Here's a review of this week's top stories on Payments News. If you missed it, last week's Weekly Wrap is here.

• ACH News
  
  • NACHA introduced Electronic Billing Information Delivery Service (EBIDS) (See more ACH and NACHA news.)
• Conferences
  
  • Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness will be attending next week's Digital Money Forum in London
  • FSTC's 2008 Annual Conference - June 17-19 - Sonoma County, CA (See more FSTC news.)
• Debit Card News
• The Center for Responsible Lending published results from a survey of consumers finding that they overwhelmingly prefer that debit card purchases be declined at the checkout if these would otherwise result in an overdraft fee (See more on Debit Cards and Overdraft Fees.)
• Eco-Sensitive Payments
  
  • Citi Cards Launches EcoSweepstakes Promoting Going Paperless (See more news about Eco-Friendly Cards.)
• Ecommerce Payments News
  
  • PayPal reports First Quarter 2008 Financial Results (See more PayPal news.)
• Gift Card News
  
  • Kroger announced incentives to get consumers to cash their economic stimulus checks and buy Kroger gift cards (See more Gift Card news.)
• Private Equity News
  
  • Alliance Data Systems terminated its merger agreement with Blackstone (See more Alliance Data news.)
  • FTVentures Raises $512 Million Growth Capital Fund
• Commercial Payments News
  
  • Commercial Payments in Transition - A Conference in Your Pocket (See more news about Commercial Payments and Commerical Cards.)
• Mobile Banking and Mobile Payments News
  
  • Juniper Research published a new report forecasting that the number of consumers accessing banking services and products via their mobile phones will reach 816 million by 2011 (See more Mobile Banking news.)
  • Mobile Payments Player Safaricom Spurs IPO Fever in Kenya (See more Mobile Payments news.)
  • Obopay Reportedly Gets $20 Million to Send Money via Mobiles (See more Obopay and Mobile Payments news.)
  • What's Up with PayPal Mobile - and with Mobile Payments Generally? (See more PayPal Mobile and Mobile Payments news.)
• Banking Regulatory & Legislative News
  
  • The House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit held a hearing on H.R. 5244, The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights (See more news from financial regulators and legislators.)
  • The Reserve Bank of Australia has published the Proceedings from its Payments Systems Review Conference held last November (See more news from Australia.)
• Merchant Acquiring News
  
  • NOVA Information Systems Becomes Elavon (See more news about Elavon and NOVA.)
  • The ETA Annual Conference and Expo was held this week in Las Vegas. Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg filed a field report. (See more writings from Glenbrook's team.)
  • TSYS Acquiring Solutions Partners to Provide Data Breach Insurance (See more TSYS news.)
  • Authorize.Net Introduces Simple Checkout Solution (See more CyberSource/Authorize.net news.)
• PCI Compliance News
  • Payment Application Data Security Standard Issued (See more PCI Compliance news.)
• Organizational Announcements
  
  • Roy Vella was named Director of Mobile at Royal Bank of Scotland.
  • Former head of First Data International Pam Patsley was named an operating partner at Advent International.
  • Citigroup announced 9,000 more layoffs ahead - on top of 4,200 announced in January. (See more Citi news.)
• Open Job Listings on PaymentsJobs.com
  
  • Account Relationship Manager at Skylight Financial (Atlanta, Georgia)
  • Product Manager at Skylight Financial (Atlanta, Georgia)
  • Director, Public Relations at Chase Paymentech (Dallas, Texas)
  • Retail Product Manager at PreCash, Inc. (Portland, Oregon)
  • Project Manager at FSV Payment Systems (Jacksonville, Florida)
  • Senior Analyst at Mercator Advisory Group (Waltham, Massachusetts)
  • Manager, Fraud and Risk at PayCycle (Palo Alto, California)
  • Vice President / Director Business Development at i2c (Redwood City, California)
  • Account Executive at FirstCard Merchant Services (Chicago, Illinois)
  • Find and hire the best! Post your current job openings on PaymentsJobs.com!
• Upcoming Glenbrook Payments Education Offerings
  
  • Roundtable on Emerging Payments: Cross-Border eCommerce: Pot of Gold and Rainbow of Fraud - San Francisco Bay Area - May 7
  • 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.

