Every once in a while we come across a new book that we think will be of interest to the payments professionals among our readership. (Note: you can find a selection of all of our prior book recommendations in our PaymentsNews Bookstore on Amazon.com).

The book "details how Williams painstakingly defeated the anti-forging features of the New Note, how Williams and his partner-in-crime wife converted fake bills into legitimate tender at shopping malls all over America, and how they stayed one step ahead of the Secret Service until trusting the wrong person brought them all down. A compulsively readable story of how having it all is never enough, The Art of Making Money is a stirring portrait of the rise and inevitable fall of a modern-day criminal mastermind."

It's a great read! Also available in a Kindle edition from Amazon.com. If you're interested in learning more about the book, you should listen to this excellent interview of the author by KQED's MIchael Kransny last week and this article on Time.com.

The US House Committee on Financial Services is holding a hearing in Washington today on the Obama administration's financial regulatory reform proposals. A number of speakers from the banking industry are testifying at the hearing.

According to research conducted by Moebs Services as part of its 22nd annual survey, "the national median for overdraft (OD) fees on consumer checking accounts, debit cards and ATMs increased to $26 per incident in 2009 from $25 per incident in 2008, a 4 percent increase, led primarily by Wall Street Banks – those with assets of more than $50 billion. These findings are the result of a just-completed nationwide survey of more than 2,000 commercial banks, savings institutions and credit unions." READ MORE

In an article title "Not-So-Personal Banking", Laura Lorber writes for the Wall St. Journal about more small businesses avoiding trips to the bank to deposit checks they've received - instead using remote deposit capture to transmit an image of the check electronically to their bank.

Remote deposit capture is the equivalent of the electronic draft capture POS terminal that moved the credit card world from paper to electronics over 20 years ago - finally coming to the world of checking. One of the implications of RDC, of course, is that the local bank branch becomes less important. Said differently, banks can now market services to small businesses outside of their branch footprint.

The new J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Retail Bank Shopping Study finds that, when selecting a retail bank, shoppers place the most importance on the bank’s brand image. The study finds that 36 percent of a shopper’s selection decision is driven by the bank’s brand image, while branch proximity (21%) and products and services (14%) also considerably influence which bank shoppers ultimately choose. READ MORE

Yesterday, the Department of the Treasury sent to Congress specific language for a bill that would create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

The agency will be dedicated to looking out for American families when they take out loans or use other financial products or services – with a mission to promote access and protect consumers from unscrupulous practices across the market. This new agency will implement and enforce the new credit card bill signed into law by President Obama and Congress and have authority to combat the worst abuses in mortgage markets. This legislation creates an agency to promote transparency, simplicity, fairness, accountability, and access – laying the cornerstone for the effort to fundamentally reform our system of financial regulation.

In an article titled "Banks Balk at Agency Meant to Aid Consumers", Edmund L. Andrews writes for the New York Times that "banks and mortgage lenders are placing top priority on killing President Obama’s proposal to create a new consumer protection agency."

Broox Peterson comments on today's US Supreme Court decision in the case of Cuomo vs. Clearinghouse Association. "The decision today (5 Justices on majority opinion, 4 on opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part) holds that state attorneys general can enforce non-preempted state laws against national banks, contrary to the position of the OCC that such enforcement constituted preempted "visitation" under the National Bank Act."

In Sunday's Washington Post, writers Nancy Trejos and Jonathan Starkey look at what's been happening to bank fees - noting that "your bank wants more of your money, and it's found a way to get it: by jacking up the fees on your account."

Examples? "Bank of America this year raised the maximum number of times customers can get hit with overdraft fees from five a day to 10. On top of that, it began charging a one-time fee of $35 if the account remains in the negative for more than five days."

More here.

In an article titled "Is This The Beginning of the End of Free Checking?", Kelly Evans looks at Probity Financial Services - who offers checking accounts that aren’t free. Probity thinks its monthly charges are an attractive alternative to most banks’ standard practices with respect to overdraft fees, etc.

