Aite Group has published a new report titled "Who Wants a Decoupled Debit Card?" that it says "reveals that there is a sizeable potential market for decoupled debit cards in the United States, with about a third of cardholders expressing interest." READ MORE »

The International Journal of Central Banking's March issue includes the article "Transaction Pricing and the Adoption of Electronic Payments: A Cross-Country Comparison" by Wilko Bolt, David Humphrey and Roland Uittenbogaard. From the abstract: "After safety, the efficiency of a nation's payment system is a primary concern of central banks. Since electronic payments are typically cheaper than paper-based or cash payments, pricing these transactions should speed up the shift to electronics. But by how much? Norway explicitly priced point-of-sale and bill-payment transactions and rapidly shifted to electronic payments, while the Netherlands experienced a similar shift without pricing. Controlling for terminal availability and differences between countries, direct pricing accelerated the shift to electronics by about 20 percent. The quid pro quo was the elimination of bank-float revenues."

The Federal Reserve has published its latest G.19 Statistical Release on Consumer Credit reporting that overall consumer credit increased at an annual rate of 3-1/4 percent in January while revolving credit increased at an annual rate of 7 percent.

Here's the full text of H.R. 5546 - The Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 that was introduced yesterday Rep. John Conyers and several other co-sponsors "to amend the antitrust laws to ensure competitive market-based rates and terms for merchants’ access to electronic payment systems."

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