Late today, Alliance Data Systems announced that it has terminated the May 17, 2007 merger agreement providing for the acquisition of Alliance Data by affiliates of The Blackstone Group.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg was at this week's 2008 annual Electronic Transactions Association's Annual Meeting & Expo in Las Vegas. Allen has filed a field report from the Expo.

Citigroup announced its first quarter financial results this morning - including plans to cut 9,000 more jobs on top of the 4,200 layoffs announced in January. ""It is clearly feasible for us to take 10, 15, 20 percent off our cost base, especially in information technology and operations," Citi CEO Vikram Pandit told the Financial Times. Citi also disclosed it had a $349 million pre-tax gain on Visa shares and a $161 million pre-tax gain on the sale of MasterCard shares during the quarter.

• Business Week: How New Global Banking Rules Could Deepen the U.S. Crisis
• Center for American Progress: Problems with Plastic: Credit Card Debt Hits Record High
• EU's McCreevy tells payment card cos not to use SEPA as excuse for price rises
• Investor's Business Daily: Great Credit Score Gets More Important
• SF Chronicle: TransLink - Prepaid fare card's launch put off again
• eMarketer: Online Banking is Old News. Hello Mobile!

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Roy Vella has been named Director of Mobile at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group leading RBS' global efforts in pursuit of opportunities at the intersection of mobile telephony and financial services. Vella spent the past five years with PayPal - most recently as PayPal's Head of Mobile Payments in Europe.

[Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness writes...] At Dave Birch's invitation, I'll be heading to London on Monday for next week's 11th annual Digital Money Forum on Wed-Thu April 23-24 in London. I'll be participating on the "Meet the Bloggers" panel on Thursday along with fellow payments bloggers Chris Skinner, Aneace Haddad, Colin Henderson, and Dave Birch himself - moderated by Steve Bowbrick.

Should be fun! If you'll be attending the Forum, I look forward to seeing you there. If you'd like to meet up separately while I'm in London (Friday April 25 is open), just let me know.

We mentioned earlier this week that Forte Financial's Erin McCune was in Las Vegas this week - not for the ETA Expo but for the TAWPI Payments in Transition Conference. TAWPI = The Association for Work Process Improvements - "a professional membership association dedicated to providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities for practitioners and technology and service providers in payments automation, distributed capture, and imaging & forms processing."

Erin's done a superb job of blogging her notes from the conference sessions - and the association has done a great job as well of providing downloadable copies of the conference presentations!

The Kroger Co. has announced that 'beginning May 2, 2008, customers can receive free groceries through a gift card program available exclusively in Kroger stores. The program allows Kroger customers to exchange their tax refund or economic stimulus checks for a Kroger gift card with an extra $30.00, $60.00 or $120.00 added to it. Gift card amounts correspond to the payment amounts outlined by the Internal Revenue Service for the federal economic stimulus program.'   » Continue Reading

GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham writes that "Obopay has scored $20 million in additional funding, CEO Carol Realini told me this afternoon. She and other Obopay executives contributed to the round by wiring their investments to the company coffers by way of their Obopay accounts on their mobile phones." [Editor's note: We've not yet found an official press release from the company announcing the financing.]

The Financial Services Technology Consortium's annual conference this year is being held June 17-19 at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel in Sonoma County, California. The theme of this year's conference is "On the Innovative Edge: Successful Strategies for Financial Services". The agenda with speaker details is available online along with registration. Note that Early Bird registrations are only available through tomorrow. After tomorrow, registration fees for the conference increase.

