state their bank balance at any given time, and an additional 42 percent typically know their bank balance to the nearest $200."

Aneace Haddad blogs about a new ad his company - Welcome Real-time - is running that he believes is "probably the first advertisement in the world that specifically addresses interchange protection through new, merchant-centric payment features."

Last Friday, Cardtronics filed a Form S-1 Registration Statement with the SEC for an initial public offering of its common stock. The company says it operates the world's largest network of ATMs - "approximately 31,000 ATMs, principally in national and regional merchant locations throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. Approximately 18,850 of the ATMs we operate are Company-owned and 12,125 are merchant-owned."

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