Google Scholar now includes the ability to search for and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts. You can easily find some of the important cases that have affected the US payments industry over the last 25 years including:

• National Bancard Corp.(NaBanco) v. Visa USA, Inc., 779 F. 2d 592 - US: Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit 1986
• US v. Visa USA, Inc., 163 F. Supp. 2d 322 - US: Dist. Court, SD New York 2001
• In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation, 280 F. 3d 124 - US: Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 2001
• SCFC ILC, Inc. v. Visa USA, Inc., 36 F. 3d 958 - US: Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit 1994
• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Visa USA, Inc., 396 F. 3d 96 - US: Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 2005

The Reserve Bank of India has published Payments Systems in India - Vision 2009-12, a report that outlines several major initiatives that the bank is undertaking with respect to the payment systems in India. Among them is India Card - a domestic card initiative.

Quoting from the report: "The concept of a domestic payment card (India Card) and a PoS switch network for issuance and acceptance of payment cards would be looked into. The need for such a system arises from two major considerations (a) the high cost borne by the Indian banks for affiliation with international card associations in the absence of a domestic price setter (b) the connection with international card associations resulting in the need for routing even domestic transactions, which account for more than 90% of the total, through a switch located outside the country."

In an article titled "New York’s Cabbies Like Credit Cards? Go Figure", Michael M. Grynbaum writes for the New York Times about how New York cabbies have grown to appreciate the benefits of payment card acceptance as they've emerged as "an unlikely savior for New York’s taxi industry." When initially introduced two years ago, cabbies were very unhappy with the requirement to accept cards. According to Grynbaum, all of that has changed.

Over the last few years, we've been watching various acceptance environments abandoning cash and moving to only card-based payments. Perhaps the best examples are the airlines - who moved over a relatively short period to eliminating cash acceptance for meals and drinks purchased in-flight. Now comes word from the Miami Herald in south Florida that Florida's Turnpike is being turned into a cashless toll road. "By February 2011, all cash collection on the Turnpike's southernmost stretch will end, and crews will begin tearing down every toll booth."

ISTS Worldwide, Inc., a retail and payment technology consulting and services organization, has published a new white paper titled "Service Oriented Architecture in Payments". According to the company, this paper is part of a series of white papers ISTS plans to publish around topics related to payments and high transaction low latency systems.

In an article titled "Grocery stores taking check use off shoppers' lists", Jerry Hirsch writes for the Los Angeles Times about grocery stores, including Whole Foods Markets, considering banning the use of personal checks at their stores in favor of only accepting cash and cards. Hirsh quotes a Whole Foods regional vice president who says it "prefers cash, debit cards and credit cards because they can be processed quickly and come with added protections that safeguard the interests of the consumer and the retailer."

Over on his Payment Systems blog, Andy Orrock, COO at On-Line Strategies, shares some insights into transaction times for various payment card transaction times from a large merchant.

I found the time difference between credit and offline debit cards vs. online PIN-based debit cards to be interesting with PIN debit taking 1.6 times longer. Andy shares his explanation of the timing difference in the comments.

Non-cash payment volumes continued to grow in 2008 after an increase of 8.6 percent globally in 2007 to 250 billion transactions, according to the World Payments Report 2009, released today by Capgemini, RBS and Efma. The use of cards continues to be the single strongest driver for this growth with llobal card transactions (credit and debit) growing 14.5% in 2007 and 11.2% in 2008. READ MORE »

FleetCor has announced that it has acquired the UK and Ireland fuel card businesses of Retail Decisions (ReD). The acquisition includes all of ReD’s fuel card operations in the UK and Ireland, including ReD’s network of UK fuel bunkering outlets. READ MORE »

New research from TowerGroup titled "Shuffling the Cards: The Migration of Frugal Consumers and Cautious Lenders to a Debit Card World" finds that "debit cards are far more resilient in the current recessionary economy than credit cards. In less than 15 years, debit card transactions in the United States grew from 1 percent of noncash transactions to more than 50 percent. TowerGroup predicts that debit card transaction volume and card spend will grow through 2015, through the current recession and ensuing economic recovery." READ MORE »

Figures published by The UK Cards Association show that donations to charitable organisations on plastic cards reached £1.19 billion in 2008 – up from £1.01 billion in 2007 – an increase of 18%. In terms of the number of donations made on plastic cards there was an overall increase of 13% from 2007 to 2008. Donations on debit cards increased by 16% (up from 13 million in 2007 to 15.1 million last year) while credit card transactions rose 9% (9.6 million in 2007 to 10.5 million last year). READ MORE »

With yesterday's death of Michael Jackson, purchasers of tickets to his planned London shows originally scheduled to begin in a few weeks will be seeking refunds on their purchases. See this article in todays' Guardian for more information. "Tickets for Jackson's 50-day tour sold out almost immediately when they went on sale in March. More than a quarter of a million people bought tickets..."

This is a nightmare scenario for a merchant acquirer - tickets purchased using credit cards for a future performance that ultimately doesn't happen. This is why merchant acquirers are as concerned about the nature of the goods/services being sold as they are about the merchant itself. It will be interesting to watch as this plays out in the UK.

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.

