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.   » Continue Reading

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.   » Continue Reading

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.   » Continue Reading

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.   » Continue Reading

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.'   » Continue Reading

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.   » Continue Reading

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."   » Continue Reading

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."   » Continue Reading

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."   » Continue Reading

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."   » Continue Reading

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.   » Continue Reading

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.   » Continue Reading

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."

Online Banking Report has published a new analysis of Web 2.0 features as they apply to banking websites titled "Bank 2.0: Remaking your financial website for a Web 2.0 world". The report "covers the increasingly common use of blogs, feeds, web video, and other interactive features" - explaining which features are most important for financial institutions and how they can be profitably implemented.   » Continue Reading

In an article titled 'ATM System Called Unsafe", MSNBC's Bob Sullivan takes a look at issues involving the security of ATM PINs in transit between ATM machines and card issuers that were earlier outlined in a white paper published by an Israeli security firm.

Bruce Schneier blogs about a recent paper by Omer Berkman and Odelia Moshe Ostrovsky titled "The Unbearable Lightness of PIN Cracking" (PDF) saying "basically, the paper describes an inherent flaw with the way ATM PINs are encrypted and transmitted on the international financial networks, making them vulnerable to attack from malicious insiders in a bank."

eFunds has announced it is partnering with IBM to deliver new payments management solutions and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework to banking and financial services clients. According to the companies, "the partnership will help global customers transform business processes and capitalize on emerging opportunities quickly in a rapidly changing payments market."   » Continue Reading

The American Banker and Financial Insights have released their third annual FinTech rankings of the top technology providers to the financial services industry worldwide.   » Continue Reading

A number of presentations from the annual meeting of the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) held last week in New York are available online.

Glenbrook's Jim Salters files this report: Even if you've been following the authentication space and the industry dash to comply with the FFIEC Authentication Guidance, it's likely that you've never heard of Arcot. But that may soon change. According to the company, a major bank in the US will soon announce their plans to deploy ArcotID technology to its millions of retail banking customers. And while this might sound like just another customer win for an authentication solution provider, this appears to represent a dramatically different authentication strategy than we've seen so far from a large US bank, with interesting implications.   » Continue Reading

Fiserv has announced that a growing number of U.S. financial institutions have discovered significant increases in one-day funds availability along with lowering labor costs by deploying its Virtual Item Exchange (VIE).   » Continue Reading

EMC, scheduled soon to acquire RSA Security, is in the midst of a major transition from being known as "the storage company" to what they want to become known as: "the Information infrastructure company". An article by AP Technology Writer Brian Bergstein takes a look at what's involved in this transformation. "I think they come to the table today with a much better story, a holistic solution," said James Hull, head of engineering services at MasterCard Inc., a large EMC customer.

Ted Griffith writes for the Wilmington News Journal about how Bank of America and Chase are using new technology - including contactless cards - to help grow a mature business. "When you're looking at payment devices, and you're looking at payments in general, you just want to find that thing that you never leave home without," says Bank of America's Turner, borrowing from the most famous credit card slogan. "I always have my keys, I always have my cell phone, and I always have my thumb. Those will be the things that will indicate where payment technology will go." I also always have my wallet!

Paul Korzeniowski writes for Investor's Business Daily about "identity-based encryption" - a new approach that simplifies the management of encryption keys by using something like an email address (an identity) as the basis for a public encryption key. Korzeniowski reports that Ferris Research did a cost comparison between the IBE and PKI approaches and found that an IBE system costs one-fourth as much to operate as a traditional PKI-based approach.

Tom Young reports for Computing from the UK that Barclays plans to issue new hand-held card readers to all of its online banking customers for use in authenticating their logon access to Barclays' online banking sites. According to the article, the readers will read the chips on Barclays debit cards and generate a unique one-time password that must then be used to successfully complete the logon. The devices are based upon standards developed by APACS.