Update: The Early Bird registration rates are still available - through April 28.

The House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit is holding a hearing today on H.R. 5244, The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. The prepared testimony of the witnesses is available on the Subcommittee's hearing page. Four consumers are testifying along with other financial services regulators (from the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC, and OTS), card industry executives (from Citi Cards, American Express, and Discover) and consumer groups (Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Action, and US PIRG).

Update: CNNMoney.com reports on the hearing and testimony by Sen. Carl Levin and Sen. Ron Wyden who both urged the House to take action on the legislation.

Metavante has announced an agreement with Advanced Payment Solutions (APS), making it the payment processing house for the entire prepaid portfolio of APS, including the cashplus prepaid gold MasterCard, the Gap Year cashplus card and a range of other fully re-loadable prepaid MasterCard programmes.   » Continue Reading

PULSE and its parent company, Discover Financial Services, have announced the signing of agreements with seven additional financial institutions for the issuance of Discover Debit cards.   » Continue Reading

The Reserve Bank of Australia has published the Proceedings from its Payments Systems Review Conference held last November. 'The conference was designed to bring together a wide range of parties to discuss the reforms of recent years and how best to move forward. It was attended by around 90 invited participants, drawn from financial institutions, payment schemes, industry bodies, merchants, consultants, academia and public policy institutions.' The table of contents of the proceedings is here.

• Frontier CEO: Credit-card processors eyeing airline industry
• VeriFone Announces Preferred US Reseller Program
• FSTC Completes Significant Fraud Collaboration Project
• Authentium’s New SafeCentral Shuts Down Cybercrime
• Fidelity National Information Services Announces Conversion of Banco Real's Card Portfolio to FIS' Brazilian Card Servicing Company
• Bankrate.com: Improve credit score by using credit cards
• Extending PCI Standards to Protect All Confidential Data
• Discover(R) Motiva Card Receives Accolades By Top Publications

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Pam Patsley has joined Advent International as a Boston-based operating partner, focused on opportunities in the financial services, payments and transaction processing sectors. Patsley spent the past seven years with First Data Corp., most recently as president of first Data International.

eBay reported first quarter 2008 financial results earlier today - saying that 'PayPal had a strong quarter with $582 million in net revenue, an increase of 32% year-over-year. Net total payment volume (TPV) for the quarter was $14.42 billion, an increase of 34% year-over-year. Growth in global active accounts increased to 60.2 million, representing 17% year-over-year growth.'   » Continue Reading

In an article titled The Credit Rating in Your Shoe Box, Ben Levisohn and Brian Burnsed write for Business Week about Pay Rent, Build Credit (PRBC). "They've captured the attention of lenders right now who want growth in new markets [like the unbanked]," says Michael Turner of Political & Economic Research Council (PERC), a public policy group.

Debix has announced the national launch of the expanded Debix Identity Protection Network. Debix says its network is 'the first and only identity protection solution that is with you during an attack and proactively stops identity theft at the moment it is attempted.'   » Continue Reading

Our friend Tim Oren sends us off to read Jeff Nolan's post asking whether the mobile web is dead? Jeff writes: 'Stop the insanity! The mass market does not use the mobile web as a regular mode of interacting with the bigger web!' Read the comments to his post as well.

Tim also points us to Russell Beattie's lament from earlier this week about his startup, Mowser, shutting down. Russell writes: 'The argument up to now has been simply that there are roughly 3 billion phones out there, and that when these phones get on the Internet, their vast numbers will outweigh PCs and tilt the market towards mobile as the primary web device. The problem is that these billions of users *haven't* gotten on the Internet, and they won't until the experience is better and access to the web is barrier-free - and that means better devices and "full browsers".'

What's a mobile banker to think of all this?

