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.

On September 20-21, 2007, the Payment Cards Center and the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia co-sponsored the fourth in a series of joint research conferences focusing on important issues in consumer credit and payments. The discussion brought together academic scholars and industry experts to present and discuss the latest research on these topics. The conference included both theoretical and empirical papers. The PCC has just published a conference summary .

In April, the Reserve Bank of Australia released the preliminary conclusions of its 2007/08 review of the payments system reforms undertaken by its Payments System Board. Interested parties were invited to make written submissions by June 30th on these conclusions and the analysis underpinning them. The RBA has made those submissions available online.

In a press release this morning, payment processor Equens and supermarket chain Albert Heijn have announced they will begin a pilot with Tip2Pay - pay with your fingertip. Both a debit card and your fingertip must be presented at the point-of-sale. READ MORE

On the Digital Money Forum blog, Dave Birch posts about Harry Leinonen's paper titled "Payment Habits and Trends in the Changing E-Landscape 2010+" . From the foreward: "This book is the summary of a project undertaken in the Bank of Finland with the objective of discovering business and technological innovations, with which possibly new payment approaches could be introduced to the market and changes in future payment habits could be brought about. Payments habits have changed slowly in the past and therefore the time period selected for the study is 2010+, ranging to about 5–10 years beyond then. According to the findings we appear to be heading towards a new era in payment technology." READ MORE

Celent has published a new report titled 'Disruption in the Payments World' saying that 'the current euphoric era for many issuers will be disrupted and quite possibly eliminated over the next three years.' Why? Celent's reasons include a forecast that interchange rates will begin to decline, that a large payments company will launch an alternative network to MasterCard and Visa, and that credit card issuers will need to diversify their payments mix by adding decoupled debit payment options. READ MORE

Just listened to a fascinating talk at today's Digital Money Forum in London by Ronnie O'Toole, Chief Economist of the National Irish Bank. Last November, the bank provided a pre-budget submission to the Irish Department of Finance that contained four recommendations about how to reduce inefficiencies in the Irish payment system (Dave Birch blogged about it here). One of the four recommendations was to require that taxis in the country be equipped to for card-based payments as a compulsory measure. We've seen other examples of where transit payments have been the focal point for shifting from cash to electronic payments. Glenbrook's Carol Benson blogged about her experience with card-based taxi payments in New York City late last year.

Marianne Crowe, Vice President, Emerging Payments Research Group, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, gave a presentation last week titled "Emerging Payments - The Changing Landscape" to the Maine Association of Community Banks and to the New Hampshire Community Bankers Association. Crowe's presentation discusses the growth in debit card payments, the emergence (and potential threats to banks) of decoupled debit cards, prepaid cards for the unbanked, and the use of the Internet for bill payment, ecommerce purchases, and person-to-person or account-to-account money transfers. She also discusses contactless payments and mobile banking.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has announced the availability of a new publication, Consumer Payments Research Reference Guide - Supplement , providing an addendum to the original Consumer Payments Research Reference Guide. The Supplement includes new organizations that have conducted studies on consumer payments topics or support other research efforts to collect data on consumer payments. While the original Guide focused on private sector companies, the Supplement focuses primarily on organizations engaged in public policy research. READ MORE

The Reserve Bank of Australia has released preliminary conclusions from its 2007/08 review of the payments system reforms undertaken by the Payments System Board. The Bank is now seeking submissions on these conclusions, before finalising the review later in the year. READ MORE

A reminder that the Airline Payment Summit is coming up in Toronto, Ontario on April 9-10, 2008. "As airline yields come under downward pressure, Airline Payment Summit (APS) will examine leading-edge low-cost payment solutions within the landscape of traditional forms of payments such as credit cards."

Dave Birch writes on the Digital Money Blog about a presentation given by Julian Niblett of Boots, one of the UK's largest retailers, at the New Payments Channels conference in London. Interestingly, Boots studied where in their stores contactless made economic sense, and where it didn't. But, perhaps even more interesting were Niblett's comments on the costs of cash acceptance vs. the cost of cards.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has released the latest edition of its annual publication "Statistics on Payment and Settlement Systems in Selected Countries". "This version of the statistical update contains data for 2006 and earlier years. There are detailed tables for each individual country as well as a number of comparative tables. This year the tables have been expanded to include detailed data on securities trading, clearing and settlement systems. The statistical methodology has been updated accordingly."