Speaking of labs, Hugo Olliphant, the head of PayPal Labs, blogs about his groups activities. You'll find PayPal Labs at www.x.com.

You've probably already seen the ads. Capital One Financial Corporation has announced the launch of the Capital One Card Lab, calling it "a convenient online tool designed to help consumers select from a menu of terms and options to build their own credit card. The Capital One Card Lab site offers an array of options related to interest rate, annual fee, rewards and even the design on the front of their card and allows consumers to select the combination of features that are most important to them."

Global Payments has announced that "it has activated the first of its Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs) relationships - EVO, Mercury Payments, North American Bankcard and Total Merchant Services - to acquire Discover Network merchants in a manner consistent with Visa's and MasterCard's acquiring programs."

Today is Cyber Monday - expected to be the busiest online shopping day of the year. As a reminder, some of the online ecommerce payments companies have special offers setup to save you money doing this year's holiday shopping. These include PayPal's Holiday Shopping site, Bill Me Later's holiday store, and Google Checkout's Holiday Offers.

The Payments Council, the organisation that sets strategy for UK payments, has announced the launch of a public consultation on its proposals for a UK National Payments Plan. The National Payments Plan will set the strategy for how payments will develop in the UK over the next five to ten years and will cover current payment methods like plastic cards, cash and cheques and innovative technologies like contactless, pre-paid and mobile payments.

NACHA has announced that its voting membership has approved the Network Enforcement Rule as an amendment to the NACHA Operating Rules. "The implementation of the Network Enforcement Rule, the first rule change under NACHA’s comprehensive risk management strategy, is intended to give NACHA and the ACH Rules Enforcement Panel greater ability to enforce the NACHA Operating Rules."

Aite Group has announced a new report titled "The State of the Merchant Acquiring Industry" that "provides an overview of the state of merchant acquiring in the U.S. market. The report looks at the impact of discount rates and interchange in the merchant acquiring space, reviews vendors, overviews sampled acquirers' portfolios and fraud and PCI DSS compliance, and considers the future of acquiring."

Kevin Bullis writes for Technology Review about Kovio's new technology for printing transistors - and forecasts its use in making disposable smart cards.

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