Wells Fargo has announced plans to open a technology resource facility in Hyderabad, India later this year -- citing "a growing need for technology talent that can no longer be supplied solely in the U.S."   » Continue Reading

Jaikumar Vijayan reports for Computerworld that "a majority of U.S. banks appear unprepared to meet the Dec. 31 deadline for complying with the guidelines, several analysts said last week. They placed much of the blame for the current lack of preparedness on the fact that the guide-lines aren't mandatory and don't specify what form of strong authentication banks should implement."

Valerie Bauerlein reports for the Wall St. Journal on the increasing use of live chat services by major banks to provide real time help to online banking customers. According to Bauerlein, at least six of the twelve biggest banks have either launched live chat or are in the midst of rolling it out. She cites evidence from Bank of America and Citigroup about the significant positive effects live chat has on close rates for things like home equity loans and mortgages.

Zions First National Bank, a subsidiary of Zions Bancorporation, and Pay By Touch have announced the introduction of biometric check-cashing to 12 locations throughout Utah and Idaho. The new service, powered by Pay By Touch, uses a finger scan to quickly and securely identify customers when they are cashing a government or payroll check.   » Continue Reading

Andrew Ross Sorkin and John Markoff report for the New York Times that RSA Security is in the late stages of negotiating a sale of the company - with EMC reported as one of the potential bidders to acquire the company.

Glenbrook's Jim Salters shares a perspective on the reality of payments convergence based upon his recent discussions with senior executives from CheckFree and ACI Worldwide.   » Continue Reading

IDC and Financial Insights have announced results from a recent study concluding that financial institutions are increasingly looking to third parties to manage entire payment functions, rather than the process alone. IDC estimates that U.S. spending on payments BPO services reached $3.3 billion in 2005 and will grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.2% to reach $4 billion by 2010.   » Continue Reading

Clear2Pay has announced a ‘Faster Payments for the UK’ solution based upon the Open Payments Framework (OPF), a library of component building blocks built entirely on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The Faster Payments initiative for the UK aims to reduce clearing times on electronic payments between banks following telephone or internet instructions from customers, including standing orders.   » Continue Reading

Andrew Reinbach, editor of Electronic Payments Week, has recently written about the impact of new technologies on banking and, in particular, mobile payments. Here's Andy's analysis - posted with permission.   » Continue Reading

A friend writes: I'd like to draw your attention to a big customer satisfaction study published in current issue of BAI's Banking Strategies magazine In an article titled 'Why Can't Some People Commit?"   » Continue Reading

Cardtronics and Info Touch have announced a hybrid ATM unit which is the result of combining a traditional, cash- dispensing ATM with a cash-accepting financial services kiosk.   » Continue Reading

Business Day reports from South Africa on mobile banking applications, a recent study done by Arthur D. Little on prospects for and progress in mobile payments, and comments from mobile payments software developer Craig Saks, COO at Cape Town-based Fundamo.

According to Saks, "few people will deny that mobile banking will become pervasive - it is just a question of what form it will take."

The FSTC Board of Directors has announced Daniel Schutzer as the new FSTC Executive Director, effective February 27, 2006.   » Continue Reading

TowerGroup has released a new report that concludes the largest U.S. banks (those with assets of $80 billion or more) have historically used an individually tailored approach to core banking systems that lack vital integration with the other core applications. These banks continue to show no indication of adopting new integrated core systems.   » Continue Reading

RSA Security has announced that Japan Net Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation have selected RSA SecurID strong authentication tokens to better protect online banking customers in Japan. Japan Net Bank will be the first to deliver two-factor authentication tokens to over one million online banking customers.   » Continue Reading

Yomirui Shimbun reports on plans by Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. to introduce a service later this year to allow ATM access by customers using mobile phones equipped with contactless chips in lieu of cards - plus the customer's PIN number. The bank says it will remodel about 7,000 ATMs to provide the new service.

