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

• Conferences
  
  • Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness attended this week's Digital Money Forum in London. Scott had a great time in London and posted a number of articles from the Forum.
• First Quarter 2008 Financial Results
• Bank of America reported first quarter results including announcing it has 840,000 mobile banking subscribers and 8 million customers enrolled in the Keep the Change program. (See more Bank of America news.)
• American Express reported first quarter financial results. (See more American Express news.)
• Contactless Payments News
  • Javelin Strategy & Research has released a new report titled 'Contactless Strategy & Forecast'. (See more Contactless Payments news.)
• Eco-Friendly Payments
  
  • Wells Fargo announced several Earth Day 2008 initiatives. (See more Wells Fargo news.)
  • Fiserv and SunTrust announced a program to incent customers to migrate to electronic bill paymet. (See more Fiserv and SunTrust news.)
• Gift Card News
  
  • More merchants followed Kroger's lead last week and announced incentives to get consumers to cash their economic stimulus checks into merchant-specific gift cards (See more Gift Card news.)
• Legal and Regulatory News
  
  • The Reserve Bank of Australia released preliminary conclusions from its 2007/08 review of the payments system reforms undertaken by the Payments System Board.
  • The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston updated its Consumer Payments Research Reference Guide. Marianne Crowe, Vice President, Emerging Payments Research Group, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, gave a presentation last week titled "Emerging Payments - The Changing Landscape".
  • UK banks lost a court case challenging overdraft fees on checking accounts.
  • The Reserve Bank of India published preliminary plans to require payments companies to register and be authorized to provide services in India.
  • The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a class-action lawsuit against a group of banks that force their credit card customers to use arbitration instead of the courts for settling disputes.
• Mobile Payments News
  
  • PayPal and Sprint Nextel are working together on a mobile payments application. (See more PayPal Mobile and Mobile Payments news.)
  • Obopay confirmed a new $20 million financing round and added two new board members. (See more Obopay and Mobile Payments news.)
• PCI Compliance News
  • The PCI Security Standards Council announced the availability of two Information Supplements providing further clarification for PCI DSS requirement 11.3 , regarding penetration testing, and Requirement 6.6, regarding application code review and application firewalls. (See more PCI Compliance 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.

Stimulated by an American Banker interview with Wachovia's card chief Steve Boehm, David Evans posts on the Catalyst Code blog about contactless payments: "Contactless – like smart cards – is unfortunately a technology in search of a business model to support it."

The issue here is mandatory arbitration clauses in US credit card issuer agreements. Leslie Gevirtz reports for Reuters that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has 'reinstated a class-action suit Friday against a group of banks that force their credit card customers to use arbitration instead of the courts to settle disputes.' The court's full decision is available online.

In an article titled 'MasterCard CEO gets paid $11 million for 2007', Madlen Read reports for the AP that 'MasterCard Inc.'s president and chief executive, Robert W. Selander, received compensation valued at $11 million in 2007.' Details are included in MasterCard's recent Schedule 14A filing with the SEC.

In an article titled "RBI to regulate MasterCard, Visa and Western Union", India's Economic Times reports on a draft proposal posted to the Reserve Bank of India's website today implementing provisions of India's Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007 that would require "every person desirous of commencing or carrying on a payment system ... [to] submit an application to the Reserve Bank for authorization."   » Continue Reading

Last Friday, the Irish Payment Services Organization held its National Payments Conference 2008. The conference presentations are available online. I found the Nordea presentation (but it's not about Ireland!) particularly interesting.

Fiserv and SunTrust have announced 'they will donate one tree for every SunTrust customer who signs up for electronic bill (e-bill) activation or pays at least three bills online or via a mobile phone between April 14 and June 30, 2008. With assistance from the Arbor Day Foundation, Fiserv and SunTrust have set a goal of planting more than 10,000 trees as part of the campaign.'   » Continue Reading

• A Chat With Sanjay Swamy - CEO of mChek
• TheStreet.com: Credit-Card Debt: The Next Possible Implosion
• Bank Systems & Technology: MCNB Banks Unlocks the Potential of Electronic Check Capture

In an article titled "PayPal Launches Its First Mobile Service on a Downloadable Application", Digital Transactions reports that PayPal is one of the mobile payments offerings included in Sprint Nextel's MyMoneyManager application. Sprint Nextel says "think of it as a web browser where you add bookmarks to all of your financial services providers on your phone." The article quotes Menekse Gencer, director of business development PayPal’s mobile group: "Our intent is to make PayPal ubiquitous on the handset."

