Offering free online bill payment solutions to retail banking customers will cost the financial services industry $1 billion (USD) by 2010, according to TowerGroup estimates. "This aggregate amount represents spending on the portion of the service that financial services institutions (FSIs) outsource. While financial institutions traditionally accepted this expense as a cost of doing business, the “soft” revenue associated with online bill pay (enhanced customer retention, cross-sell opportunities, reduced call center activity, and higher profitability of online bill payment users) no longer compensates for the “hard” dollars institutions must spend to facilitate it." READ MORE »

Steve Hamm writes for Business Week about First Data's GO-Tags for contactless payments - "demoed this week at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where First Data is based. The company demonstrated its newest technology, called GO-Tag, by distributing small buttons to 5,000 journalists and delegates. When they tapped the buttons on electronic sensors at concession stands in Denver's Pepsi (PEP) Center, they got free snacks and drinks."

• Pittsburgh Company Changes the Face of Multi-Billion-Dollar Gift Card Industry
• State Employees' Credit Union Extends Long-Term Agreement with Visa
• Business Week: Credit-Card Rage
• FT.com:US shoppers turn away from credit cards
• Convenience Store News: E&C Gives Discount for Cash

The Clearing House Board of Directors has announced that James D. Aramanda has been named the company's Chief Executive Officer effective September 8. He succeeds Jeffrey P. Neubert, who will retire from The Clearing House following a transition period. READ MORE »

In the latest in his podcast series, Dave Birch interviews Alistair Lukies, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Monitise. Lukies talks about some of Monitise's recent partnerships including one with Carphone Warehouse to mobile-enable an open loop prepaid card in the UK and another with Made in Africa to mobile enable banking services in east Africa. If you're interested in mobile financial services, you'll enjoy this podcast!

• U.S. Banker Article: Learning to Monetize Mobile In The Land Down Under
• CNET News: Rising fraud threats in virtual worlds
• Hertz Europe Selects CyberSource Payer Authentication Service
• Fiserv MyMoney Banking Application Built on Facebook Platform Wins The Banker Technology Awards 2008 Retail Award for Online Innovation

J.P. Morgan has announced that "Brooklyn and Chicago recently used J.P. Morgan prepaid debit cards in successful campaigns to take firearms off the streets. The gun buy back programs were sponsored by local law enforcement officials who offered citizens prepaid debit cards for working guns, no questions asked. More than 7,500 firearms were collected at community churches and other turn-in sites in the two cities." READ MORE »

According to a survey sponsored by CheckFree, "more Americans than ever, an estimated 63.1 million households or three-fourth of those online, are paying their bills online rather than writing paper checks. The 2008 Consumer Banking and Bill Payment Survey, the eighth conducted by CheckFree since 2002, highlights Americans’ growing use of online banking and bill payment services to help manage their personal finances." READ MORE »

Today's PayPal webinar, last of the August webinar series, will focus on the topic of reducing shopping card abandonment. Patti Freeman Evans, research director from JupiterResearch, and Lewis Broadnax, director of e-commerce at Lenovo are participating. More info here - register here.

Videos and presentations from the eBay/PayPal Developers Conference held in June in Chicago are available online.

In a multi-part series, Sramana Mitra interviews mChek CEO Sanjay Swamy about his company's mobile banking and payments platform in India. Swamy comments: "It is very important to ensure there is a means of instant gratification. It may not expose you to all of the features and capabilities, but at least the customer can touch it now. That is what we had to do. We had to simplify the product and get it out there."

TrialPay has announced the launch of a new Gifts & Gourmet category with the company saying that "top companies from the food industry have enlisted in this new advertising section, marking a milestone for the payment method widely used for digital goods and services." READ MORE »

• NewsOn6.com - Tulsa, OK: Got a Gift Card? Use It Or Lose It
• Fiserv's eBILLPLACE.com Turns Green
• Alliance Data Signs New Long-Term Private Label Credit Agreement With Orchard Brands
• Element Payment Services Selects Hypercom to Enhance Its Express IP Payment Platform
• Breach Security Helps Organizations Accelerate PCI Compliance With New PCI QuickStart Packages
• ID Experts Releases Five Tips for Companies Victimized by a Data Breach
• The Hindu Business Line: Mobile banking guidelines likely in a fortnight
• Verizon Business Helps E-Retailers Gear Up for Holiday Crunch

Last week, Judge Barbara S. Jones issued a ruling narrowing the scope of Discover's antitrust lawsuit against MasterCard and Visa.

MasterCard commented: "MasterCard Worldwide said today it is pleased that Judge Barbara S. Jones narrowed the scope of Discover’s antitrust case against MasterCard by granting certain aspects of MasterCard’s summary judgment motion."

Visa commented: "As a consequence of these summary judgment rulings, Discover cannot challenge the legality of the agreements Visa has signed with its debit issuance partners. As such, it is unlikely the Discover litigation will have a significant impact on Visa's ongoing business operations."