The Center for Responsible Lending has published results from a survey titled 'Consumers Want Informed Choice on Overdraft Fees and Banking Options' conducted by Opinion Research Corporation that found 'respondents overwhelmingly prefer that debit card purchases be declined at the checkout if these would otherwise result in an overdraft fee.'   » Continue Reading

Stephanie Mencimer writes for Mother Jones magazine about Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank who is also chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

The Committee's Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit is holding a hearing tomorrow continuing its review of H.R. 5244, “The Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights: Providing New Protections for Consumers", introduced by Subcommittee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Mahoney of New York. Today's hearing was preceded by an initial hearing on the bill held on March 13.   » Continue Reading

AAA has announced it has enhanced its prepaid card products using Visa Inc. and MetaBank as key program partners. The new AAA Visa TravelMoney card and Visa Gift card are now available at participating AAA locations across the country.   » Continue Reading

First Data Corp. has announced the introduction of the First Data FD50 - calling it 'an affordable point-of-sale terminal featuring solid design and construction, easy operation and state-of-the-art security.'   » Continue Reading

Merchant Link has announced that it has seen a significant increase in the adoption of its credit card payments security product, TransactionVault, by quick service, casual and table service restaurant organizations nationwide, including Perkin's, Zaxby's, Famous Dave's, La Madeline, and Ruth's Chris Steak House.   » Continue Reading

In a press release, Orbiscom has announced that 'millions of consumers are taking control over risks from identity theft and online fraud with a free security service from Orbiscom. The service is available from credit card and online payment issuers and generates disposable numbers linked to a real account that can only be used within constraints specified by the card holder. As a result, merchants and unauthorized persons are prevented from seeing direct financial details in transactions that do not require the physical card, like online or by phone.'   » Continue Reading

JPMorgan Chase reported first quarter 2008 financial results this morning - its Card Services unit reported net income of $609 million, a decline of $156 million, or 20%, from the prior year.   » Continue Reading

UreLife has announced 'the UK's first ever prepaid card to incorporate Government-approved proof-of-age verification.' By combining a prepaid Visa debit card with a colour photograph and PASS (Proof of Age Standards Scheme) accredited proof-of-age hologram, the card provides a new way for parents and retailers, and for the first time online retailers, to stop underage spending on age-restricted goods.   » Continue Reading

AdvanceMe has announced the creation of a Portfolio Valuation Services Unit, designed to assist banks and other financial institutions in gauging the market value of recently acquired or prospective Merchant Cash Advance portfolios.   » Continue Reading

Forte Financial's Erin McCune is blogging from this week's TAWPI Payments in Transition Conference in Las Vegas. TAWPI = The Association for Work Process Improvement.

A new report by Juniper Research titled 'Mobile Financial Services: Banking & Payment Markets 2007-2011' forecasts that the number of consumers accessing banking services and products via their mobile phones will reach 816 million by 2011, a tenfold increase on the number using such services in 2007.   » Continue Reading

Innovative Card Technologies, developers of the ICT DisplayCard for e-banking, e-commerce and data access authentication, has announced a two-year supply and license agreement with RSA. Under the terms of the agreement, Innovative Card Technologies’ one-time passcode authentication cards will be available to RSA’s customers worldwide.   » Continue Reading

• Obopay Mobile Technology India Appoints Chief Marketing Officer
• Smart Card Alliance Spearheads New Agenda for CTST 2008 - The Americas Conference
• Postilion Introduces Enhanced Active/Active ATM Driving Solution for Financial Institutions
• MyECheck Partners With IP Commerce, Inc. to Integrate Its Online Check Service to the IP Commerce Platform
• ViVOtech Launches ViVOpay Kiosk add-on Contactless Module for Worldwide Unattended Markets
• Hypercom Makes “Pay at the Table” Secure for Restaurants in North America
• Equifax Credit Report Control Takes Credit Monitoring to New Level
• CardinalCommerce and AspDotNetStorefront Deliver Electronic Check Processing Through MyECheck
• Experian CEO sees a slowdown in acquisition activity; upbeat on co prospects
• Parallel Software Announces Integrated Credit Card Processing for MacPractice MD, DDS, DC and 20/20
• U.S. Financial Services Professionals' Bonus Outlook and Job Confidence Deteriorates
• Americans Worry Their Paychecks Won't Cover Basic Costs in 2008 - Yet They Stay Hopeful of Local Improvements

