American Express has announced financial results for the third quarter - reporting that "third quarter diluted EPS from continuing operations" increased 18% over last year. Worldwide billed business grew 16% to $162.5 billion, worldwide cards in force great 11% to 84.7 million, and worldwide average spending per proprietary card increased 8% to $3,006 in the quarter.

Utica College’s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection has published the results of what it is calling "a landmark study of closed U.S. Secret Service cases involving identify theft."

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson is attending this weeks Association of Financial Professionals (AFP) conference in Boston. She filed her first report from the conference earlier this morning.

Tony Adams writes for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer about TSYS and its potential spin-out from Synovus Financial Corp.

Wells Fargo has announced what it calls "another component of its Wells Fargo Mobile service: text banking. This addition makes Wells Fargo the first major financial services company in the country to offer its consumer and small business customers both browser- and text-based account access via their mobile devices." Wells Fargo has posted an FAQ on the new Wells Fargo Mobile text banking service.

mFoundry has announced that IBC Bank, the Laredo, Texas-based bank of International Bancshares Corporation, has selected mFoundry's Mobile Banking solution to provide IBC’s customers with real-time, on-demand access to their IBC checking, savings and credit card accounts.

Sybase 365 has announced the availability of Sybase mBanking 365 - calling it "an innovative new suite of products for the financial industry enabling banks to interact with customers in real-time through mobile alerts, two-way banking services, out-of-band authentication, and marketing campaigns."

MasterCard Worldwide and First Data Corp. have announced that "First Data will make the MasterCard Payment Gateway available to its network of 3.5 million merchant locations throughout the United States."

Visa has announced that it is extending its Visa Money Transfer service in India with a new mobile capability developed by mChek. Visa Money Transfer, launched by Visa in India in 2004, is a domestic card-to-card money transfer service that enables a Visa cardholder to transfer money conveniently and securely to another Visa account number. mChek is providing the software for mobile handsets and processing capabilities to link up to VisaNet, Visa’s global transaction processing network, for the new mobile service.

Bank of America has announced that the national restaurant chain Chick-fil-A is piloting a "revolutionary Bank of America technology that will automate and simplify cash handling for retailers and give them faster access to funds."

NYCE has announced The Washington Trust Company has agreed to "a long-term NYCE Network participation renewal, which names NYCE as its sole provider of retail PIN debit and domestic ATM card access."

• Heartland Payment Systems Acquires General Meters Corporation
• Electronic Payment Exchange Launches Revolutionary Cardholder Data Security Solution, BuyerWall™
• Global Payments to Provide Comprehensive Payment Processing Services to HSBC Bank Canada's Clients
• Major Supermarket Retailer, Hy-Vee Inc., Set to Recognize Full Value of Back-Office Check Imaging and Conversion from NCR
• Discover Polls Reveal True Character of the American Entrepreneur
• Bottomline Technologies Optimizes WebSeries(R) Payments Platform for Corporate Finance Departments and Shared Service Centers
• China UnionPay to complete national electronic payment network next year
• Atrua Made-For-Mobile Fingerprint Solution Enables First-Of-Its-Kind Mobile Commerce Trial In U.S.
• Kyocera Wireless Mobile Phones Excel in Cellular South WirelessWallet Consumer Trial
• Oracle Rapidly Integrates Bharosa Software to Deliver New Oracle Identity Management Offering that Helps Organizations Combat Online Identity Theft and Fraud
• Prevalence of Online Fraud Accelerates Demand for VeriSign(R) Identity Protection
• AFP Survey: B2B Electronic Payments Growing, Checks Declining
• Braintree Payment Solutions announces integration with PayPal, Google Checkout, and Bill Me Later
• Barclays and Miles & More Launch the Miles & More Mastercard for Lufthansa's Global U.S. Travelers
• Ericsson’s Mobile Payment and Messaging Service to Support Twitter’s US And International Expansion
• ACI and uMonitor Partner to Add Online Account Opening and Funding Services to ACI Enterprise Enrollments Offering
• AFP, IBM and Deutsche Bank Announce Partnership to Develop Treasury Benchmarking Program
• Dashwire Makes Using Your Mobile Phone Easier – From Your Computer
• Trintech Announces the Availability of LCM Payments, a Next Generation Account Reconciliation and Positive Pay Solution for Financial Institutions
• Gemalto Provides Web Services to SEB’s German Affiliate for Designing Personalized Credit Cards
• MasterCard Worldwide Wins 2007 AFP Pinnacle Award Grand Prize

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Rod Dir has been named Chief Operating Officer at Firethorn Holdings where he will oversee the company's sales, marketing, product development, customer care, product implementation and service delivery. Dir was most recently Chief Operating Officer at Cincinnati Bell, Inc.