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• Visa to Increase Stake in Monitise
• First Data Study Reveals Banks Missing out on Major Opportunity to Improve Profitability of Their Debit Programs
• Contactless News: Episode 60: Walmart's drive for EMV (Podcast)
• Korea IT Times: SK Telecom-KDDI-SOFTBANK MOBILE Agree to Cooperate on Mobile NFC Service

The U.S. Senate gave final passage today to the long debated financial reform bill.

While there are many provisions in the bill affecting all aspects of financial services in this country, the most important for payments professionals is that the U.S. Federal Reserve will now be responsible for setting debit interchange rates that are “reasonable and proportional” to costs incurred. The Fed has nine months from the effective date (when signed by the President) to complete its work.

The legislation directs the Fed to consider functional similarity between debit cards and checks (i.e., checks having cleared at par for almost 100 years vs. debit cards having interchange fees), the distinction between incremental costs and other costs, and fraud prevention costs––including potential new steps to reduce fraud, and the fraud costs absorbed by various parties.

Relevant Links:

• DavisPolk: Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (PDF)
• U.S. Federal Reserve: Statement by Chairman Bernanke on Financial Reform Legislation
• New York Times: Editorial on Financial Reform Passage

JP Morgan Chase has reported financial results for the second quarter 2010. For its Card Services unit, net income was $343mm, compared with a net loss of $672mm in the prior year. Credit costs of $2.2B include a reduction of $1.5B to the allowance for loan losses, reflecting a lower level of net charge-offs and lower estimated losses. End-of-period outstandings (excluding the WaMu portfolio) of $127.4B down 14% YoY and 4% QoQ. Sales volume (excluding the WaMu portfolio) of $75.4B was up 8% YoY and 13% QoQ.

Merchant processing volume was $117.1 billion on 5.0 billion total transactions processed.

The Merchant Risk Council (MRC), a merchant-led trade association focused on electronic commerce risk and payments globally, has announced the results of their 2010/2011 board elections. READ MORE »

Headline News is brought to you by Glenbrook Partners and our PaymentsJobs.com job board - the best place to post your position openings for payments professionals!

• Banks Anti-Fraud Measures a Top Concern for U.S. Customers
• Visa Launches Campaign Promoting Prepaid Card Benefits for Financially Underserved Consumers
• Nymgo Partners with GlobalCollect for Online Payment Processing
• Airdrie Savings Bank Signs Five-year Contract with FIS for Hosted Card Management
• American Banker: Bank of America Adds Fee for Paper Statements
• The Citizen: Vodacom M-Pesa Takes Financial Sector by Storm
• MeetTheBoss.tv: Scott Thompson, Paypal President (video interview)

PULSE has announced that it is "bringing the security, reliability and convenience of PIN debit to online shopping with the introduction of PULSE Internet PIN debit." The new payment solution, which uses Acculynk's PaySecure Internet PIN debit software, "reinforces the issuer and cardholder relationship by using a financial institution-branded graphical PIN pad." READ MORE »

Visa has announced global industry best practices for card data tokenization.

Based on Visa's experience working with the industry and also insights from data compromise investigations, the tokenization best practices are the latest in a series of guidance to help merchants reduce or eliminate sensitive card data from payment systems and simplify data security and compliance efforts. Tokenization is the process through which a credit or debit card's 16-digit primary account number (PAN) is replaced by proxy numbers.

Visa's Best Practices for Tokenization, Data Field Encryption, and PAN Storage and Truncation may be found online at www.visa.com/cisp. READ MORE »

Headline News is brought to you by Glenbrook Partners and our PaymentsJobs.com job board - the best place to post your position openings for payments professionals!

• New Media Age: Facebook Virtual Currency To Roll Out In September
• The Grocery Trader: Visa Europe - The Interview
• Zuora Delivers Z-Force 3.0
• McDonald’s goes with NFC in Japan for Sales Lift
• Dominion CU Selects Geezeo For Personal Financial Management (PFM) Platform
• New Celent Report - Taxonomy of Payments: Part I
• New Celent Report - Taxonomy of Payments: Part II
• BAI Online:Moving Up Exceptions Could Limit Fraud, Improve Service
• TransFS.com Releases Square Calculator for Mobile Credit Card Processing
• New Aite Group Report - Wire Transfer Remittance Data: Who Really Benefits?
• NetBanker: Debit Card Overdraft Protection: 2 Steps Forward, 1.9 Back
• TechCrunch: PayPal-Backed BillFloat Launches, Secures $4.5 Million Series A Round
• MasterCard and Major League Baseball Advanced Media Reward Fans for Loyalty with Priceless Perks
• Foreign Visa Card Spending Reaches USD$312 Million (R2.4 billion) During the Lead-up to and During the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa
• WAUSAU Financial Systems, Mitek Systems Announce Agreement to Use Mobile Deposit for Mobile Remote Deposit Capture

