On the web:

• LG adds PayPal to its web-connected TVs - Internet Retailer - "PayPal significantly reduces the number of steps the user has to take in order to complete a transaction…"
• Mining digital gold - The Economist - "Even if it crashes, Bitcoin may make a dent in the financial world…"
• Analysts See Steady Credit-Card Use, Despite Fears of Consumer Cutbacks - Wall St. Journal - "...shoppers continued to swipe their credit cards at a healthy clip in the most recent quarter."
• eBay’s Paypal Acquires IronPearl To Fuel Growth Beyond 123M Users - TechCrunch - "There are only very few, world-reknowned growth hackers in the world and Stan (Chudnovsky) is one of them."
• The promise of Ripple - Reuters (Felix Salmon) - "I’ve been playing around a bit with Ripple, and I think it’s extremely promising."
• Now Backed By Andreessen & More, OpenCoin Looks To Build A Better Bitcoin — And A Universal Payment Ecosystem - TechCrunch - "Headed by financial services veterans like CEO Chris Larsen, who is also the founder of P2P lending giant Prosper, OpenCoin is on a mission to create a new kind of global currency."
• As Big Investors Emerge, Bitcoin Gets Ready for its Close-Up - NY Times - “To say highly speculative would be the understatement of the century.”
• PayPal / Discover Partnership to Launch April 19th - Reuters - "The deal means that, by the end of this year, PayPal will be accepted as a payment option in roughly 2 million retail stores that already take Discover credit cards."
• How advanced analytics are redefining banking - McKinsey - "Every single major decision to drive revenue, to control costs, or to mitigate risks can be infused with data and analytics…"
• Vodafone eyes M-Pesa launch in SE Asia - FT.com - "The company expects a potentially big market for M-Pesa in Myanmar…"
• E-cash in the attic - Consult Hyperion's Dave Birch: "The real point that I want to make, though, is that all of the factors that made Mondex inconvenient have vanished in a world with mobile phones, perhaps there is a kid in basement somewhere right now cooking up a bastard son of Mondex and Bitcoin and the e-cash revolution is, after all, just around the corner."
• Analysis: PayPal hopes to break shoppers' swipe habit in stores - Reuters - "There's no silver bullet for switching people from credit cards to PayPal. It will just take some time."
• The Bitcoin Crash Continues - Business Insider
• China UnionPay and Intel join forces for secure mobile payment - Engadget
• New Rwanda Diaries Ask, “Can We Build A Better Goat?” - CGAP
• Does mobile POS increase data security risks? - Mobile Commerce Daily
• Happy Birthday iPad - Asymco
• Facebook Will Peer Into Your Grocery Bag to Sell an Ad - Wired.com - "The system allows Facebook advertisers to target groups of users based on loyalty card usage at grocery stores and elsewhere, based on public records like auto registration, and based on email addresses consumers give out at retail checkout registers."
• Swipely Expands Its Credit Card-Based Loyalty System With Reputation Monitoring And Campaign Tracking - TechCrunch - "Since Swipely uses credit card data, it can not only show whether a campaign brought in new or returning customers, but also how much those customers spent on average."
• Banks' mobile apps fall short of the grade - Financial Services Club Blog

On the wires:

• Women’s Network in Electronic Transactions Announces Schedule for Annual Educational Event
• More Than Half of Surveyed Mobile Users Manage Personal Finances on Their Connected Devices, According to Research from IAB, InMobi & Viggle
• New Oxford Economics Study Confirms Negative Impact of Increased Bank Capital Levels on U.S. Economic and Job Growth - The Clearing House Association
• Centennial Bank Strengthens Its Merchant Relationships with Flexible, Efficient and Profit-driving Merchant Services from FIS
• Leaf Transforms Quick Serve Point of Sale Terminals Into Point of Smart Interactions

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has published "The Future of the Internet III" , an "eight-part 2008 survey of technology experts and social analysts that inspired thousands of intriguing predictive statements tied to eight compelling question sets about the state of things in 2020."

Among the quantitative results from the expert group:

• Some 77% said the mobile computing device (the smartphone) with more significant computing power will be 2020's primary global Internet-connection platform.
• 64% favored the idea that 2020 user interfaces will offer advanced touch, talk and typing options and some added a fourth "T" - think.
• Nearly four out of five respondents (78%) said the original Internet architecture will not be completely replaced by a next-generation 'net by 2020.

Yesterday, NCR held an Analyst Day for investors - the presentation slides are available in an SEC filing made by the company.