In an article titled 'First Data: We were surprised, too', David Milstead reports for the Rocky Mountain News that First Data spokeswoman Staci Busby said today that "we [First Data] were taken by surprise when Frontier Airlines filed for bankruptcy. In our numerous conversations with them, they never informed us that filing for Chapter 11 was even a consideration."

Bob Lawless writes on the Credit Slips blog: "The March 2008 bankruptcy data showed that the U.S. average filing rate went over 4,000 per day for the first time since the 2005 bankruptcy law's effective date."

The PCI Security Standards Council, a global, open industry standards body providing management of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (DSS), PCI PIN Entry Device (PED) Security Requirements and the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS), has announced the release of version 1.1 of the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS).   » Continue Reading

Felix Salmon writes for Conde Nast Porfolio about credit card holdbacks, merchant acquirers and Frontier Airlines.   » Continue Reading

NOVA Information Systems (NOVA), a wholly-owned subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp, has unveiled a new global company name, Elavon. Elavon becomes the identity for NOVA and its affiliate merchant acquiring brands including First Horizon Merchant Services (FHMS) and euroConex.   » Continue Reading

The North American Merchant Advance Association (NAMAA) has announced its formation 'to represent merchant cash advance providers and to promote competition and efficiency throughout the merchant advance industry.'   » Continue Reading

Sarah Childress writes for the Wall St. Journal about Kenya's Safaricom - saying that 'first-time investors here are betting big on an initial public offering of [Safaricom] stock on the Nairobi Stock Exchange.' Dave Birch wrote about Safaricom's M-PESA mobile payments service over two years ago. Susie Lonie from Vodafone gave a presentation on M-PESA at the 2006 Digital Money Forum. Click for more M-PESA coverage.

CyberSource has announced that its Authorize.Net small business solution has launched Simple Checkout allowing online merchants to create easy-to-implement 'Buy Now' and 'Donate' buttons. 'Simple Checkout was designed specifically for organizations that rely on donations and specialty merchants that typically sell one item per order.'   » Continue Reading

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and MasterCard Worldwide have announced 'they have joined forces and implemented MasterCard's state-of-the-art payment platform, MasterCard inControl' with RBS marketing it as 'Approval-to-Buy' to its UK corporate banking customers.   » Continue Reading

Equifax has announced that it has agreed to acquire a 28 percent equity stake in Global Payments Credit Services LLC (GPCS), a credit information company in Russia, from Global Payments Europe, s.r.o., a subsidiary of Global Payments Inc., and Home Credit and Finance Bank of Russia (Home Credit).   » Continue Reading

Members of the payment card industry in Canada - Interac Association, MasterCard Canada, Visa Canada and many of their respective card issuers and payment processors - have reported positive preliminary results from an industry trial of chip technology in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.   » Continue Reading

At this week's ETA meeting in Las Vegas, VeriFone has introduced PAYware PC - calling it 'the next generation of its popular PCCharge payment processing solution for standalone or integrated environments. PAYware PC provides end-to-end payment processing and customer management capabilities for small-to-medium-sized merchants of all types and a simple, yet highly-secure integration platform for developers.'   » Continue Reading

Chris Walsh writes for Denver's Rocky Mountain News about the Frontier Airlines bankruptcy filing late last week and the need to move quickly to resolve a dispute with its credit card processor, First Data Corp. Walsh writes that "the carrier initially will look to resolve a dispute with its credit-card processor, First Data, over the amount of money the company can withhold on Frontier's ticket sales."

