TechCrunch's Mark Hendrickson writes about Noca, a Redwood City, CA-based startup that "is attempting to virtually eliminate transaction fees by bypassing the credit card companies altogether with its own online payment service." Noca's mission statement says it is "building a new online payment system to provide significantly reduced transaction processing rates for online shopping enabling efficient processing of micro-transactions for digital goods."

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes: At Glenbrook, we often conclude one of our Payments Boot Camps with an informal poll of participants on their favored cash replacement form factor (mobile phone, fingerprint, etc.) At a private payments workshop in San Francisco last week, we were surprised by the strength of that group's response in favor of fingerprint. We decided to test it out (still pretty informally!) with a quick Facebook poll.   » Continue Reading

PayPal Labs, a new showcase site for some of PayPal's new experimental products, has launched at www.x.com. The first two products featured are PayPal's Facebook application to request money and a new fundraising tool for non-profits launched on MySpace.

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman filed the following report tonight from today's Finovate 1.0 Conference in New York City.   » Continue Reading

In an article titled 'For-Credit Course", Rob Walker writes for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine about Chase Card Services "+1" credit card - offered primarily by way of a sponsored group setup on Facebook called Chase +1. Chase limits access to the group so that only Facebook members who are part of college networks can join. Chase also has a Chase Credit Education group on Facebook that is open membership.

In a post titled "Following your money in Facebook", Colin Smillie blogs on his Inside Facebook blog about the personal financial management applications on Facebook - including BillMonk and Lending Club. He notes that "many developers have been clamoring for Facebook to launch a payment system fully integrated with the Platform soon."

The Google Checkout API Blog has a video interview with Renaud Visage, CTO of Eventbrite, about how he's monetizing a Facebook online events registration application using Google Checkout.

Dave Birch reflects on a Facebook poll that we ran recently - about online payment preferences among 18-24 year olds - and concludes: "One crucial difference that might be apparent in the Facebook case is that these consumers don't distinguish between banks, non-banks and third-party offerings. They go by convenience, utility and brand. And brand is so, so important."

Carolyn Y. Johnson writes for the Boston Globe about social networking sites and how they're beginning to offer financial advice. Johnson notes that "the tools that people use to connect with their peers and share information on websites like Facebook, Del.icio.us, or Wikipedia can help people save money or make smarter purchases." She quotes Wesabe's Jason Knight: "Social finance is a way for consumers to find out if there's real value where they're spending money. . . . It's absolutely critical in rebalancing the power between consumers and marketers."

PayPal is challenging its developer community in a PayPal Developer Challenge content to develop Facebook widgets that use PayPal. The grand prize available in the Challenge is $10,000.

Jim Bruene posts on his NetBanker blog about PayPal's launch of its own application on the Facebook platform.

By the way, I've been enjoying Facebook since signing up a couple of months ago. If you know me (Scott Loftesness), have attended one of our Glenbrook Payments Boot Camps, etc. and want to send me a Facebook friend request, I'd be happy to reciprocate.

We ran a Facebook poll last night asking those between 18 and 24 years of age "When you buy something online, how do you prefer to pay?" Here are the results - based upon a sample of over 400 responses - hardly scientific but interesting nonetheless:

No surprise, the debit card is most favored among this age group - but PayPal's showing is also especially strong. New entrant Google Checkout barely moves the needle in this particular survey and almost no one likes to pay by providing their checking account details (also known as eCheck).

Jane Kim writes for the Wall St. Journal about social networking sites focused on personal finance - including Wesabe and BillMonk.

Speaking of BillMonk, they just launched the BillMonk application on the FaceBook Platform. They say "Let BillMonk help you keep track of money that you've borrowed or loaned, and eliminate the awkwardness of mixing money and friends. Use it to keep track of IOUs, and shared bills like beer, food, or utilities. Let us deal with the pain of money math and reminders, so you can concentrate on the beer and not who paid for it."

Want to learn more about the FaceBook Platform, read this excellent post by Marc Andreessen.

Last week, Facebook launched a new polling capability - allowing simple polls to be setup and conducted across its membership base. Mike Arrington covered the launch of Facebook Polls on his TechCrunch blog, calling it a "marketing research paradise." Last night, we gave Facebook Polls a trial run - setting up a poll that asked a sample of 200 18-25 year olds on Facebook whether they had ever used PayPal Mobile to send money to friends. This results aren't very scientific - but still interesting and fun. You can view the results of the poll here. This poll cost $25 to run - $5 to set it up and $0.10 per response for 200 responses.

Jim Bruene blogs about his upcoming Online Banking Report issue on the topic of Social Personal Finance. Jim says it will include "a detailed look at Wesabe and Lending Club, which is catering entirely to Facebook users, and what banks should do to compete and/or partner with this new type of financial provider."

Lending Club, a Sunnyvale, California-based startup, has launched a new person-to-person lending service on the social networking service FaceBook. From the company's web site: "Lending Club is an online lending community where people can borrow and lend money, bypass the banks, and get better rates. By working together, members can borrow money more easily and at a better rate than they would get from a bank, or invest in a pool of loans at higher rates than those served by savings accounts or CDs." Lending Club is using the recently introduced Facebook Platform for integration into Facebook. Read more on the Lending Club blog.

The Wall St. Journal reports this morning that Chase has entered into a one-year marketing agreement to be the exclusive credit card sponsor on Facebook.