In an article titled "Reg Plan Could Force GE, Retailers to Divest Banks" in today's American Banker, Maria Aspan writes that the Obama administration proposals for financial industry regulatory reform could result in certain kinds of special purpose banks, such as retailer-owned credit card banks, being eliminated.

As part of her reporting this story, Aspan spoke to a number of industry participants who "stressed that it remained early to understand the proposed reforms' full implications. But they agreed that, if the proposals are enacted as written, the days when retailers could issue their own credit cards would end — forcing the few remaining players to sell or close down their lending arms."

Norway's central bank, Norges Bank, used Twitter yesterday to communicate its latest interest rate decision. "We believe we are the first in the world to use Twitter this way," Norges Bank spokeswoman Siv Meisingseth told Reuters. Follow Norges Bank on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/norgesbank

In an article titled "Banks Brace for Fight Over an Agency Meant to Bolster Consumer Protection", Andrew Martin and Louise Story write for the New York Times about concern among bankers about the Obama administration's regulatory changes that were proposed yesterday. The authors write: "Banks “are really dumbfounded by the scope of this agency,” Edward L. Yingling, the president of the American Bankers Association, said."

Binyamin Appelbaum reports for the Washington Post this afternoon that the Obama administration has proposed a new agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, that would "protect consumers of financial products such as mortgages and credit cards."

A new research report titled "Protecting Personal Information: We Lost the Battle, Can We Win the War?" by TowerGroup declares that the financial services industry has lost the battle to protect consumers' personally identifiable information (PII) data. TowerGroup's George Tubin points out that "in light of the loss or theft of hundreds of millions of data records containing PII, the financial services industry must consider the ramifications of past, present and future data losses." READ MORE

In a letter today to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, urged the Federal Reserve to act as soon as possible to protect consumers from abusive overdraft fees. Dodd called on the Fed "to finalize a proposed rule that would curb the use of excessive and unfair fees when consumers overdraw their bank accounts. Dodd further pressed the Fed to implement an “opt-in” approach to overdraft fees, which would ensure that banks would be prohibited from charging consumers an overdraft fee without their consent."

Here's a table of major US banks and what we know about their usage of Twitter. The table is sorted in descending amount based on the number of followers who are subscribed to a particular bank's Twitter feed. If you have updates, please post them as a comment below!

The May issue of Cards&Payments magazine has arrived with its annual survey of US bank card issuer profitability - finding that 2008 revenues grew 10% over 2007 to $129.6 billion while expenses grew 14% to $102.4 billion (primarily driven by a 52% increase in credit chargeoffs). After-tax profits declined about 3% to $17.7 billion. Purchase volume on credit cards grew less than 1% to $1.37 trillion.

The US Census Bureau has published its estimate of U.S. retail and food services sales for April - $337.7 billion - down 0.4% from March and down a whopping 10.1% from the same month a year ago.

In his weekly address to the nation, President Obama called on Congress to pass a credit card reform bill, so that he can sign it into law by Memorial Day.

Americans know that they have a responsibility to live within their means and pay what they owe. But they also have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties, and hidden fees that have become all-too common in our credit card industry. You shouldn’t have to fear that any new credit card is going to come with strings attached, nor should you need a magnifying glass and a reference book to read a credit card application. And the abuses in our credit card industry have only multiplied in the midst of this recession, when Americans can least afford to bear an extra burden."

Victor Stango and Jonathan Zinman have published a paper titled "What Do Consumers Really Pay on Their Checking and Credit Card Accounts? Explicit, Implicit, and Avoidable Costs" . The authors say they're attempting to answer the following questions:

What do people really pay to use their bank and credit card accounts, and which components of cost are the largest? Of all the costs that people pay, which could they easily avoid by making different day-to-day choices? And how stable are both the level of costs and the share of costs that are “avoidable,” for a given person over time?