John Engen writes for Bank Technology News about "natural selection" and the four public online banking technology vendors left standing after the dust from the dot.com craze settled -- Corillian, Digital Insight, Online Resources, S1 - and their combined less than $2 billion market cap.   » Continue Reading

Bolero has announced that HypoVereinsbank (HVB) - one of the leading German banks and a member of UniCredit Group - has implemented BoleroAdvise and BoleroApply into its trade finance offering.   » Continue Reading

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has issued new guidance for banks regarding “Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment.”

For banks offering Internet-based financial services, the guidance describes enhanced authentication methods that regulators expect banks to use when authenticating the identity of customers using the on-line products and services. Examiners will review this area to determine a financial institution’s progress in complying with this guidance during upcoming examinations. Financial Institutions will be expected to achieve compliance with the guidance no later than year-end 2006.

The full text of the guidance letter (PDF) is available online.

TheDeal.com reports on Oracle's interest in potentially acquiring a controlling interest in India's i-Flex Solutions Ltd.

Jon Van reports for the Chicago Tribune on the use of predictive analytics to analyze mountains of information from purchases, loyalty cards, etc.

SPSS' clients include some of the nation's major cell phone operators. While he declined to disclose their names, Noonan said one carrier has been particularly adept at using predictive analytics to single out customers likely to switch to another carrier.

This knowledge enabled the carrier to offer those customers sweeter deals--such as free phones or extra minutes--to renew their contracts. The carrier reduced customer churn by 25 percent, Noonan said, while others haven't been as effective in their execution.

The FDIC today issued guidance to financial institutions on steps they should be taking to mitigate risks from spyware from both a bank and a consumer perspective.

Spyware poses a significant risk to financial institutions and its customers. Practices to prevent and detect spyware should be regularly reviewed to ensure that an institution is aware of all risks to its systems and to sensitive customer information.

Bill Brubaker writes for the Washington Post about Bank of America's new SiteKey online authentication system.   » Continue Reading

Matthew Haughey has posted an email he received from American Express inviting him to test Amex's new RSS feeds. [Hat tip: Scripting News]

Separately, Microsoft announced today that its next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, will include support for RSS.

“RSS is key to how people will use the Internet in the future by automatically delivering the information that is important to them,” said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for “Longhorn” browsing and RSS at Microsoft.

“We are investing heavily in RSS for Windows ‘Longhorn’ to make it easy for users to discover, read and subscribe to RSS feeds as well as enable developers to deliver powerful, smart applications that act on the information on behalf of the user.”

RSA Security has announced two US banks (Allentown, Pennsylvania-based American Bank and West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Stonebridge Bank) who will be adopting RSA's SecurID two-factor authentication for use by their online banking customers.   » Continue Reading

Wells Fargo has announced two new services that allow businesses to deposit checks remotely from their own locations -- saving time and costs.

The Desktop Deposit Service allows customers to scan checks at their desks using equipment provided by Wells Fargo. For customers already equipped with their own scanning equipment, Wells Fargo offers the Electronic Deposit service to transmit check images from their business locations to the bank.

"Check 21 allows us to take anywhere, anytime banking to the next level," said Steve Ellis, head of Wholesale Services at Wells Fargo. "It is truly banking without boundaries. Our business customers can now deposit checks into their Wells Fargo accounts from their offices, stores or operations. There's no more need to deal with multiple branches.

Payment industry veteran Phil Heasley has been named president and CEO of Transaction Systems Architects, Inc.   » Continue Reading

Wells Fargo has announced that its entire network of 6,200 ATMs is now web-enabled.

"Very few of our customers are single-channel users," said Jonathan Velline, head of Wells Fargo's ATM Banking. "Today more than 51% of our checking accounts are accessed online and our customers are conducting as many transactions at our ATMs as they do with our tellers. We've completely integrated our webATM machines with all our other channels, so customers can access information and conduct transactions in whatever channel that best suits their changing needs and preferences."

