Several new positions for payments professionals have recently been listed on PaymentsJobs.com:

• Product Manager, International Billing - Linden Lab
• Senior Industry Analyst - Card Issuing and Payments - Aite Group
• Leader, Online Channel Payments (Money Movement) - TD Bank
• Project Manager - mFoundry
• Processor Analyst - CyberSource

Are you looking for payments professionals to hire? Post your openings on PaymentsJobs.com and reach an engaged group of payments pros!

Earlier today, MasterCard announced that it was going to open up API's for third–party and independent software developers later this year. This afternoon, PayPal responded in a post titled "PayPal X Developers Driving Innovation" by Damon Hougland, senior director of PayPal X - PayPal's open platform announced last fall.

Hougland concludes: "The wallet is becoming virtual, mobile is becoming the Web and the gap between online and offline will soon no longer exist." Get ready for PayPal's second annual developer conference coming up this October.

Verifi has announced the availability of a new hosted payment page that enables merchants to outsource PCI compliance and fraud prevention. Verifi says its hosted payment page "provides retailers with complete flexibility to customize their checkout page for a seamless, branded customer experience, along with tools to optimize sales conversions." READ MORE »

CashEdge has announced that Bank of the West has launched Popmoney™, CashEdge’s person-to-person (P2P) payments service. CashEdge says that "Popmoney is the first payments service to allow bank customers the ability to send money from their bank account, using a recipient’s email address, mobile phone number or bank account information. Popmoney provides support for text messaging, WAP and downloadable mobile applications."

Bank of the West is waiving fees on the Popmoney service until the end of June. After that, fees charged to senders will be $3.00 for "Standard Delivery" (3 business days) and $10.00 for "Next Day Delivery". READ MORE »

Aria Systems has announced Aria SubscriptionsPlus for PayPal, a new subscription management and recurring billing product designed for PayPal's global merchant base. Aria says its "SubscriptionsPlus for PayPal gives merchants robust, SaaS-based subscription billing capabilities, enabling them to develop or expand their recurring revenue streams." READ MORE »

CGAP's Claudia McKay and Mark Pickens have shared a global pricing study they've completed that examines pricing for services targeting unbanked and underbanked poor people in 10 countries. Their conclusion: "mobile banking and other forms of branchless banking are cheaper than traditional banking, but the gap between the two may not be as wide as some may think. On average, branchless banking is 19% cheaper than banks." A PDF of their presentation is available online. See also this article by Jim Rosenberg on the CGAP blog.

Visa and Bancomer Transfer Services, a subsidiary of BBVA Bancomer, have announced the launch of a money transfer service that will provide an additional alternative for consumers that send money from the United States to friends and family living abroad. Consumers will be able to initiate a Visa money transfer transaction at any BTS location in the United States and send funds to select countries including El Salvador, Brazil, China and The Philippines - with future plans to extend the program to support remittances from BTS locations to any country within the Visa network. READ MORE »

Blackhawk Network has announced its fourth annual Hawk Award winners. The awards honor leaders in the prepaid card industry and are awarded in five key areas: Overall Gift Card Program, Card Design, Marketing and Promotion, Industry Achievement, and Product Innovation. READ MORE »

Fiserv has announced the results of its most recent Consumer Billing and Payment Trends survey which has tracked online consumer bill payment habits since 2001. According to the company, "the 2010 survey shows online banking, bill payment and e-bill usage continues to grow, and that the online bill payment population has changed significantly during the last decade. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of households that use online banking increased more than six-fold (to 72.5 million), and the number that use online bill payment increased nearly eight-fold (to 36.4 million). Online bill payers now represent a wide cross-section of the U.S population, and women have edged out men as the primary users of the service." An overview of the 2010 Consumer Billing and Payment Trends survey results can be downloaded at http://www.fiserv.com/trends.htm. READ MORE »

MasterCard has announced that it will release Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs) for third–party and independent software developers later this year. The company says that "by opening up previously proprietary payments and data services, developers will be able to create a new wave of e-commerce and mobile payment applications. A new developer portal will also be launched to enable developers to easily sign up for access to all of the Open APIs that MasterCard makes available will also be launched. The new Open API program is the first initiative from the newly created MasterCard Labs." Interested developers can contact MasterCard at api@mastercard.com to learn more on how to participate in the program. READ MORE »

Headline News is brought to you by Glenbrook Partners and our Payments Education series.

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