The results of the "stress tests" of the financial conditions of the nation's 19 largest bank holding companies by the federal bank supervisory agencies have been released. The exercise--conducted by the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation--was conducted so that supervisors could determine the capital buffers sufficient for the 19 bank holding companies to withstand losses and sustain lending--even if the economic downturn is more severe than is currently anticipated.

New research by Gartner finds that while social banking won't change the consumer banking model immediately, retail banks that understand social media, financial social networks and microfinance have a better chance of adapting their services. Those banks that don't "face the prospect of being sidelined in the emergence of the social-banking services model." READ MORE

Over on the American Banker's BankThink blog, Maria Aspan asks what does swing flu have to do with MasterCard's and Visa's financial results? On last week's analysts' calls, both the Visa and MasterCard CEOs were asked about the potential impact.

Edgar, Dunn & Company and Bankerstuff are providing three webinars in May to help financial institutions capitalize on opportunities while effectively managing the challenges of this rapidly changing economic climate:

• Future Directions in Building Customer Loyalty - May 14 @ 1:00 PM CDT
• Collection Trends for Financial Services in Turbulent Times - May 21 @ 1:00 PM CDT
• Segmenting and Marketing to the Unbanked Population - May 28 @ 1:00 PM CDT

In an article titled "Edgy Banks Start to Get Word Today on Stress Tests", Eric Dash reports for the New York Times that the "Federal Reserve intends to disclose, in general terms, how it conducted the stress tests on Friday afternoon, but the government will not publicly reveal the results until May 4."

In an article titled "Banks Sway Bills to Aid Consumers", Stephen Labaton and Eric Dash report for the New York Times on the politics swirling in Washington over pending legislation regarding curtailing certain credit card issuer practices and renegotiation of mortgage terms in bankruptcy.

Regarding credit cards, President Obama is scheduled to meet with a group of industry executives tomorrow at the White House. During his campaign last year, Obama set out changes he would push for regarding credit card issuer practices - saying he would "establish a five-star rating system so that every consumer knows the risk involved in every credit card ... [and] establish a Credit Card Bill of Rights to stop credit card companies from exploiting consumers with unfair practices."

Meanwhile, the American Bankers Association has sent a letter to the House Committee on Financial Services - which is marking up pending credit card legislation today. The ABA writes:

H.R. 627 is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive in light of the sweeping credit card rules adopted by the Federal Reserve Board (Fed), Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) in December 2008. Enactment of H.R. 627 adds further restrictions on the ability of credit card issuers to factor in risk when making credit decisions, and increases the already extensive operational challenges facing the industry as they prepare to comply with the Fed’s rules.

In an article titled "Bailed-Out Banks Face Probe Over Fee Hikes", David Enrich, Marshall Eckblad and Maurice Tamman write for the Wall St. Journal about how banks that have both received Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money from the Federal government and who have increased fees on deposit accounts, credit card interest rates, etc. are being examined by the Congressional Oversight Panel and legislators.

A new study sponsored by Fiserv has found that "consumers who pay bills online are more profitable and loyal to their financial institution due to their use of online bill pay services. Customers who began using online bill payment during the course of the study delivered 15 to 20 percent more profit to their financial institution when compared to similar customers who did not adopt the online service. Further, customers who paid bills online were 76 percent less likely to churn or leave the financial institution." READ MORE

Deteriorating financial conditions in 2008 coupled with the emergence of new payments types and the growth of electronic payments opened up new opportunities for payment fraud, according to the 2009 AFP Payments and Fraud Control Survey. According to AFP, "the assault on payments is widespread: over seventy percent of organizations surveyed experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2008." The survey was sponsored by J.P. Morgan Treasury Services. READ MORE

The Bank Fraud Forum Blog has been launched by Memento Security.

Fraud is a serious issue that deserves serious discussion. The Bank Fraud Forum℠ has two primary objectives: 1) to convey insights, opinions and comments on the world of financial crime, and 2) to serve as an open, albeit virtual, forum for the fraud fighting community. Our goal is to offer intelligent, timely and thought-provoking analysis of trends, news, best practices and more.