U.S. Bank has announced a series of modifications to its service charge policies on checking accounts that will take effect in the first quarter of 2010. The changes include eliminating overdraft fees when a customer's account is overdrawn by less than $10, limiting the number of overdraft fees to no more than three per day and offering "opt out" to customers who would prefer to have transactions declined rather than pay overdraft fees. READ MORE »

The cover story in the new issue of the Economist is titled "The power of mobile money" - "By far the most successful example of mobile money is M-PESA, launched in 2007 by Safaricom of Kenya. It now has nearly 7m users—not bad for a country of 38m people, 18.3m of whom have mobile phones."

The article concludes: "Mobile money presents a shining opportunity to start a second wave of mobile-led development across the poor world. Operators, banks and regulators should seize it."

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