Link2Gov has announced the availability of businesstaxpayment.com, Link2Gov’s new consolidated business tax payment site. At businesstaxpayment.com, businesses can use credit and debit cards to pay the federal business tax types — multiple variations of Forms 940, 941, 943, 944 and 945 — that have been designated by the Internal Revenue Service as eligible for card-based payments. READ MORE »

The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index rose in February driven by strong growth in real wages and a decline in energy prices. The Index attempts to track consumer cash flow as an indicator of future consumer spending. READ MORE »

The Boston Consulting Group has announced its ninth major study of the payments industry titled "Weathering the Storm: Global Payments 2009" find that "banks must take forceful steps to overcome major challenges to their payments businesses if they are to bolster their overall profitability amid the ongoing financial crisis." READ MORE »

Hitachi Consulting has announced results of the 2008 Study of Consumer Payment Preferences, a nationwide study conducted by BAI Research and Hitachi Consulting sponsored by First Data, MasterCard Worldwide, Metavante, and PULSE. According to the study, "traditional card-based payment methods already have whittled away the base of check transactions in the United States, and are now impacting consumers’ use of cash, with 41 percent of consumers indicating they use cash less often today than they did two years ago." READ MORE »

APACS has released full year 2008 data for payments in the UK . Highlights from the full year’s data include:

• Plastic cards: Total debit and credit card spending was up in 2008 in terms of both value and volume, increasing 6.8% and 7.4% respectively.
• Debit cards dominate card spending - accounting for 73.5% of all plastic card purchase transactions in 2008.
• There were 42.1 million debit cardholders with 75 million debit cards in issue at the end of 2008, compared with 30.1 million credit card holders with 71 million credit cards.
• The number of debit cardholders and cards in issue increased by 1.0% and 4.7% respectively, whereas the number of credit card holders and cards in issue decreased by 2.1% and 2.4% respectively.
• Cheques: During 2008, the number of cheque transactions went down by 10.4%, total values declined by 7.1%.

APACS, the UK payments association, has announced December 2008 spending figures showing that spending on plastic cards over the Christmas period reached £32.3 billion - up 0.3% from 2007, with £4.7 billion spent online. Debit card spending grew to £21.6 billion, up 3.1%, while credit card spending declined to £10.8 billion, down 4.8% from 2007. READ MORE »

American Airlines has announced that it will begin this summer to transition to cashless cabins onboard flights within the United States and to and from Canada. "On these flights, American will only accept major credit cards or debit cards for onboard purchases such as headsets, fresh light meals, snacks and alcoholic beverages."

"Moving to a cashless cabin allows us to streamline the inflight sales process for both our customers and flight attendants," said Lauri Curtis, American's Vice President - Onboard Service.

Flight attendants will use a hand-held Onboard Sales Recorder to charge credit and debit cards, eliminating the need to search for small bills or change. The airline has been using these user-friendly devices since May 2006. American Express® and other major credit and debit cards will be accepted. Receipts will be provided to passengers upon request.

The latest issue of Economic Perspectives from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago includes the article "Economics of payment cards: A status report" by Wilko Bolt and Sujit Chakravorti.

This article surveys the recent theoretical literature on payment cards (focusing on debit and credit cards) and studies this research's possible implications for the current public policy debate over payment card networks and the pricing of their services for both consumers and merchants.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has published a working paper titled "Consumer Choice and Merchant Acceptance of Payment Media" by Wilko Bolt and Sujit Chakravorti. READ MORE »

The Fourth Quarter 2008 edition of Economic Perspectives from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago includes an article titled "Economics of payment cards: A status report" by Wilko Bolt and Sujit Chakravorti.

From the abstract: "This article surveys the recent theoretical literature on payment cards (focusing on debit and credit cards) and studies this research's possible implications for the current public policy debate over payment card networks and the pricing of their services for both consumers and merchants."

In an article titled "Retailers Offering New Payment Choices", Kelli B. Grant writes for the Wall St. Journal about payments options available to consumers this holiday shopping season.

APACS, the UK payments association, has announced the launch of Payment Profiles, taking a look behind the statistics of 12 separate age and gender profiles within England, Scotland and Wales to show the differences that exist when it comes to managing money. READ MORE »

With the slogan "Keep Your Cash", Southwest Airlines has announced that beginning September 9th, you'll not be able to use cash in the cabin to purchase onboard drinks, etc. [Hat tip: CreditCards.com]

APACS has released its latest quarterly statistical summary of UK card payment activity.

"In the second quarter of 2008 there were 1.8 billion plastic card purchases made in the UK totalling £92.6 billion. The number of purchases was 7.8% higher than in the second quarter of 2007, and spending was 7.5% higher. Debit cards accounted for 73.4% of all plastic card purchases compared with 71.6% in the second quarter of 2007."

Deloitte's Center for Banking Solutions has published a new paper titled "Building Consumer Trust in Retail Payments" .

Eric Konigsberg and Sewell Chan report for the New York Times on failures on Monday and Tuesday of New York City MetroCard machines that were unable to handle credit and debit cards. They write: "The malfunction raised questions for riders about not only the efficacy of the MetroCard machines but also the larger notion of the American commercial culture’s movement toward an increasingly cashless existence." The outage also provoked this New York Times editorial complaining about the overall design of the MetroCard machines.