Glenbrook's Jay DeWitt will be on hand at this year's Direct Response Forum (DRF) on August 10th to lead a session that explores business continuity best practices for CNP merchants. The session will evaluate, in a business context, where merchants should focus their energies and which activities probably "aren't worth the bother".

This years DRF conference is being held August 9-11 in Memphis. The full agenda is available online. If you're going to be at the conference, - he'd love to meet you!

Consumers who are frequent users of overdraft (OD) fees at banks and credit unions could save money by bridging their cash gap with a 14- day payday advance loan, rather than paying checking account OD fees, according to a recent national study by Moebs Services.

“The average amount overdrawn on checking accounts by about 70% of consumers, according to the General Accounting Office and the FDIC, is less than $100,” said Michael Moebs, economist and CEO of Moebs $ervices. “Consumers who use a payday advance loan for $100 or less will pay an average of $17.97, which is 33 percent less than the $27.01 it costs for an overdraft of that same amount from a checking account,” he explained.

GXS has announced that it has been testing a new service with Microsoft Windows Azure as an on-demand extension to GXS Trading Grid, with information securely federated between cloud platforms. Implemented on Windows Azure, GXS Trading Partner Analytics Beta gives customers greater insight into supply chain performance and the information flows of their B2B communities. READ MORE »

Headline News is brought to you by Glenbrook Partners and our PaymentsJobs.com job board - the best place to post your position openings for payments professionals!

• Patelco Credit Union Launches Popmoney P2P Payments Integrated With Mobile Banking
• Digital Money Blog: Is this the iDEAL third scheme?
• TechCrunch: With Carrier Rates Dropping, Boku Prepares To Expand Beyond Virtual Goods

The total value of the branded prepaid card opportunity in the United States is expected to surpass $440 billion by 2017, nearly quadrupling its estimated value of $120.2 billion in 2009, according to independent research commissioned by MasterCard.

“As the study findings demonstrate, there’s significant growth potential for prepaid in the U.S. and MasterCard is committed to aggressively resourcing the opportunity to expand our prepaid footprint both in the U.S. and worldwide,” said Laura Kelly, Group Executive, Global Prepaid Solutions, MasterCard Worldwide.

First Data has released its First Data SpendTrend™ analysis for the full month of June 2010 compared to June 2009.

Consumers remained cautious in June with dollar volume growth of 6.8% (6.7% excluding Gasoline Stations) compared to May’s growth of 9.2% (8.2% excluding Gasoline Stations). June’s transaction growth was 7.3% (7.2% excluding Gasoline Stations), a decline from May’s growth of 8.4% (8.1% excluding Gasoline Stations).

MoneyGram has introduced state-of-the-art technology to better protect its customers and agents from fraud.

According to the company, "The enhanced technologies, which layer in protection through identification of suspicious transactions, computer and behavioural authentication and anti-phishing capabilities, are already dramatically reducing third-party consumer fraud at agent locations and online."

Headline News is brought to you by Glenbrook Partners and our PaymentsJobs.com job board - the best place to post your position openings for payments professionals!

• Green Dot Corporation Commences IPO
• Valarie Gelb, Senior Advisor to MasterCard Worldwide, Joins Cimbal Board of Directors
• Reuters: Citi Mulls Investing in Rival to Mint.com
• Banktech Blog: Microsoft Sets Up Phony Bank in NYC
• Carlos Menendez to Lead Global Debit at MasterCard Worldwide
• Tampa Bay Online: Credit Rules Will Also Cover Retailers' Offers
• The Security Blog: A Bad Week for Higher Ed Security Breaches
• UK ATMs Open To German Domestic Debit Cardholders Under EAPS (PDF)
• TNS Leverages Equinix in North America and Europe; Expands Managed Connectivity Services to Asia-Pacific
• Aptys Solutions Streamlines Payments Processing With Active Archive
• VentureBeat: Virtual goods firm PlaySpan expands into making money via video micropayments
• Hindustan Times: Mastercard To Bring Faster, Easier e-Payment Solutions: Banga