This afternoon Visa Inc. reported financial results for its fiscal third quarter 2009.

The company reported adjusted quarterly net income of $507 million (excluding the gain on the VisaNet do Brasil shares) on net operating revenue of $1.6 billion, an increase of 2% over the prior year. Visa's payments volume growth declined 5% over the prior year to $617 billion and total volume, on a nominal basis and inclusive of cash volume, was $969 billion, a 7% decline over the prior year. Total processed transactions, which represent transactions processed by VisaNet through June 30, 2009, totaled 10.3 billion, an 8% increase over the prior year.

Visa and U.S. Bank have announced Syncada – a joint venture that the two companies say "provides a business-to-business (B2B) network for corporations and governments to process and track invoices, make and receive payments around the world, and have payables or receivables financed through local and global financial institutions." As part of the joint venture, Visa said it has made a capital investment in Syncada. READ MORE »

In a TechCrunch post this morning titled "1-800-FLOWERS.COM Sets Up Shop Inside Facebook", Robin Wauters writes about the online retailer's new eCommerce store launched on its Facebook page inside Facebook. According to Wauters, "Registered users can now order all kinds of floral products from the popular florist and gift shop without ever leaving the social network."

It's earnings season for the major card companies again. Later today at 5 PM Eastern, Visa will be announcing financial results for its fiscal Q3. Tomorrow morning, MasterCard will be announcing financial results before the market opens at 9 AM Eastern.

On-Line Strategies has announced it has completed certification and production implementation of an Electronic Check Acceptance interface with a major authorizer as part a Fortune 100 client project. According to OLS, "OLS.Switch is a payment transaction processing engine, built using best-of-breed technologies to implement a unique new design supporting the latest industry standards, regulations, and best practices for payments and settlement processing." READ MORE »

In an article titled "Brigham Young University to test new NFC microSD solution", Sarah Clark writes for Near-Field Communications World about RFinity, an Idaho Falls-based startup that has developed technology to use an NFC application embedded in a microSD card that "enables a secure one-time token to be generated each time a transaction takes place and ensures that a user's credit card details never need to be transmitted, even in an encrypted form."

ACI Worldwide has announced that its recent global card fraud survey found that "18 per cent of consumers questioned have been victims of credit or debit card fraud in the past five years. The research, of more than 2,400 consumers across eight countries, also found that if an individual or someone they knew was hit by card fraud, 22 per cent would change financial institutions, and a further 27 per cent would consider changing financial institutions." READ MORE »

In an op-ed piece titled "Credit card transactions benefit both merchant and customer" the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, MasterCard's Rob Reeg, president of Global Technology and Operations for MasterCard Worldwide, writes about interchange fees and current efforts by many merchants lobbying Congress to "push for a new law that would shift the fees for using a card onto consumers while merchants keep the benefits, and the profits." Reeg cites the example of the Reserve Bank of Australia's mandated cuts in interchange fees a few years ago - and where, he says, "rather than passing along the savings to their customers, merchants pocketed the funds." He concludes by urging Congress to reject "the merchants' anti-competitive legislation."

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