FTVentures has announced the closing of its third and largest fund to date, FTV III, at $512 million. According to the firm, 'FTVentures will continue its strategy of investing in software and business services companies that derive value from the firm’s unmatched Global Partner Network, which includes the world’s leading financial institutions. Founded in 1998, FTVentures has over $1 billion in committed capital and has offices in San Francisco and New York.'   » Continue Reading

APACS, the UK payments association, said today that 'almost 1 in 3 people don’t have any anti-spyware software on their computer' as it discussed the increasing numbers of phishing attacks in the UK and reminded consumers of the tips to help them avoid falling victim to such crimes. According to APACS, 'phishing has become far more frequent in recent months with the latest APACS data showing more than 10,000 reported phishing incidents in the first quarter of 2008 – up over 200 per cent from the same period last year.'   » Continue Reading

• NY Times: Larger Prey Are Targets of Phishing
• WAUSAU Declares Role as Leading Provider of Enterprise Payment Solutions
• Business Standard (India): Barclays hopes to change the rules of mobile banking with help from a smaller-than-life bank executive
• The Society of Payment Security Professionals Offers Certification
• Jagdish Kini joins Obopay Mobile Technology as Executive Advisor
• NetDeposit to Provide Home National Bank's Remote Deposit Capture Solution
• Ingenico's Pay@Table solution awarded the FTA Hospitality Award for Excellence - IT Innovation
• Ingenico to grant TASQ Technology exclusivity on the new AQUA low-cost transaction terminal
• Ingenico expands relationship with First Data and gains Class A support for its i-Series terminals
• German, French banks to take on Visa, MasterCard with rival system - report
• Authorize.Net Streamlines Reseller Sign-ups
• VeriFone Introduces Vx 810 DUET with Innovative Dual-User Design for Merchant and Customer Use
• TSYS Acquiring Solutions Becomes Premier Partner of W.net
• Ingenico receives Class A certification from Global Payments Inc.
• Datacard Group Announces Milestone Installation for Beijing Postage Stamp Printing House
• DIGIPASS for Retail Brings VASCO Products to End-Users
• China Daily: Alipay ties up with Amazon.cn
• China Unionpay Joins Hands with United Overseas Bank
• Digital Check Introduces New Check Scanner for Small Business Remote Deposit Capture Market

Here's a brief update on Glenbrook's Payments Boot Camp education program. This week's session in New York City has been completely sold out. The next Payments Boot Camp session is scheduled for Santa Clara, California on June 11-12. Registration for the June session is now open. If you can't make the June session, the next Payments Boot Camp will be held October 15-16, 2008 in Santa Clara.

Last Thursday, in a post titled 'Innovation in Payments - A Survey of Experts', I mentioned a survey of global payments 'experts' conducted by our good friend John Chaplin on questions about the innovation in payments. If you'd like a copy of John's survey findings, please email me and I'll get a copy out to you.

TSYS Acquiring Solutions has announced 'a partnership agreement with Royal Group Services designed to protect merchants, acquirers and independent sales agents (ISOs) from expenses resulting from a suspected or actual credit card data breach.'   » Continue Reading

Citi, the world's largest provider of credit cards, has announced the launch of its EcoSweepstakes, "a promotion to encourage customers to go paperless. Every time cardmembers enroll in one of Citi's convenient online account management services or perform eligible activities, they are automatically entered to win great green prizes, including a Brand new hybrid car or a green home makeover."   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that its "Electronic Billing Information Delivery Service (EBIDS), which speeds up the ability of consumers to receive electronic bills (eBills) at the online provider of their choice, recently began operation. The first transaction was the presentment and payment of a Verizon bill. Verizon is one of the founding participants of EBIDS."   » Continue Reading

Merchant Link has announced results of a survey on credit card security and PCI compliance among attendees of the recently completed 2008 Multi-Unit Restaurant Technology Conference (MURTEC 2008) finding that "corporate reputation and customer concerns regarding the security of their data are the primary worries in the hospitality industry in terms of credit card use among restaurants of all sizes and styles."   » Continue Reading

