Season's Greetings and a Happy New Year from Glenbrook Partners. Thank you for reading Payments News throughout 2012. We'll be on holiday the rest of the year and will return to industry news coverage on January 2nd, 2013.

Chase and Bloomspot have announced that they have signed an agreement and plan of merger whereby Chase will acquire Bloomspot, a provider of targeted merchant offers.

“Chase has millions of strong relationships with consumers and merchants, and we are committed to building value in those relationships,” said Jeff Kinder, president of Chase Offers. “Merchant partners are continually looking for ways to engage the right customers, and consumers have shown a clear interest in receiving offers from their favorite merchants. We believe Chase has a unique set of assets to bring these customers together and deliver highly targeted, relevant merchant offers at scale.”

Discover Financial Services has reported financial results for the fourth quarter 2012. "The company said card sales volume grew 6% from the prior year to $26.5 billion. Credit card loans ended the quarter at $49.6 billion, up 6%, from the prior year. The delinquency rate for credit card loans over 30 days past due was 1.86%, an improvement of 53 basis points from the prior year, and a seasonal increase of 5 basis points from the prior quarter. The credit card net charge-off rate improved to 2.29% for the fourth quarter of 2012, down 95 basis points from the prior year, and 14 basis points from the prior quarter."

Payza has announced a new service, SimplySendBD, to facilitate money transfers to Bangladesh.

This new low-cost, convenient and fast online service will enable Payza members to send money to friends and family in Bangladesh, regardless of whether or not they have a Payza account. Earlier this year, Payza became the first online payment processor to be licensed by the country’s central bank, Bangladesh Bank. According to the bank’s estimate, there was more than $14 billion in remittances that entered the country in 2012.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has published a public policy discussion document entitled, "Why Don’t Most Merchants Use Price Discounts to Steer Consumer Payment Choice?"

We find that steering consumers to debit and cash via price discounts reduces some merchants’ card costs. However, this cost reduction may be insufficient to offset the cost increase of administering price menus that vary by payment instrument. In addition, rewards buyers receive on credit card transactions may exceed the price discounts that merchants can provide. These factors may explain why steering via price discounts is not widely observed.

The full paper is here.

On the web:

• PayPal’s Ambitious Plans For Stores - Internet Retailer
• UK-based ERN Raises $2M For 'Big Data' Card Analytics - TechCrunch
• ‎ As EMV-Debit-Durbin Problem Festers, a Solution May Be on Its Way - Digital Transactions
• UAE Exchange collaborates with ElectraCard Services to Launch 'gocash' Prepaid Travel Card - AfricanBrains
• SimplyTapp Proposes Secure Elements In The Cloud - NFC World

On the wires:

• VeriFone NFC Managed Services to Drive China Mobile Commerce Network
• FDIC Survey on How Banks are Working to Meet the Needs of Unbanked, Underbanked
• Voltage Secure Stateless Tokenization Advances PCI DSS Audit Scope Reduction
• Digital River World Payments Offers Online Merchants Full Card Acceptance Services for AmEx
• CARDFREE Releases Study on Fast Food Restaurants Gift Card Sales and Redemption
• Western Union Now Offering Two Options for International Travelers