Obopay has announced the closing of its fourth round of venture funding, raising $20 million along with adding two new board members. Essar Communications Holdings Limited, the telecom subsidiary of Essar Global Limited, led the round. The two new board members are K B Rajendran, Senior Vice President, Essar Global Limited and Robert G. Hottensen, Jr., Senior Vice President for Public Equity at Olayan America Corporation.   » Continue Reading

Jayne O'Donnell and Erin Kutz write for USA TODAY that 'a handful of retail chains are dangling discounts and promotions to try to get people to spend their [tax rebate] checks in the companies' stores.' The article lists a number of retailers who are offering the opportunity for customers to exchange their rebate checks for gift cards typically with a 10% increase in value over the value of the rebate check itself.

American Express has reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2008 with net income from continuing operations down 11% compared to the same quarter last year while revenues net of interest expense were up 11%.   » Continue Reading

Social personal finance website Wesabe has announced the launch of a new "Tips" feature that provides members with customized, side-by-side comparisons of competing businesses across a number of data points. Wesabe says that 'Tips gives members financial power by arming them with the most comprehensive mix of purchase behavior data, consumer satisfaction ratings and advice.'   » Continue Reading

MasterCard has filed its annual Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement with the SEC in advance of its upcoming annual meeting of shareholders scheduled for Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at MasterCard headquarters in Purchase, NY. Included are details regarding candidates for election to the board of directors along with compensation details for principal executive officers of the company.

The afternoon session on day 2 of the Digital Money Forum was devoted to discussions about mobile payments. Samee Zafar from Edgar Dunn & Co. chaired the afternoon session and introduced Diane Coyle (who spoke on Mobile Money in Emerging Markets), Dirk-Jan de Haan (who spoke on experience from the Payter NFC trial in Rotterdam), and Guido Manglagalli from Visa EU who spoke about Visa's Mobile Platform and an NFC trial currently underway in London.   » Continue Reading

At mid-day today at the Digital Money Forum in London, five of us bank/payments bloggers took the stage for a lively discussion about blogs in financial services. The participants were Dave Birch from the Digital Money Forum blog (and the superb producer/director of this whole Forum!), Chris Skinner of TheFinanser.com, Colin Henderson of The BankWatch, Aneace Haddad of Aneace's Blog, and me, Scott Loftesness, of Payments News. The panel was introduced and deftly moderated by Steve Bowbrick.   » Continue Reading

Consumer groups have been active in the US pointing out the overdraft charges that banks charge their checking account customers for non-sufficient funds. In the UK, the issue has been litigated and the BBC reports today that "the UK's biggest banks have lost a test case about overdraft charges." The Guardians headline reads "Customers in line for billions as banks lose unfair charges case." The court decision is available online .

We're back at the Digital Money Forum in London for the day 2 agenda. This morning's topics are focused primarily on European payments issues - SEPA in particular in presentations by Charles Bryan and John Chaplin.

Aneace has done a great job on blogging the two SEPA sessions this morning. In particular, I enjoyed John Chaplin's eight SEPA predictions - along with the two "jokers" that could change everything.

WebMoney also presented on their ecommerce payment system based in Moscow. Colin blogs about WebMoney here.