Tom Smith writes in Speech Technology Magazine about Fort Knox National Company's use of voice technologies to deliver voice e-payments in a cost-efficient manner.

Troy Critchelow, vice president of product management, Fort Knox National Company, said, “Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) technology holds the key to allowing billers to benefit from consumer adoption of electronic payments and payment automation.  Through the use of ASR, telephone payment transactions can now be fully automated.  And given consumers’ preferences for voice interfaces, billers can exponentially cut the number of customers who opt-out to costly operators to make telephone payments.”

The Electronic Authentication Partnership (EAP) has announced the election of its first board of directors. The EAP promotes interoperability among public and private online authentication systems.

The obstacle to widespread online authentication isn't technology, it's a lack of accepted rules for trust," said James Lewis, the Interim Chair of the EAP and Director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). "The EAP's Trust Framework (PDF) is a major achievement by a public-private partnership that gives companies and individuals a way to determine how much they can trust a credential issued by someone else."

"In conducting the pilots," Lewis said, "the EAP will be able to count on the oversight of a talented Board that draws from a broad cross-section of the authentication industry."

Some banks are using iPod's instead of toasters to encourage new accounts. Michael Fitzgerald reports in CIO Insight on Commerce Bank's strategy uses advanced IT to help drive quick responses for customers in branches.   » Continue Reading

The Japan Times reports on the application of biometric technologies for financial transactions in Japan.

The growing number of bank account thefts involving stolen or forged bank cards is forcing financial institutions to adopt costly biometric technology to verify that only bona fide customers are using automated teller machines.

Vance McCarthy writes in Integration Developer News about JPay, a new set of open application program interfaces intended to eash the cost, time and complexity for supporting electronic payments.

The JPay API will support payments in an open, Web-like environment, and specifically allow Java applications (typically Web applications or Java enabled content servers) to utilize a third-party payment service. The proposal is being back by some of the leading names in transaction-driven Java, including Oracle, IBM, Sun, HP and Siemens.

More information about JPay is available on the JPay home page.

Cyota has released the results of it second annual Financial Institution Online Fraud Survey conducted during November 2004.   » Continue Reading

Jennifer Kingson reports in the New York Times on DataTreasury Corporation, a Melville, NY-based company that has sued others, including several banks and processors, for patent infringement.

DataTreasury, for its part, said in court filings that the two patents were the brainchild of its founder, an inventor named Claudio Ballard. The filings are silent on Mr. Ballard's professional credentials and background, but they do assert that he met at least once with people from J. P. Morgan Chase and that they appropriated his ideas.

The Scotsman reports on anti-skimming devices being deployed by Barclays Bank to protect its ATMs.

Viewpointe has announced that First Horizon and SunTrust have begun electronic check clearing through ViewPointe's ImageShare image exchange capability.   » Continue Reading

Alenka Grealish of Celent Communicatins writes in Bank Systems & Technology on banking trends for 2005.

RSA Security has announced that Commerce Bank will be using RSA's SecurID token for two-factor authentication of more than 4,000 employees and corporate banking customers.   » Continue Reading

An article by Dan Atkinson from the UK speculates that electronic smart tags may start being embedded in currency over the next few years.

Checkfree Software has announced a new payer verification capability for checks that uses image capture technology to pull payee names off of check images. The new capability allows banks to identify altered or unmatched payee paid exception items. If the results conclude the check has been changed or added to, it is rejected as an exception and may be presented to the company for a "pay" or "return" decision with no loss to the customer or the bank.

The Electronic Payments Network has announced a minimum remittance information standard, EPN 820, intended to improve the straight through processing for business-to-business payments.

Fundtech has announced that it plans to support the new Minimum Remittance Information Standard in its next software release.