Jim Bruene takes a look at Intuit's recently introduced Quicken Beam service - "the free service sends users text messages balance and activity alerts from most U.S. bank, credit card, and credit union accounts." Here's the press release introducing the service. Quicken Beam is one of the first services introduced by Intuit Labs.

Metavante has announced an alliance with Connect Software Solutions, an online banking provider for credit unions to bring Metavante’s bill presentment and payment solutions and Connect’s online banking platform together into a fully integrated online banking and bill pay product that will be delivered to the credit union market by Connect. READ MORE »

• New Mercator Advisory Group Report: Driving Consumers toward Mobile Money Services: Lessons from South Africa, the Philippines, and Kenya
• globeandmail.com: Mexicans to use cell phones to pay stores, taxis
• Alliance Data's Epsilon Signs Multi-Year Marketing Services Agreement With Commerce Bank
• Chris Skinner: How many cards are left in Chip&PIN terminals every day?
• Plastic Jungle Announces Board of Directors
• MediaWhiz Introduces Innovative Publisher Payment Solution Powered by Payoneer
• Discover(R) Small Business Watch(SM): Small Business Economic Confidence Increases for Second Consecutive Month

We're delighted to announce a revised and expanded schedule for our Glenbrook Payments Education events for the fall season.

• Glenbrook Workshops on Emerging Payments

  We've introduced a new, one-day Workshop on Emerging Payments. This advanced course will cover the newest developments in payments in the online, physicial point-of-sale, bill payment, and business to business arenas. The Workshop on Emerging Payments will be held twice this fall: in New York City on October 23 and in Mountain View, California on November 12. Registration for both Workshops is now open!

• Glenbrook Payments Boot Camps

  We're also presenting two sessions of our very popular Payments Boot Camp this fall - in the San Francisco Bay Area on October 15-16 and in Denver on December 3-4. Registration for both Boot Camps is now open.

• Private Payments Workshops

  In addition to these public sessions, Glenbrook also offers private payments workshops tailored and delivered at our client's locations. These workshops are individually customized to concentrate on the topics of most importance to you.

To learn more about Glenbrook's Payments Education series, contact Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson.

Duncan Graham-Rowe writes for Technology Review about the San Francisco Bay Area's FasTrak bridge toll system and the finding by a security researcher that "that the unique identity numbers used to identify the FasTrak wireless transponders carried in cars can be copied or overwritten with relative ease."

• SmartMoney.com: The Dangers of Medical Credit Cards (GE, Citigroup)
• CreditCards.com: Credit cards and the gentleman from Delaware
• Bank Systems & Technology: Huntington Hits Annual m-Banking Target in Two Months
• Bank Systems & Technology: Comerica EVP and CIO John Beran Balances IT and Operations
• KeyBank is First to Market With Integrated Online Check/ACH Fraud Prevention for Small/Mid-Sized Companies
• New Aite Group Report: Global Core Banking Vendor Performance: Does Targeting the U.S. Market Make Sense?
• Digital Check Delivers CheXpress CX30 Check Scanners
• PaySimple Adds Open Source Shopping Cart Solution

Here's a review of this week's top stories on Payments News. Back to the future!: for fun, click for this same week's activity a year ago here on Payments News!

Looking for more payments-related reading? Checkout our Other Payments and Banking Blogs page for more from the blogosphere about the worlds of payments and banking.

Quote of the week: From Philip Mikal, COO of ChargeSmart: “We believe that consumers are taking advantage of the service for their car payments not only because of the credit card rewards they earn, but also the added convenience of being able to set up monthly payments, not to mention a useful cash management tool”

• APACS (UK) News
  • APACS Releases Latest Quarterly Statistics on UK Card Payments. (See more APACS and UK news.)
• Card Fraud News
  • Guardian Analytics announced the general availability of FraudMAP 2.0. (See more Card Fraud News.)
• Debit Card News
  • Surcharge-free ATM access is gaining in popularity among debit card issuers as they explore new ways to better serve cardholders, according to the 2008 Debit Issuer Study, commissioned by PULSE. (See more Debit Card News.)
• Mobile Banking News
  • Visa announced that it and eight North American financial institutions – PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the United States, and Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial Group, and Vancity in Canada – have agreed to initiate a pilot program with up to a total of 2,000 participants to test the delivery of real-time notification alerts on Visa accounts. (See more Mobile Alerts and Visa news.)
• PayPal News
• The Reserve Bank of Australia's Payments System Board has announced that it will be pursuing reforms of some PayPal policies. (See more PayPal news.)
• PCI Compliance News
• The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) announced the availability of a summary of forthcoming changes to PCI DSS as it moves from version 1.1 to the previously announced version 1.2 in October. (See more PCI Compliance news.)
• Visa News
• Visa and Chase announced a consumer pilot to deliver merchant offers directly to the mobile devices of Chase credit and debit cardholders in the Phoenix metropolitan area. (See more Chase and Visa News.)