AdvanceMe, a provider of merchant cash advances for small and mid-sized businesses, has announced a milestone with RBS Lynk delivering almost $15 million in working capital to the RBS Lynk customer base over the last six months. Through a referral relationship, RBS Lynk expanded its product portfolio to include AdvanceMe's Merchant Cash Advance product, helping clients' access capital quickly, despite tightening credit markets.   » Continue Reading

In an article title 'Where WaMu went wrong', Seattle Times business reporter Drew DeSilver takes a look at Washington Mutual before its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow in Seattle. He writes: 'Billions of dollars in tarnished debt sit festering on WaMu's books. The stock is down 71 percent over the past year, thousands of employees have been laid off, and just last week WaMu effectively sold half of itself to an investor group at a bargain-basement price.'

Nancy Trejos writes for the Washington Post about college students and credit cards: "Decades ago, it wasn't until one had a career, a spouse, even a child that credit cards typically entered the picture. Now, once people turn 18, they are bombarded with credit card offers. College campuses have become breeding grounds for new consumers of credit, with companies using free T-shirts, sandwiches, even iPods to entice potential customers."

• Guardian (UK): MasterCard confident, sees growth
• CardinalCommerce and ipCapital Group Announce Strategic Alliance
• TheStreet.com: Credit Card Issuers Tighten Standards
• TheStreet.com Enters Into Agreement with CreditCards.com to Increase its BankingMyWay Web Site Offerings
• MagTek Introduces the iPad®, the most Secure PINpad providing end to end Protection for Merchants, Acquirers, Processors, Issuers and Consumers
• Magensa’s Decryption Services and MagTek’s MagneSafe™ Bluetooth Readers Selected by eProcessing Network to Implement Secure Customer Card Data with Mobile Devices
• MagTek Introduces MagneSafe™ m20, a Secure Magstripe Reader with PCI DSS Compliance to Simplify Mobile Payment Transactions
• MagTek Introduces Excella MDX, a Secure, Single-feed, Compact Check Reader and Dual-sided Scanner
• MagTek Collaborates with ISTS to Provide Custom Integrated Web Applications for MagTek Products for Security Conscious Merchants
• Credit card direct mail volume continues decline into 2008
• TSYS Acquiring Solutions Partners with ControlScan to Provide PCI Compliance Solutions for Small Merchants
• NY Times: Despite Tough Times, Ultrarich Keep Spending
• E-xact Achieves PCI Compliance Again in 2008
• New Mercator Advisory Group report: Testing Merchant Acceptance of Prepaid Online: Have Gift Card, Will Lift
• Peplinski Group Estimates 60 Day Return on Investment with PaySimple
• Survey: Less Than 20% Japanese Use Cellphone as Contactless IC Card, GPS
• Denver Post: First Data's demand turns fears to reality
• TSYS Hires New Business Expansion Director for Brazil
• AuctionBytes: eBay Australia Sellers React to PayPal-Only Policy
• Wachovia Reports 1st Quarter Results; Announces Initiatives To Further Enhance Capital Base and Flexibility

Curiously, over the weekend the second most popular article on Payments News was one written way back in late March of 2006 as the official launch of PayPal Mobile was nearing. The article, titled "PayPal in the Air! - A Look At PayPal Mobile", was written before PayPal's official launch of the mobile payments service - that happened a few weeks later on April 6, 2006. That was just over two years ago.   » Continue Reading

Aldo Svaldi writes for the Denver Post about Frontier Airlines chapter 11 bankruptcy filing which resulted from what Svaldi reports as a significant increase in the reserve requirements that First Data, as Frontier's merchant acquirer, was imposing. [Editor's note: We first reported the Frontier/First Data news last Friday morning here on Payments News.]