On the web:

• Silicon Valley firms claim new California data disclosure bill is “overbroad” - ArsTechnica - "If passed, the bill would allow an unprecedented amount of access to individuals to find out what companies know about us."
• The Man (Jack Dorsey) Who Made the Cash Register Obsolete - Inc. - "One guiding philosophy at Square is that technology should be so intuitive that no one stops to question how difficult it must have been to create. That philosophy is paying off."
• With Tablets, Businesses Ring Up at More Fanciful Cash Registers - New York Times - "With the advent of tablets, particularly the iPad, many stores have traded in their clunky cash registers for mobile devices."
• "Bankalytics" – Banks and Analytics - BankInnovation - "I feel the future of banks depends on how relevant they stay to the target market, based on how they analyse the Big Data in their databases."
• Bitcoin’s Last Mile Problem - TechCrunch - "The world needs Bitcoins to exist, even if the mass of humanity doesn’t use it."
• Online Sales-Tax Bill Could Get Senate Votes This Week - Storefront Backtalk - "The bill, known as the “Marketplace Fairness Act,” would allow states to require online retailers to collect sales tax, even if the e-tailer doesn’t have a physical presence in the state."
• Dunkin’ Donut email campaign showcases ongoing mobile payment endeavors - Mobile Commerce Daily - "Mobile payments are on the rise. And, this campaign helps the company solidify its place in the space."
• Are You the Weakest Link? - Retail Payments Risk Forum - "A basic tenet of security that we often mention in Portals and Rails is that experienced criminals attack the weakest points in the system."
• Small Banks Lead the Innovation Agenda: Are They Making the Elephants Dance? - "Today, we are witnessing numerous instances of smaller players spawning innovations across social media, self-service channels, mobile banking, pricing, payments etc. to deliver customer delight."

On the wires:

• American Express OPEN Simplifies Expense Tracking for Small Business with Launch of ReceiptMatch
• Clear2Pay and Earthport partner on low value clearing - "With the OPF Earthport Connect module, clients of the Open Payment Framework (OPF) will have out of the box connectivity to Earthport’s global payments infrastructure in over 50 countries."
• Consumers Want a More Seamless and Personalized Customer Experience From Their Bank - Cisco - "Overall, the report demonstrates consumer interest in more personalized, timely and valuable connections with banks…"
• ACI Worldwide Paves the Way to True Enterprise Payments with Universal Payments Platform - "The Universal Payments Platform is a solution that provides purpose-built payments functionality to orchestrate all aspects of payments processing for any payment type, any channel, any currency and any network."
• With Consumer Optimism Rising, Chase Blueprint Unveils New Initiative to Reinforce Positive Spending Habits - Drawing upon the expertise of Chase and respected experts, the Resource Center for Mindful Spending is a free knowledge center available at Chase.com/MindfulSpending.
• USA Technologies To Demonstrate Two New Cashless Payment Devices at NAMA OneShow - "The ePort G9 represents a redesigned, feature-rich offering for USAT’s popular JumpStart program. It will include all of the functionality of USAT’s NFC-enabled ePort G8, plus new features…"
• Boulder Valley Credit Union Introduces Tyfone Mobile Banking Financial Services - "One Tyfone client has reported more than a 10 percent mobile adoption from non-PC bankers, which in turn increases the ROI for the financial institution."

A global 'Perfect Passenger Payment' insights report, commissioned by WorldPay, finds that 66% of airline merchants are seeing fraud levels stay the same or increase as they lose 1.5% of booking revenue to fraudulent transactions. 29% of airlines reported that incidents of fraud have risen in the past year.

The good news for airlines is that customers are happy to accept a robust screening process when buying tickets online. 71% of consumers would prefer a slower payment process with more rigorous security checks than a faster process with fewer checks.

IdentityMind, a new on-demand platform tracking Internet identities and providing next generation anti-fraud services for online commerce, recently announced the availability of its Antifraud Platform for the general market.

IdentityMind proactive fraud prevention Platform offers real-time evaluation of payment transactions, account creation and login verification protecting merchants from accepting fraudulent transactions, acquirers and payment service providers (PSP) from fraudulent account creation and fraudulent merchants.

Finsphere has announced an $11.3 million investment led by Vodafone Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Vodafone Group.

"Through strategic relationships with mobile network operators and working with key industry partners, Finsphere enables wireless carriers to help protect their customers," said Mike Buhrmann, CEO of Finsphere. "Finsphere provides a sophisticated analytics platform for the development of non-intrusive identity services to enhance privacy and protect information across all industry segments."

CyberSource has announced results of its 13th annual survey of eCommerce fraud based on an independent survey of hundreds of online merchants.

The overall picture: merchants are making gains against fraud but the battle continues. The fraud rate by order (the percentage of orders that turned out to be fraudulent) dropped from 0.9% in 2010 to 0.6% in 2011—the lowest in the 13 year history of the survey. But the cost of combatting fraud continues to grow. Dollar losses were up, manual review continued to climb, and merchants reiterated their concern that fraud is becoming more difficult to detect. 27% of respondents said they are engaged in mobile commerce and initial indicators regarding fraud in that channel are promising.

