Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson attended The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's sold-out 2007 Payments Conference this week. The theme of this year's conference was "Competitive Forces Shaping the Payments Environment: What's Next?." Click here to read Carol's full report.   » Continue Reading

"Pointing to a recent survey that found 21 million Americans will purchase more on Mother's Day because they pay with a debit or credit card, the Electronic Payments Coalition today reaffirmed its core message that payment card options are increasingly preferred by consumers and an important part of retailer sales."   » Continue Reading

Reuters is reporting that it received a document that indicates a "group of European banks are in secret talks to set up a pan-European debit card to challenge MasterCard and Visa Europe in cross-border business."

• Payment Processing: NCR Poised To Support Merchant Reduction Of Check-Clearing Costs, In Step With New Back-Office Conversion Ruling
• eMarketer: Mother's Day and Retail E-Commerce
• Alogent Webinar: Perspectives on Branch Image Capture Strategy – Front Counter, Back Counter, and/or Mini-sites

Reminder: Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg will be conducting an afternoon workshop on May 15 titled "Point Of Sale Impact: Preparing for the Merchant and Online Payments Revolution" at the CardTech/SecureTech conference next week in San Francisco. More details here.

Federal Reserve Governor Randall S. Kroszner spoke today at the 2007 Payments Conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. In his talk, titled "The Future of Payments: Challenges and Opportunities", he commented on the future of electronic check clearing: "Perhaps the greatest current opportunity in the retail payments system is for the banking industry to move rapidly to the electronic clearing of checks. As envisioned by Congress, Check 21 has created a strategic vision for moving the U.S. check clearing system into the new century. The historic infrastructure for paper check clearing is consolidating rapidly. Banks are changing their internal systems so they can accept deposits and collect checks electronically and are increasingly accepting their check presentments electronically."

Mercator Advisory Group has announced its latest report, Solving the Micropayment Problem, Online and at the Point of Sale, that reviews "both the history and challenges of electronic micropayments and examines how the existing rails have evolved to address under $5 electronic payments at both the point of sale and for online transactions."   » Continue Reading

The Arriva Card, the first credit card designed specifically for use in casinos, has initiated a “Bounty Program” that rewards casinos for each approved Arriva application that results directly from casino activity. Launched less than a year ago, Arriva has already extended over $40 million of credit to responsible gaming patrons. Arriva Cardholders use the card to get better terms for in-casino cash advances – and to receive points for cash back and other valuable rewards.   » Continue Reading

Péralte C. Paul writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about whether banks should give depositors access to their own money faster. "The money strides out of your bank account, but it strolls in," said Jean Ann Fox, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Alyson Ward writes for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram about Secure Give, a company that provides card accepting kiosks for churches.

The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), an independent industry standards body providing management of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (DSS) on a global basis, has announced that it has implemented formal channels for stakeholders to contribute to the organization and development of data security standards.   » Continue Reading

PayPal has announced that customers in 87 new markets can send money online with PayPal. In addition, customers using PayPal.com will now be able to view the site in Spanish, French and simplified Chinese.   » Continue Reading

• Billtrust Upgrades Its Online Bill Presentment and Payment Capabilities
• First Data Enters into Strategic Alliance with T-Base Communications

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Dan Tierney has been named senior vice president, sales, at Chockstone.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City last week hosted "Nonbanks in the Payments System: Innovation, Competition, and Risk," May 2-4 in Santa Fe, N.M. This conference brought together three principal audiences -- industry participants, academics, and public authorities -- for an exchange of views and thoughts around the topic of nonbanks' increasing prominence in payments systems around the world. Preliminary copies of the papers presented at this conference are available online.

SourceMedia's Cards&Payments' annual Bankcard Profitability Study and Annual Report has been released - concluding that U.S. issuers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in 2006 experienced a big reduction in charge-off expenses that helped boost bankcard issuers' profits to a collective after-tax return on assets of $18.37 billion, or 2.97% of average outstandings, up 45% from $12.67 billion and 2.09% in 2005.   » Continue Reading

The PELORUS Group has announced "M-Payments & M-Banking: The Rise of Mobile Financial Services" being held June 27 & 28, 2007 at Caesars Atlantic City. "Dedicated to defining the sweeping changes that will be triggered as mobile financial services take hold, the event will focus on why mobile payments and banking services will become entrenched so quickly, and what banks, retailers, credit card issuers and other vested concerns should be doing to prepare for - and indeed capitalize on - the phenomenon."   » Continue Reading