• Digital Transactions: PayPal Launches Its First Mobile Service on a Downloadable Application
• ComputerWeekly: PayPal to extend Teradata data warehouse
• Target says good-bye to credit-card debt
• Tri-Counties Bank: Free Checking Just Got Mighty Interest-ing
• eMarketer: Sick of Gas Prices, Shoppers Head Online
• GlobalCollect Expands its Global Presence by Opening an Asia-Pacific Office in Singapore

Javelin Strategy & Research has released a new report titled 'Contactless Strategy & Forecast' ( Preview) that reports findings about how contactless technology will become mainstream for payment card transactions. According to Javelin, the report 'highlights how the promotion of non-network payment products will drive acceptance, thwart competition and pave the path for what card networks and issuers consider to be the eventual goal — mobile payments. In turn, the technologies and strategies described in the report will lead to radical changes in personal finance for every consumer, merchant and financial institution.'   » Continue Reading

This morning's panel titled 'Omelettes and Eggs: Innovation' at the Digital Money Forum explored the extremes of the issues of innovation in payments.

Perhaps the most basic question asked from the audience was 'why does innovation matter?' "Because it does" wasn't exactly the collective answer from the panel - but the question got to the point that it's not often that technology itself drives innovation. (Opening new markets is, to me, perhaps the best answer).

A venture investor asked the panel where theyd' put their own money to work. Among the answers from the panel: prepaid and mobile, opportunities that might emerge from new real-time 'instant' payments (e.g. FPS in the UK), innovations that truly address user (as opposed to merchant) needs and can demostrate user adoption, and a prepaid solution that truly addresses the needs of minors.

Just listened to a fascinating talk at today's Digital Money Forum in London by Ronnie O'Toole, Chief Economist of the National Irish Bank. Last November, the bank provided a pre-budget submission to the Irish Department of Finance that contained four recommendations about how to reduce inefficiencies in the Irish payment system (Dave Birch blogged about it here). One of the four recommendations was to require that taxis in the country be equipped to for card-based payments as a compulsory measure. We've seen other examples of where transit payments have been the focal point for shifting from cash to electronic payments. Glenbrook's Carol Benson blogged about her experience with card-based taxi payments in New York City late last year.

[Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness writes...] I'm in London this morning at the Eleventh Annual Digital Money Forum hosted by Consult Hyperion. This year's Forum is sponsored by Visa Europe and WebMoney with support from ACI.

At this morning's session, about 100 attendees will be discussing a range of payments related topics including innovation in general as well as the future of retail banking, the future of money and, indeed, the future of cash. I'll be participating on a panel discussion at tomorrow's session titled "Meet the Bloggers".

[Update: Colin's blogging from the Forum too - with pictures! So is Aneace!]

• New York Times: Debt Collection a New Frontier of India Outsourcing
• House Financial Services Committee Members Call on Congress to Prevent Implementation of Internet Gambling Ban
• Heartland’s Give Something Back Network Receives “Best in Payments” Editor’s Choice Award
• BillCharger.com: New Service Lets Users Pay Any Bill Online With Their Credit Card
• New Revolution MoneyExchange Buttons Helps Sellers Attract More Business
• VeriSign's Green Bar Signals Safe Online Banking With HSBC
• Burlington Free Press Editorial: Sharing the blame for credit card debt
• GlobalPlatform Finalizes Device Application Security Management (DASM) Specification
• Retailers to Send Up to 3 Billion 'Mobile Coupons' to Phone Users by 2011, According to Juniper Research
• Dubai: Credit card companies intensify competition (4% cash back!)

The PCI Security Standards Council has announced the availability of two Information Supplements providing further clarification for PCI DSS requirement 11.3 , regarding penetration testing, and Requirement 6.6 , regarding application code review and application firewalls. Both of these information supplements provide guidance to help merchants and service providers meet these two requirements in support of their PCI DSS compliance efforts.   » Continue Reading

American Express and Delta Air Lines have announced the launch of Delta Reserve Credit Card and the Delta Reserve for Business Credit Card, new premium co-branded credit cards for U.S.-based consumers. According to the two companies, 'the Delta Reserve Credit Cards are designed to cater to the needs of Delta’s on-the-go customers and provides Cardmembers with a greatly enhanced travel experience through benefits such as the ability to earn Medallion® Qualification Miles (MQMs) faster, share MQMs with family and friends for the first time ever, access to the dedicated Breezeway priority boarding lane and frequent traveler security line, Delta Crown Room Clubs access, and 24-7 concierge services.' The cards have an annual fee of $450.   » Continue Reading

Forrester's Benjamin Ensor and Alexander Hesse have published a new report titled "NFC Technology Is Revitalizing Mobile Payments". While that title certainly sounds optimistic, their subtitle adds a bit more drama: "But Mobile Contactless Payments Face Huge Adoption Hurdles". From the abstract: "But technology isn't the main barrier to wider mobile payment adoption in developed markets. Mobile contactless payment systems based on the NFC standard face many of the same adoption hurdles as other new payment systems."

