Payments News - Weekly Wrap - May 24, 2008

Here's a review of this week's top stories on Payments News. If you missed it, last week's Weekly Wrap is here. Back to the future!: for fun, click for this same week's activity a year ago here on Payments News!

• NACHA's Payments 2008 Conference News
  • Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg and Jim Salters attended this week's NACHA Payments 2008 conference in Las Vegas and filed several reports about what they learned. Here are Allen's reports and Jim's reports.
• ACH News
  • As part of the Payments 2008 conference, NACHA announced that 18 billion automated clearing house (ACH) payments were made in 2007, a 12.6 percent increase over 2006. (See more ACH and NACHA news.)
  • NACHA also announced the top 50 ACH originating and receiving financial institutions for 2007. JP Morgan Chase handled the largest number of ACH items in 2007. (See more ACH and NACHA news.)
  • Apple Vacations announced that it will add NACHA's ACH-based Secure Vault Payments as an additional payment option for online customers. (See more ACH, NACHA and Secure Vault Payments news.)
• Contactless Payments News
  • Capital One Canada announced results of a consumer survey finding that Canadian consumers could save between 28 and 46 hours spent standing in lines waiting to be if they (and the merchants) adopted contactless card technology. (See more Canadian, Capital One and Contactless news.)
• Credit Card News
  • L.L. Bean announced that it will be terminating its current relationship with Bank of America, issuer of the L.L. Bean Visa card, at the end of June. The new issuer has not yet been named. (See more Bank of America, Card Issuers and Credit Card news.)
• Ecommerce Payments News
  • Microsoft announced a new cashback awards feature on its Live Search web site. (See more Ecommerce Payments news.)
  • TrialPay has announced it is partnering with FreshGames to give away ZenGems, Cubis 2 and the Cubis 2 Expansion Pack for free. (See more TrialPay news.)
  • Crutchfield has announced that customers who shop online or through their call center can now choose to pay securely with cash using eBillme. (See more eBillme news.)
  • Amazon.com announced a new Amazon Flexible Payments Service Marketplace Widget that provides developers the ability to create a widget for moving money between two other parties, with complete control of fees paid to the developer. (See more Amazon Flexible Payments Service news.)
• First Data Corp. News
  • First Data Corp. published the results of its 2007 U.S. Gift Card Consumer Insights Survey finding that nine out of ten American adults who responded to an online survey purchased or received a gift card in the previous 12 months and six out of ten did both. (See more First Data Corp. and Gift Card news).
  • First Data Corp. announced that it has signed an agreement with EUFISERV and its fifteen shareholders (including twelve European banks and banking organizations) to expand and develop the European inter-bank processing network managed by EUFISERV. (See more EUFISERV and First Data Corp. news).
• Interchange Fee News
  • The Merchant's Guide, LLC announced the release of "Understanding Credit Card Interchange In Card-Not-Present Environments" calling it "the first comprehensive guide developed to provide direct sellers with the tactical knowledge to minimize credit card Interchange fees." (See more Interchange Fee news).
• Mobile Banking News
  • WaMu launched SMS-based Mobile Banking. (See more Mobile Banking and Washington Mutual News.)
  • In Australia, the NAB introduced SMS-based mobile banking. (See more Australia and Mobile Banking News.)
  • Fidelity National Information Services announced the launch of a new two-way mobile banking and bill pay product suite, FIS Mobile Banking and Bill Pay, using technology from ClairMail and mFoundry. (See more ClairMail, Fidelity National, mFoundry and Mobile Banking news).
• Mobile Payments News
  
  • WAUSAU Financial Systems and ClairMail have announced an agreement to extend the mobile channel to WAUSAU's remittance processing solutions using ClairMail's Mobile Lockbox technology with its remittance processing managed service.(See more Bill Payment, Clairmail and Mobile Payments news).
  • Mobile Giving Foundation announced that Qualcomm has become MGF's founding patron in pursuit of its mission to create a single "mobile giving channel" allowing more than 250 million wireless users in the U.S. to make charitable contributions instantly through SMS from their cell phones. (See more Mobile Payments news).
• PCI Compliance News
  • In a couple of posts, we continued to explore estimates of what the total industry cost of PCI compliance might be. (See more PCI Compliance news.)
• Open Job Listings on PaymentsJobs.com
  
  • Product Manager - Remittance Solutions at Creditron (Gaithersburg, Maryland)
  • Senior Product Manager - Remittance Solutions at Creditrron (Mississauga, Canada)
  • VP Partnerships (Marketing) at Western Payments Alliance (San Francisco, California)
  • Assistant Vice President of Educational Programs at Western Payments Alliance (San Francisco, California)
  • Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Western Payments Alliance (San Francisco, California)
  • Open Sales Position E-Commerce Company at preCharge.com (New York)
  • Vice President and Program Manager at Skylight Financial (Atlanta, Georgia)
  • Payments Attorney at a stealth start up (San Francisco/Bay Area)
  • Director - Chargebacks & Disputes Policy at American Express (Phoenix, Arizona)
  • Sales Executive at Online Resources (Atlanta, GA)
• Upcoming Glenbrook Payments Education Offerings
  
  • Workshop on The Structure of the Merchant Payments Marketplace - San Francisco Bay Area - June 10
  • Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp - San Francisco Bay Area - June 11-12

You can find all of our Weekly Wrap summaries in the Payments News Weekly Wrap Archive. They're published every Saturday and look back at the highlights of the week's news. Please send us on how we can improve the Weekly Wrap!