First Data Corp. filed a 10-Q quarterly report yesterday with the SEC that includes some information about its plans for data center consolidation scheduled over the next two and a half years.   » Continue Reading

MasterCard Worldwide has announced a 15.2% increase in gross dollar volume (GDV) for Europe in the first quarter of 2007 to $141 billion . The rise in GDV was accompanied by a 15.9% rise in European purchase volume to $104 billion, driven by increasing cardholder spending on a growing number of MasterCard cards.   » Continue Reading

MasterCard Worldwide has announced the launch of Europe’s first watch equipped with MasterCard PayPass contactless technology, in partnership with Garanti Bank in Turkey.   » Continue Reading

Gemalto has announced it is the "first company to achieve the MasterCard and Visa Chip Authentication Program (CAP) 2007 certification of its Pocket reader, designed to secure authentication of cardholders for remote banking and e-commerce."   » Continue Reading

• Chase Donates $38,500 Grant to George Washington University to Support Research for Successful Debt Management Plans
• TSYS Announces Executive Promotions
• Five Cent Nickel blog: Five Reasons That Credit Cards Rock and Debit Cards Suck
• Retail Banks Not Meeting Their Own Expectations, New Study Suggests

eCommLink and issuer First Bank & Trust in Brookings, South Dakota have announced a partnership with mCASH and its technical arm telSPACE, a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE), to create a mobile phone and branded virtual payment card solution for wireless carriers, banks and merchants.   » Continue Reading

American Express has begun marketing two new corporate purchasing solutions as part of its expanding S2S (Source-to-Settle) product suite. The company has announced S2S Contract Audit & Recovery and S2S Catalog Pro, which it says are "designed to help companies optimize performance, drive savings and increase control and compliance in their supply chains."   » Continue Reading

Business Week takes a look at mobile banking and payments - including Citibank's pilot with Obopay, PayPal Mobile, Firethorn and First Data's efforts including last week's investment in VIVOtech.

MarketingWeek in the UK reports on plans by MasterCard and RBS to roll-out contactless cards in London later this year.

The Federal Reserve released its latest monthly G.19 Consumer Credit statistics yesterday showing that US consumer revolving debt (primarily credit card-related) great at an annual pace of 9.2 percent to $888.2 billion.

• Amazon.com and IBM Settle Patent Lawsuits
• Panini and InStream Provide Banks a Superior Solution for Distributed Capture

Green Dot Corporation has announced an agreement with CardinalCommerce to "enable eCommerce merchants for the first time to receive online payments from a largely untapped consumer segment: the financially underserved community of more than 80 million "cash consumers" nationwide who do not have access to traditional bank accounts, credit cards or other financial tools."   » Continue Reading

MasterCard Worldwide and TRX have announced an agreement to develop the MasterCard Travel Dashboard, a web-based business intelligence tool that will enable companies to evaluate, analyze and optimize travel programs. According to the companies, "the proprietary tool will leverage detailed information from MasterCard's corporate card program and TRX's advanced travel data reporting tools to provide greater visibility into the performance and compliance of travel programs."   » Continue Reading

SVPCO - Electronic Clearing Services, the electronic check and check image exchange business of The Clearing House Payments Company, has announced that The Bank of New York is now participating in the SVPCO Image Payments Network.   » Continue Reading

Payment Alliance International has announced that it has acquired the principal operating assets of NetBank Payment Systems (NPS), adding over 8,500 ATMs to PAI's base to become the third largest ATM Processor in the United States.   » Continue Reading

On Friday, the Wall St. Journal published a front page story by Joseph Pereira about the TJX data breaches that he says began about two years ago outside a discount discount clothing store near St. Paul, Minnesota.

• Bank Systems & Technology: Fraud Techniques Evolve in Parallel with Bank Products and Defenses
• ''Connected Payments'' Program from StoreNext and MTXEPS To Cut Electronic Payments Costs
• Consumer Security, Privacy Advanced with Smart Card Guard™ from National Envelope Corporation

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Mari Ellis has been named senior vice president at Blackhawk Network. Most recently, Ms. Ellis served as chief operations officer for the prepaid services group at First Data Corporation.