In an article on PaymentsViews.com titled "Blinging it Home? A Look at Bling Nation", Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at Bling Nation, a provider of a community payments service based on contactless technology and relationships with community financial institutions.

Over the last several weeks, Carol has been conducting a series of very interesting interviews with companies in the mobile payments space. Be sure to check them out!

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area on the evening of Tuesday, October 20th, you may want to attend the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab discussion on the topic of "Mobile Wallet: Can your phone replace your wallet?" being held at Stanford University.

Panelists for the discussion, to be moderated by Scott Ellison - Vice President/Mobile and Wireless, IDC, include:

• Wenceslao Casares - Founder, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Director, BlingNation
• Eric Duprat - General Manager Mobile, Paypal
• Dev Khare - Vice President, Venrock
• Margaret Mackenzie - SVP Operations and Chief Financial Officer, Boku
• Carol Realini - CEO, Obopay

More details here.

Mobile payments provider Bling Nation has announced receiving $8 million in Series A funding with $6.3 million coming from lead investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. The remaining $1.7 million was raised primarily from Meck, Ltd., which invested an initial $5.3 million in Bling Nation, and CampVentures. READ MORE

Bling Nation has announced that "La Junta, Colo.-based The State Bank went live on May 21 with the Bling Nation Community Payments Service, a contactless payments network that enables banks and merchants to avoid global network costs and keep money within the community through a secure local debit network. The bank markets the local payments network as an alternative to expensive, traditional payments networks and accompanying rewards program as Redi Pay Bling." READ MORE