Looking for new areas for product development or investment in business to business payments? At Glenbrook, we're spending a lot of time looking at the move towards electronics for B2B payments. Join us at our upcoming New York City workshop, "New Opportunities in B2B Payments", on May 27th & 28th. If you have any questions about this workshop, please contact Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson."

In a press release, the Retail Council of Canada has announced that representatives of hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses will descend on Ottawa this week for the start of House of Commons Committee hearings focused on the runaway fees merchants are forced to pay to accept credit cards.

According to the Council, "the joint House Finance/Industry Committee inquiry, which begins tomorrow, comes on the heels of hearings held on the issue by the Senate Banking Committee that concluded last week. The hearings signal the first time that credit and debit card issues have been examined by Parliament." READ MORE »

Dow Jones is reporting that Sen. Chris Dodd and Sen. Richard Shelby have reached an agreement on the pending credit card legislation scheduled to be voted on in the Senate later this week.

See also this statement from Senator Chris Dodd.

In an article today titled "Under Pressure, Target is Likely to Quit Card Line", the American Banker's Maria Aspan writes that the proxy battle underway for Target could include dealing with its in-house credit card business. Aspan notes that Richard Vague, a co-founder of First USA, is one of the board nominees put forward by Pershing Square Capital's William Ackman.

Auriemma Consulting Group has published research finding that British consumers are less likely to have credit card debt than they were before the credit crunch. "By the end of 2008, consumers users were 21% less likely to be burdened by credit card debt than they were at the beginning of the year. In Q1 2008, 63% of British consumers carried balances on their credit cards. By the end of 2008, the incidence of revolving debt on credit cards fell to just 50%." READ MORE »

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