• Open Job Listings on PaymentsJobs.com
  
  • Director, Client Solutions - for a Mobile Payments start-up at Bling Nation (Palo Alto, CA)
  • Senior Business Analyst - Payments at Clear2pay Americas (New York, NY)
  • Senior Risk Management Analysts/Statisticians at Intuit (Woodland Hills, CA)
  • Senior Business Analyst - Check Processing at Clear2pay Americas (San Francisco, CA)
  • Lead Java Engineer, Develop Innovative Debt Management Services at Goalspring (San Francisco, CA)
  • Associate Consultant - Qualified Security Accessor at Xtrategies (Miami, FL)
  • Associate/Consultant - Risk Management at Xtrategies (Miami, FL)
  • Corporate Strategy, Senior Business Leader at Visa (San Francisco, CA)
• Upcoming Glenbrook Payments Education Offerings
  
  • Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp - Santa Clara, California - October 15-16
  • Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp - Denver - December 3-4

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 share on how we can improve the Weekly Wrap!

Jim Bruene has announced the lineup of finalists who will be demo'ing their wares at the Finovate 2008 Conference coming up on Tuesday, October 14th in New York City. He's culled from a list of over 100 companies to a set of 24 finalists who will have the chance to strut their stuff.

Jim writes: "In a single action-packed day, we'll see several financial startups launch, a few major product overhauls revealed, and a pile of new features shown to the public for the first time. It could be the single biggest "news days" in the history of online finance."

October's simply a great time to be in New York and the Finovate conference format (no boring PowerPoint slides to sit through - just quick, to the point, 7-minute demos) keeps things moving and "information rich"!

For a taste of Finovate, see my postings from the San Francisco FinovateStartup conference held earlier this year. If you're interested in financial services innovation, you'll definitely want to be at the New York session in October. Registration is open - with a $100 Early Bird discount available. Glenbrook will be there - and we look forward to seeing you there.

Des Moines-based TMG (The Members Group) has announced it is expanding its prepaid product line with the availability of general purpose reloadable cards to its credit union clients. "The reloadable card service, called ATIRAreload, allows cardholders (and other authorized users) to load money onto the credit union-branded card, which can be used for purchases almost anywhere Visa Debit cards are accepted. The cards also function as ATM cards, giving cardholders instant access to cash." READ MORE »

First Data has announced that "during this year's Democratic National Convention (DNC), Denver's Pepsi Center will serve not only as a focal point of American politics, but also as an arena for the future of how people will pay for goods and services. Next week, First Data will introduce a new payment technology to thousands of select media and delegates attending the DNC. Beginning August 25 through August 28, media and delegates receiving a limited edition pin from First Data can use the commemorative pin as a payment device to purchase refreshments up to $10 in value at participating Pepsi Center concession stands." READ MORE »

APACS issued a press release today responding to an earlier CPP release titled "Forecast is hot for fraud this Bank Holiday". APACS says that in the release "PP offers incorrect information when claiming that Spain and France are “… the top spots where Brits fall victim to card theft”. APACS says that its latest statistics "show that fraud in France on UK issued cards has decreased by £4.3million in two years, and France has dropped to fourth place for where fraud on our cards is committed. This is a direct result of the French introducing the same global chip and PIN system that we are using in the UK. Equally, fraud in Spain has fallen by £3.9 million since their rollout." In fact, based upon APACS 2007 fraud figures for UK-issued cards, the card fraud abroad is highest in USA (£24.6m) followed by Italy (£9.6m), Australia (£8.2m), France (£7.3m) and Spain (£5.7m). READ MORE »

• Reuters: Olympics-Visa looks to extend sponsorship beyond London

James Gardner writes on his BankerVision blog about what's happening with cloud computing and predicts: "In 10 years, 2 decades at the most, I believe banks will own neither data centres or networks."

Visa and Chase have announced a consumer pilot to deliver merchant offers directly to the mobile devices of Chase credit and debit cardholders in the Phoenix metropolitan area. According to the two companies, "the offers – from merchant discounts to specials – are tailored to match the personal interests selected by Chase cardholders and will be redeemable at the point of sale or the web site of more than 50 participating merchants." READ MORE »

In a post titled "Could Mobile Payments Get a Boost from Lowly Stickers?", Jim Bruene writes on his NetBanker blog about contactless payment stickers - "It's a quarter-sized sticker you plop on the back of your mobile phone making it instantly payment enabled."

First Data has published "Contactless Payments: Consumer Trends and Usage Preferences" saying that "the first step toward mobile commerce is the introduction of consumer-friendly form factors (i.e. a sticker attached to a person’s mobile device or ID badge; a wristband; or a key fob)." FDC calls its contactless stickers GO-Tags.

Click here for a Google search that will find more articles about contactless stickers.

Capco has published its latest Journal of Financial Transformation - with this issue focusing on retail financial services. From the abstract: "Within the financial sector the retail financial services area is one where innovations have been most evident. Financial institutions are increasingly recognizing and reacting to growing competition in this space, both from banks and non-bank players, and learning how to incorporate best practices from other retail disciplines. As this diffusion of ideas into the industry increases, so will the number of new and innovative services. This issue of the journal provides a comprehensive review of the developments made in the world of retail and the aspects that have been, or can be, applied within the financial services sector."