Experian and Credit Builders Alliance (CBA) have announced the launch of a data-reporting partnership that enables CBA's members to report microloan repayment data to Experian to help thousands of small business entrepreneurs build a credit history.   » Continue Reading

On the Credit Slips blog, in a post titled "MasterCard's Machiavellian Twist", Angie Letwin, soon to be Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Law School in Austin, writes about her recent paper titled "Beyond Usury: A Study of Credit Card Use and Preference Among Low-Income Consumers" and compares some of her conclusions about control features useful to consumers in managing their credit card use to the new features MasterCard recently introduced with its "inControl" commercial card product designed for corporate purchasing use. She hopes that "perhaps eventually this could lead to products that would help consumers control their own spending as well."

James Gardner, Head of Innovation and Research at a major UK bank, writes a great blog called BankerWatch. In one of his recent posts titled "A New Kind of Event Please," he laments the events that vendors try to stage to interest bankers in "hot issues" and, more likely, the vendors latest products.

Instead of those kinds of events, Gardner says he's looking for more interesting and thought provoking stuff such as: "I'd like an event that would tell me how to run a bank in the cloud."

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, spoke at Paul Graham's Startup School 2008 conference at Stanford over the weekend. Bezos spent his talk focused on "the cloud" - what Amazon's doing with web services (AWS). All you have to do is to look at the first slide in his talk to see how "the cloud" is becoming an important business.

TSYS has announced the renewal of a long-term agreement with Target Corporation to service its REDcard portfolio. The multi-year agreement will include systems processing for the Target Visa Credit Card, Target Credit CardS, Target Check Card and the Target Business Card. According to TSYS, Target was recently named by the Nilson Report as one of the top-five Visa credit card issuers, with more than 21.4 million accounts on file. Target began working with TSYS in 2000 for the launch of its Visa product. TSYS began supporting the Target Credit Card portfolio in 2005.   » Continue Reading

• AuctionBytes: Google Checkout Employs 'Eco' Viral Marketing
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial: Credit the cardholder - It sounds nice, but banning 'universal default' would be a risky move in a stagnant economy
• AP: Mobile banking, still unpopular in the US, could attract new, younger customers
• YouTube: mChek Live demo of mobile phone e-Commerce
• Global Payments Announces Agreement to Extend National Bank of Canada Marketing Alliance Agreement through 2017
• eGistics and US Dataworks Announce Strategic Alliance for Integrated Distributed Capture and Archive Services
• JPMorgan Commits $30 Million to Implement Central Platform for Global Services
• Alliance Data's Canadian Loyalty Business Signs Multi-Year Renewal With Leading Canadian Home Improvement Retailer RONA
• Microsoft Releases Latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report
• Bankrate.com: Fine print hides convenience-check cost
• Bankrate.com: 7 easy ways to be victimized by ID thieves
• Sun Microsystems and Java Card Forum Announce Next Generation of Industry Leading Java Card Technology
• Centrix Introduces ACH Positive Pay to Detect Transaction Fraud in Commercial Payments

We have received news of the following recent management changes:

• Mark Schwanhausser has joined Javelin Strategy & Research to provide analyst coverage of multi-channel financial services. Mark comes to Javelin from the San Jose Mercury News, where he covered personal finance and business reporting for almost two decades.