Online Resources held an Investor Day yesterday - the presentation slides are available online.

CSC has announced a new report by CSC's Leading Edge Forum finding that "a wave of disruptive technologies is reshaping industry, triggering new business models and altering consumer and employee behaviors." The report identifies seven "digital disruptions" that CSC says "21st century businesses must understand to position themselves for success in an emerging economy that places value predominantly in the production, enhancement and sharing of information and cultural content." The report is available for downloading online and an accompanying blog on digital disruptions by lead researcher Alex Fuss is also available. READ MORE »

U.S. financial institutions see moving toward a next generation payments system, including a payments hub (framework of common, reusable services), as important to remaining competitive according to a recent analysis conducted by the Global Payments Solutions division of Fiserv. Larger banks seem to be moving faster than smaller banks on this, as smaller banks wait to see what vendor packages come to the marketplace, say Fiserv payments analysts. READ MORE »

Colin Henderson blogs about Google's new Chrome browser - asking bankers "Where is the Chrome in your strategy?"

Yesterday, Google announced that today it would be making available a beta version of Google Chrome, a new open source web browser.

In its announcement blog posting, Google said: "We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."

More details are available in this comic book that describes the motivation and design behind Chrome. A summary analysis of Chrome's many new features - including some new trust and safety features - is available here.

Metavante has announced an alliance with Connect Software Solutions, an online banking provider for credit unions to bring Metavante’s bill presentment and payment solutions and Connect’s online banking platform together into a fully integrated online banking and bill pay product that will be delivered to the credit union market by Connect. READ MORE »

James Gardner writes on his BankerVision blog about what's happening with cloud computing and predicts: "In 10 years, 2 decades at the most, I believe banks will own neither data centres or networks."

Chris Skinner writes that he's found the "first Bank 2.0. It's Spanish. It's BBVA." More information - including some snazzy screenshots of how the online bank looks on an Apple iPhone - on BBVA's developer's website - Strands. Earlier this year, Strands acquired both NetworthIQ and Expensr.

Clearwire and Sprint Nextel have announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine their next-generation wireless broadband businesses to form a new wireless communications company. In addition, Intel Capital, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks – have collectively agreed to invest $3.2 billion into the new company to be named Clearwire.

Google's Larry Adler comments on the Official Google Blog about Google's participation in the new company. It will be fascinating to watch how this affects mobile Internet usage for financial services applications. Wikipedia has a comprehensive article about the WiMax technology that is the basis for this new network. READ MORE »

Unisys has published an insights paper titled Big Winners and Big Losers in Payments - – Where Is Your Bank Headed? . "In 2008 banks need to face the new challenges head on to become payments winners in 2010. It is time for banks to modernize their internal infrastructure to work FOR them instead of AGAINST them, enabling them to quickly develop new, competitive services. They should prepare themselves for a complex exercise that will likely take them several years to complete. Banks need to act now in order to survive and prosper to become big winners in tomorrow’s payments business."

Washington Mutual has announced a new account opening experience that it says couples 100% online approval and opening, and eliminates the need to mail a traditional signature card. Rather than the signature card, the new customer 'uses the first check in their checkbook, which has been specially designed so that once written and processed, it is scanned and used to serve as the sample signature for the account.' READ MORE »

Aite Group has published a new report titled 'Fraud Management Strategies of U.S. Financial Institutions: The Drive Toward Enterprise-Wide'. A new report from Aite Group, LLC examines the fraud management strategy of U.S. financial institutions today, and how it is expected to evolve over the next three years. Based on Aite Group's survey of 13 U.S. banks and credit unions conducted between January and March 2008, the report provides a measurement of fraud components and evaluates fraud management system requirements. READ MORE »

James Gardner, Head of Innovation and Research at a major UK bank, writes a great blog called BankerWatch. In one of his recent posts titled "A New Kind of Event Please," he laments the events that vendors try to stage to interest bankers in "hot issues" and, more likely, the vendors latest products.

Instead of those kinds of events, Gardner says he's looking for more interesting and thought provoking stuff such as: "I'd like an event that would tell me how to run a bank in the cloud."

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, spoke at Paul Graham's Startup School 2008 conference at Stanford over the weekend. Bezos spent his talk focused on "the cloud" - what Amazon's doing with web services (AWS). All you have to do is to look at the first slide in his talk to see how "the cloud" is becoming an important business.

