On the web:

• Walmart: Settlement ‘Worse Than Losing’ - StorefrontBacktalk
• States Join Foes of Card-Fee Settlement - Wall St. Journal - "The attorneys general of California, Ohio, Arizona and six other states argued in an objection filed Tuesday…"
• The US surcharging mess - Tomorrow's Transactions - "Payments regulation in the US is, as one of the panelists rather amusingly said, two fat guys fighting over dessert. The fat guys are the banks and the retailers, the ones with the lobbyists, and the dessert is interchange revenue."
• On ropes but not quite done - Canberra Times - "All around Australia, laboratories are experimenting with non-cash payments, raising the question of whether money, as we know it, is history."
• 2013 Internet Trends - Kleiner Perkins - Mary Meeker and Liang Wu's latest update.
• Bitcoin is a money platform with many APIs - O'Reilly Radar - "Bitcoin is much more than just a digital currency. It is a protocol, a network, a currency and a transaction language. Most of all, though, it is an application programming interface (API) for money."
• In A Single ATM, The Story Of A Nation's Economy - Planet Money - "This all-cash economy is one of the things that is holding back Myanmar's economy. The rest of the world no longer operates on rice sacks filled with paper money."
• Square’s Kimble: There’s ‘More Opportunity Than Obstacle’ in Payments Space - StreetFight - "I am really glad to see the network rules evolving to enable innovation. We are optimistic that will continue."
• Payleven ties up with Apple for retail push of its Chip & PIN card reader - The Next Web - "Apple specifically chose our Chip & PIN solution for their European stores, both offline as well as online."
• EMV Could Make Prepaid Cards Prohibitive to Issue, Unless … - American Banker BankThink (Lanny Byers) - "Either prepaid will move to mobile or prepaid will have to be repositioned toward a more value-added proposition."
• After Liberty Reserve Shut Down, Is Bitcoin Next? - "If you’re not compliant, there are some serious risks, both at the federal and state levels."
• How do you secure yourself in an insecure world? - Financial Services Club Blog (Chris Skinner) - "Just gave a presentation at the EFMA Conference this week on online insecurity…"
• AWS IAM Now Supports Amazon, Facebook, and Google Identity Federation - Amazon Web Services Blog - "For those of you not yet familiar with Login with Amazon, it's a new service you can use to securely connect your websites and apps with millions of Amazon.com customers."

On the wires:

• Blackhawk Network Recognizes Partners For Prepaid Industry Achievements - "The Hawk Awards recognize those companies who have contributed the most to the industry across the past year..."
• Payoneer Secures European Union E-Money License, Adds Management Talent - “We are committed to the vision of a world in which cross-border payment is simple, low cost and compliant - and as frictionless as electronic commerce,” said Payoneer CEO Scott Galit.
• Homeowners Pay Down $50 Million in Mortgage Principal Using the Wells Fargo Home Rebate Card Rewards Program - "Virtually every purchase a customer makes with the card counts toward rebates credited to the principal on their Wells Fargo Home Mortgage loan."
• Amazon Announces Login with Amazon to Reduce Sign-In Friction and Drive Higher Customer Engagement - "Amazon customers now have a hassle-free way to quickly and securely sign-in to apps, games and websites, without having to remember yet another password."
• TSYS Renews Payments Agreement with Nationwide Building Society - "As part of the agreement, TSYS will continue to process Nationwide’s UK consumer card portfolio, as well as supporting all of its contact centre operations."
• Earthport to receive $10m investment from IFC, a member of World Bank Group - "The funding will be used to expand Earthport’s presence and payments service infrastructure, particularly in developing countries."

On Twitter:

#MobilePayments: maybe we should stop focusing on changing merch & consumer behavior and instead add new m-merchants. Like PayPal in 2001...

— Jim Van Dyke (@JimVanDyke) May 29, 2013

Amazon Web Services has announced that "it has achieved Level 1 compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS). Merchants and other service providers can now run their applications on AWS PCI-compliant technology infrastructure to store, process and transmit credit card information in the cloud."

Amazon Web Services 2009 Startup Challenge includes a prize from Amazon Payments for the AWS Start-Up Challenge finalist with the most creative monetization strategy and use of Amazon Payments solutions. Winner of the Amazon Payments prize will go home with $10,000 in combined cash and Amazon Payments credits. Details here.

Amazon.com has announced that the Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is now out of beta and also easier to use with Amazon FPS Quick Starts. Using FPS, developers can enable your applications with common payment transactions such as one time payments, recurring payments and pre-payments in hours rather than days. Amazon is also offering free payment processing for a limited time to developers who build an application using Amazon FPS. More info on the Amazon Payments Blog.

Amazon Payments has launched both Checkout by Amazon, a complete ecommerce checkout solution including payments, shipping, sales tax, promotions, etc., and Amazon Simple Pay , a set of payment-only products that allows websites to enable their customers to use their Amazon.com payment information for payments. A comparison chart shows the key differences between Checkout by Amazon, Amazon Simple Pay, and Amazon's Flexible Payment Service.

Last wee, Amazon.com announced a new Amazon Flexible Payments Service Marketplace Widget that provides developers the ability to create a widget for moving money between two other parties, with complete control of fees paid to the developer. Money moves from buyer to seller, and the seller pays a fee to the developer. The fee can be a fixed amount and/or a percentage of the transaction. Amazon also added several other features to FPS including instant payment notification and new transaction details including providing the buyer's email address to the seller.

For some time, Amazon.com has offered merchants Fulfillment by Amazon - where they could have Amazon hold their goods for shipment at Amazon's fulfillment centers. Now, Amazon's introduced a new Fulfillment Web Service that enables merchants to programmatically manage their inventories, replenishment and shipment activities using FBA. "Products that are fulfilled by Amazon qualify for all of Amazon's buyer shipping and customer promotions (such as free Super Saver shipping and Amazon Prime) and Amazon takes care of customer service and returns." More on the Amazon Web Services blog.