S1 has announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Mosaic Software Holdings for $37 million in cash at closing and up to an additional $15 million in earn-out payments based upon Mosaic's financial performance through May 2005.   » Continue Reading

Paul Roberts of IDG News Service reports on bank usage of strong authentication technologies to authenticate their online customers.

"The good guys can't keep up with the bad guys," said Litan of Gartner. "What we need is some kind of caller ID for the Internet. Someone has to stand behind Web sites and say, 'This is John Doe.' And right now nobody does that."

ActivCard has announced the introduction of a new ActivCard Token intended for use by online banking customers.   » Continue Reading

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has released guidance to US financial institutions regarding their use of free and open source software.   » Continue Reading

Ever wonder how your Speedpass actually worked? Heard the hype about RFID and curious to learn more? Check out the article in ACM Queue by Intel's Roy Want titled The Magic of RFID".

Former US national security advisor Richard Clarke spoke to the Smart Card Alliance's fall conference in San Francisco last week.   » Continue Reading

Ann All reports on ATMmarketplace.com on bank strategies to meet the withdrawal of support for IBM's OS/2 operating system and regulatory mandates requiring triple DES encryption and audio capabilities.

Keynote has published the initial results for its new Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index. The initial results from Keynote's Credit Card Transaction performance index showed a wide range of performance for some of the largest credit card issuers' Web sites.   » Continue Reading

Steven Marlin writes in Information Week about how Wells Fargo Bank is using its experience with online consumer banking to help its commercial banking customers.   » Continue Reading

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has just published the Fall 2004 edition of its Community Developments newsletter which features "The Power of Plastic" -- highlighting efforts by banks to use technology to reach those Americans who do not have access to banking services.   » Continue Reading

Kabira, a San Rafael, California network switching software provider, has announced that its zero-latency network switching technology is being used as part of Visa Direct Exchange.   » Continue Reading

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times writes on Forbes.com about some of the potential implications of the breakup of the JP Morgan Chase outsourcing deal with IBM.

SVPCO has announced the official production launch of its Image Exchange Network following a two month trial period with KeyBank and JPMorgan Chase.   » Continue Reading

Gartner has posted a briefing on potential vulnerabilities in the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) as discussed at the recent Crypto 2004 conference in Santa Barbara.

MasterCard International and Visa International have announced that they are working together to align PIN entry device (PED) security requirements and approval procedures. MasterCard and Visa have agreed to standardize security requirements, testing methodologies, and procedures for approving PEDs. The organizations are also working towards reaching similar agreements with other key industry players in the near future. For more information, see Visa International's PIN website.   » Continue Reading

Jonathan Zinman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has published a new 50 page staff report: "Why Use Debit Instead of Credit - Consumer Choice in a Trillion Dollar Market".   » Continue Reading

Feeling the effects of a decline in check volume as payments continue to move to electronics, the US Federal Reserve announced today that it is reducing the number of check processing sites from 45 to 23 by early 2006. Earlier, the Fed had announced plans to reduced to 32 sites but the consolidation has been accelerated further. In addition, the Fed said that about 270 net employees will lose their jobs, a 6 per cent cutback from current levels.   » Continue Reading

Jonathan Decker reports on the Christian Science Monitor about using checks and being careful who you give them to.

"If you are unsure about the merchant, never use a check - use a credit card instead," says George Thomas, president of the Electronic Payments Network, a division of the Clearinghouse, the largest private check processing system, owned by many of the nation's largest banks. "That way, you can avoid the possibility of checking-account fraud down the road."

Earlier this month, the FDIC released a white paper as part of its Future of Banking series looking at limited-purpose banks (PDF) including credit card banks.

Fortune writer Ellen Florian takes a look back at the early days of ATM machines.   » Continue Reading

Kevin Poulsen writes in Security Focus about the upgrades now underway to address ATM PIN pad security and certification requirements.

Earlier this month, Visa International announced it was postponing its original July 1, 2004 compliance deadline for deploying tested and approved ATMs.