The Financial Services Technology Consortium's annual conference this year is being held June 17-19 at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel in Sonoma County, California. The theme of this year's conference is "On the Innovative Edge: Successful Strategies for Financial Services". The agenda with speaker details is available online along with registration. Note that Early Bird registrations are only available through tomorrow. After tomorrow, registration fees for the conference increase.

Update: The Early Bird registration rates are still available - through April 28.

The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) has been examining the regulatory implications of new technologies in banking. According to the group, "basic, everyday financial services are out of reach for more than two billion people in developing countries. But the rapid growth of branchless banking - including mobile phone banking - is reducing the cost and expanding the availability of such services."

Phil Hochmuth writes for Network World about PayPal CTO Scott Thompson and his experience leaving the big IBM and Sun iron at Visa and moving to PayPal a couple of years ago where he found thousands of Linux-based, single-rack-unit servers. Thompson now says that there's no other way to do it given "the economic, operational and development advantages of open source and Linux technology."

A new report titled "Transforming Data into Insight: Enhancing Customer Relationships and Bank Profits" from Aite Group, LLC "examines opportunities to gather and analyze the relationship and transaction data on both aggregated groups of customers and individual bank customers to enhance the comprehensive 360° view of the customer and to improve key business processes, such as new account opening and account management."

Technically oriented bankers considering their mobile banking strategies may find Cameron Moll's new book "Mobile Web Design" helpful. Moll writes in his introduction that "web content on mobile devices can be every bit as good of an experience [as the desktop experience], but in its own right. If we treat the mobile web as its own environment rich with possibilities, rather than a crippled extension of the desktop experience with restrictive limitations, we begin to understand how to embrace and even exploit those possibilities."

Investor's Business Daily reports on how banks are seeking a balance between convenience and cost when it comes to strengthening logon and transaction security. "As most people now have cell phones, financial firms are also considering simply sending users one-time pass codes by text message or automated phone call, eliminating the need for tokens. Passcode generators can also be built into cell phone handsets."

Ryan Kim writes for the San Francisco Chronicle's business section about mobile banking - "Wells Fargo is the latest bank to add mobile service, following Citibank, Bank of America, Wachovia and SunTrust, all of which started similar services in the past few months. Most of the country's top 20 banks are either offering the service or trying it out."

On of our friends, technology futurist Don Park, blogs about the early appearance of some new web applications based upon Adobe's Integrated Runtime (AIR). Don suggests that "if financial services are provided exclusively through AIR apps, customers will be less exposed to phishing attacks. AIR will have to add more crypto and other features (like secure client-side storage) before they can attract banks though."

TowerGroup has published new research concluding that "financial institutions offering wholesale banking as a line of business to corporations currently face unrelenting pressure from clients to improve their integration technology services."

Javelin Strategy and Research has released a new report titled "Telephone Banking Authentication: Securing a Popular yet Vulnerable Channel" that concludes that "weak authentication measures continue to be utilized for phone banking." According to the report "a majority of top 23 US financial institutions need to strengthen authentication methods for the phone, with over 1 in 4 still asking for a full Social Security number, and only 8% requiring a password or answer to challenge questions."

The Clearing House Payments Company (TCH) and the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) have
announced a joint initiative to help the financial services industry identify ways to facilitate mobile payments for consumers and businesses.

The Federal Reserve System’s Payments System Policy Advisory Committee has published a summary of results from a forum on "Transforming U.S. Retail Payments" that was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on November 2, 2006 to discuss payments system developments and barriers to innovation with the payments industry and relevant payments system participants. "During the forum, industry experts representing depository institutions, payment processors, and nonfinancial corporations provided a variety of perspectives on strategic issues and opportunities associated with the changing U.S. retail payments system."

The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) has announced its annual conference and general meeting will be held in Dallas on May 16-17. On May 15, the FSTC will he holding a Mobile Payments Workshop - also in Dallas.

Corillian has announced it is integrating support for Windows CardSpace into its online banking products. Windows CardSpace is a component of the .NET Framework 3.0, available on Windows Vista and Windows XP, which helps store a person’s digital identity in a security-enhanced manner, and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a particular transaction, such as logging in to a Web site.

After that brief moment of silence for Bitpass, let's move on to Web4 - so artfully portrayed by Seth Godin. "I'm about to buy something from a vendor (in a store with a smart card or online). At the last minute, Web4 jumps in and asks if I want it cheaper, or if I want it from a vendor with a better reputation. Not based on some gamed system, but based on what a small trusted circle believes."