Marianne Crowe, Vice President, Emerging Payments Research Group, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, gave a presentation last week titled "Emerging Payments - The Changing Landscape" to the Maine Association of Community Banks and to the New Hampshire Community Bankers Association. Crowe's presentation discusses the growth in debit card payments, the emergence (and potential threats to banks) of decoupled debit cards, prepaid cards for the unbanked, and the use of the Internet for bill payment, ecommerce purchases, and person-to-person or account-to-account money transfers. She also discusses contactless payments and mobile banking.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has announced the availability of a new publication, Consumer Payments Research Reference Guide - Supplement , providing an addendum to the original Consumer Payments Research Reference Guide. The Supplement includes new organizations that have conducted studies on consumer payments topics or support other research efforts to collect data on consumer payments. While the original Guide focused on private sector companies, the Supplement focuses primarily on organizations engaged in public policy research.   » Continue Reading

The second session of Glenbrook's new 2008 Roundtable on Emerging Payments is coming up on Wednesday morning, May 7, in Mountain View, CA. This session is titled "Cross-Border eCommerce: Pot of Gold and Rainbow of Fraud." Click to read the session abstract.   » Continue Reading

Wells Fargo has announced it is 'offering consumers a $250 incentive for the purchase of new residential photovoltaic solar energy systems, hosting a sweepstake to encourage customers to bank online, and expanding its Wells Fargo Rewards program to include a line of eco-friendly options.'   » Continue Reading

The UK's Blueberry Card Services Ltd has introduced a 'new pay-as-you-go MasterCard card' that it says has been 'created specifically to help mothers manage their finances and save hundreds of pounds off their day-to-day expenses. The BaBee Prepaid MasterCard Card lets mums budget for their families, earn money with a referral scheme and save money with a broad range of discounts, all at a time when their income is reduced to maternity pay or less and household costs escalate.' The BaBee Blog provides insight into how the card is used by a mum in her daily life.   » Continue Reading

The Reserve Bank of Australia has released preliminary conclusions from its 2007/08 review of the payments system reforms undertaken by the Payments System Board. The Bank is now seeking submissions on these conclusions, before finalising the review later in the year.   » Continue Reading

Bank of America has reported financial results for the first quarter. Included in the earnings press release were a couple of interesting data points:

• Mobile Banking recorded approximately 224,000 activations reaching 840,000 active customers
• Keep the Change reached 8 million net new enrollments since inception, with 974,000 customers alone signing up in the first quarter (Keep the Change is Bank of America's savings program that combines debit cards and deposit products)

Update: On the earnings report conference call this morning, BofA CEO Kenneth D. Lewis said that “the current environment is the most challenging I have dealt with.”

A comment on the Rocky Mountain News website by Louise M. Furche suggests that First Data Corp. got what it deserved from how it handled its credit risk management of Frontier Airlines. She suggests that "a better route for First Data would have been to sit down face-to-face with Frontier since they are both based in the Denver area and a meeting could have taken place with less than a 30-minute drive to a neutral location."

• USA Today: Younger people get into mobile banking
• New York Times: Gift Cards Go Philanthropic
• Wal-Mart Consumer Behavior Shows Buying Green is Going Mainstream
• AirPlus International Announces New Corporate MasterCard Product in the United States
• Focus on Growth and Hiring Plans Remain as Optimism in the Economy Drops for Small Business Owners, According to the OPEN from American Express(R) Small Business Monitor
• AdmitOne Security Unveils AdmitOne Authentication Suite
• Bankrate.com: 80% of Americans Say They Are Concerned About Identity Theft
• Korea Times: KTF, Shinhan Join Forces for Mobile Payment System
• BB&T Begins Processing with Endpoint Exchange
• Qualys Publishes “Vulnerability Management for Dummies”
• PaySimple Offers Earth Day Discount to Help Environment
• Experian Fraud Prevention Expertise Beneficial in Red Flag Rules Program Development
• New Aite Group Report: Online and Mobile Banking Technology Supplier Update
• Bank of America Earns $1.21 Billion, or $0.23 per Share, in the First Quarter
• The Scotsman (UK): Banks tell clients to beware of anything phishy
• Telegraph (UK): Citigroup's CFO says consumer credit now biggest risk