To obtain a copy of the survey results please visit http://www.cybersource.com/fraudreport2012.

Accertify recently commissioned a study of “connected” U.S. adults – or those with access to both a smartphone and a web-enabled computer – to learn more about how consumers perceive and are affected by online fraud.

… by large margins, online shoppers find computers more trustworthy than tablets or smartphones when making online purchases: 81% of respondents perceive their computer to be the most secure device for online shopping whereas only 7% trust their smartphone and 3% trust their tablets.

According to the survey, consumers today are conducting the most online transactions in the retail industry (57%), followed by banking and finance (51%), travel (27%), music and movie downloads (24%), and entertainment industries (18%).

Guardian Analytics has announced FraudDESK, a new fraud monitoring managed service that helps financial institutions immediately meet FFIEC Internet Banking Security expectations for anomaly detection without "staffing a new project, changing staff assignments or undergoing training."

CyberSource has released survey findings that "show that while airlines are gaining in their war against fraud, much work remains to be done. Airlines reported a loss of about $1.4 billion USD to online payment fraud in 2010."

Dr. Akif Khan, CyberSource's Director, Products and Services said: "The good news is that in terms of fraud loss rates, 2010 results showed a 31 percent improvement over 2008. Clearly, airlines have not only recognized the challenge but have made timely adjustments to it."

On the wires:

• Creativity Pays - Introducing Cleeng, the First Social Alternative to Paywalls
• hyperWALLET Announces Partnership with WIP (Wireless Industry Partnership)
• ACI Worldwide and Integrated Research Launch Payment Service Management for Fraud Prevention
• AuraPortal Launches the First BPM Software with a Seamlessly Integrated e-Commerce System
• Stream Media Raises Series A Funding to Provide Global Payment Platform for Mobile In-App Transactions
• LexisNexis Releases New Comprehensive, Hosted Collections Platform

On the web:

• TechCrunch: Tradeshift Integrates PayPal into its Free Invoicing Platform
• GigaOM: Phones Becoming Frontline in Credit Card Fraud Battle
• Digital Transactions: With Signed Merchants Onboard, ISIS Looks at Transit, Fast Food, and Groceries
• iNewp.com: Mobgets Exposes Verified by Visa Flaws on Mobile Devices
• Vator.tv: Danny Shader Interview on PayNearMe's Consumer Demographic (Video)
• Digital Money: Davd Birch's Impression on GSMA Mobile World Congress
• MIT Technology Review: The New Money - Square Profile

ClairMail has announced a new mobile fraud management solution for banks and their customers to oversee and quickly respond to fraudulent transactions directly through the mobile channel.

ClairMail's Fraud Solution works with existing FI fraud systems and processes to help mitigate card, Direct Deposit Account (DDA), online banking and identity fraud by leveraging all the capabilities of the ubiquitous mobile device and the robust alerting and orchestration capabilities of the ClairMail platform.

Chase Paymentech has announced the launch of Safetech™ Fraud and Security Solutions, a new suite of services designed to protect online merchants from fraud and POS merchants from data breaches.

“Chase Paymentech is wise to bring together these much needed solutions to their merchants,” said Carol Coye Benson, managing partner at Glenbrook Partners. “We now live in a world where managing risks associated with payment fraud and data security is part of the daily routine for merchants everywhere. By closely integrating these tools with the payment processing work streams, the Safetech approach makes the process more efficient.”

BlueCava recently announced the closing of a $5 million round of series A funding, which included two billionaire entrepreneurs - Mark Cuban and Tim Headington. BlueCava is positioning itself as a credit bureau for devices, providing information about good, bad, and historical activities conducted from desktop computers, mobile devices, and game consoles. The company hopes to find opportunities fighting online fraud and providing enhanced target marketing services. READ MORE »

Guardian Analytics recently announced the formation of an industry roundtable created to drive information sharing among financial institutions, law enforcement and industry experts. At their first industry roundtable participants shared "trends in threats and fraud attacks against the online and mobile channels and discussed trends in the online and mobile channels, the need to balance security with customer convenience, and the use of customer data as they key to defending against new and emerging cyber attacks."

Check fraud seems so old fashioned these days. But as this story points out, "these hackers got the account information in an unusual way: They broke into three websites that specialize in a little-known type of business — archiving check images online."

Verifi and Kount have announced a partnership to jointly deliver a "next-generation technology solution to equip merchants with a powerful set of risk mitigation and business management capabilities. The partnership integrates Kount’s Multi-Layer Device Fingerprinting™ and predictive scoring technology into Verifi's platform, expanding the breadth of the Device Intelligence™ component of Verifi's innovative Intelligence™ Suite. Merchants are able to identify, track and defeat fraudulent users by linking suspect orders in real time, across the shared database." READ MORE »

The Fraud Management Institute has released its first annual Address Fraud Survey.

This year, the Fraud Management Institute inaugurated its first annual Address Fraud Survey. We surveyed a wide variety of fraud management professionals in the banking, telecommunications and e-commerce industries to learn about their current experience with address fraud, the fraud risks they are giving top priority, and their implementation plans for different fraud management strategies. The results, and our analysis of those results, are published in this report.