In a post on his Payments Industry Regulation blog titled "Note to Congress Re: CFPA Legislation - Clean up Your Act", Broox Peterson writes that, with the House Committee on Financial Services to begin mark-up of the bill tomorrow, "now is the time to point out a couple of flaws in the bill I hope are fixed during the mark-up. I am not advocating for or against creation of the CFPA, just expecting Congress to make the effort to draft legislation that does not lead to unnecessary confusion and bad policy."

If you're an iPhone or iPod touch user, here's a reminder - we've put together a custom version of our main Payments News page for easy viewing on the iPhone and iPod touch. Trust me, it does look really good!

To view the iPhone-optimized page, open Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch and go to the following URL: http://paymentsnews.com/m.

You can then save it as an icon to your home screen for easy re-opening. (Note: If you're curious what was involved in creating the iPhone version, see this article on my personal blog.)

We've put together a custom version of the main Payments News page for easy viewing on iPhones and iPod Touches.

To view the iPhone-optimized page, open Safari on your iPhone and go to the following URL: http://paymentsnews.com/m.

You can save it as an icon to your home screen on the iPhone for easy re-opening. (Note: If you're curious what was involved in creating the iPhone version, see this article on my personal blog.)

Comments are always welcome - just use the feedback link on the menu bar above just below the Payments News logo.

Over the holidays, we've added more than a half dozen new payments, banking and security-related blogs to our list of Other Banking and Payments Blogs. On this one convenient page here on Payments News, you can quickly review the most recent postings from other blogs that we think are important and relevant to payments and banking professionals.

If you're an active blogger and think your blog should also be included, be sure to let us know (click on Feedback in the toolbar above) and we'll add yours as well! Send along your blog's home page and the location of your RSS feed - and we'll do the rest.

[Update: Amazon Payments is also active on Twitter.]

Amazon.com's Payments Team has launched a new blog - the Amazon Payments Blog. Baris Cetinok of the team writes "Our team will post here on this blog on a regular basis – our goal is to share with you the latest news, thoughts, ideas, and inspirations about Amazon Payments. ... We will share stories of consumers, merchants, and developers using Amazon Payments to pay or to get paid." [Editor's note: We've just added the Amazon Payments Blog to our list of other banking and payments-related blogs.]

For the last few months we've been hosting a page here on Payments News showing the latest updates from over 30 banking and payments-related blogs. We've recently streamlined the page so that it's now much faster to load. You can visit the new page here. If you're an active blogger discussing industry topics and would like to be included, follow the instructions on the Other Banking and Payments Blogs page.

If you're really a banking and payments news junkie, you might also be interested in this new banking page on Alltop.com.

Dave Birch writes on the Digital Money Forum Blog about an SK Telecom presentation on their learnings from mobile payments initiatives in Korea.

Dave Birch's latest Digital Money Forum podcast features an interview with James McDonald, head of Contactless Payments for Barclays Business in the UK. His focus in 2008 is to roll out contactless payments nationally, and in this podcast McDonald talks about the state of the current contactless roll out in London and where the business might move in the future. If you're interested in the "on the ground" perspective regarding contactless, be sure to find 30 minutes for a listen. Highly Recommended!

In a post titled Slightly Faster Payments, Dave Birch blogs about the recently launched Faster Payment Service (FPS) in the UK - noting that "if it is simple -- and I mean really simply -- to instruct an FPS transfer from the phone then it may become an established alternative to some other payment mechanisms." But the best part of the post is his comparison of three possible approaches to settling up lunch with a friend - using FPS, using PayPal, or using the M-PESA approach now live in Kenya.

Chris Skinner updates his look at PayPal upon its tenth anniversary. He writes: "I reckon that the mixture of innovations, such as becoming a bank in Europe and offering mobile payments as a first mover, to expanding across borders and territories worldwide, is the secret behind PayPal’s success."

Dave Birch interviews John Chaplin for his latest Digital Money Forum podcast. "John has worked with a number of major companies on their European payments business and he is currently serving as European Payments Adviser to First Data International where he is heavily involved in SEPA strategy."

Brad Garland's latest Banktastics' The Burst videocast covers his view on the best banking and payments related blogs - including Jim Bruene's Netbanker, Colin Henderson's Bankwatch, The Story, Marketing ROI, and even Payments News too!

As a reminder, we've got a long list of banking and payments blogs on one page here on Payments News. Got more favorites that we've missed? Add yours in the comments to this post or drop us an email!.

Jupiter's Ed Kountz blogs about alternative online payments ((PayPal, BillMeLater, Google Checkout and eBillMe).

He writes: "A new JupiterResearch report indicates that consumers who are turning to alternative online payments are doing so for two primary reasons. The first is security -- in the form of not having to enter card information online. The second, convenience, is related—as anyone who has ever wanted to make a purchase on a PC upstairs, using a credit card located in a wallet or purse a floor or two away has found." Which do you think is most important for consumer adoption: convenience or security?

Ed's new blog is one of many payments and banking blogs that we've recently collected onto our "Other Blogs" page. On one page there you can see the titles of the latest posts on over 30 blogs.

Jim Bruene's Netbanker reports on person-to-person lender Prosper.com's new marketing initiatives including its new slogan: "Let's bank on each other." More on the Prosper Blog.

Yesterday, we mentioned we were building a new page on Payments News with RSS feeds from payments and banking-related blogs. We had a number of responses from bloggers today and have updated the page to reflect those responses.

Are there any more blogs we should add - please let us know!

Tell us about it! We're building a one page listing of updated content from other payments and banking-related blogs that we find worth a regular daily read. If you've got a payments or banking-related blog and think your blog should be listed, please send us your information via the link included on that page!

At mid-day today at the Digital Money Forum in London, five of us bank/payments bloggers took the stage for a lively discussion about blogs in financial services. The participants were Dave Birch from the Digital Money Forum blog (and the superb producer/director of this whole Forum!), Chris Skinner of TheFinanser.com, Colin Henderson of The BankWatch, Aneace Haddad of Aneace's Blog, and me, Scott Loftesness, of Payments News. The panel was introduced and deftly moderated by Steve Bowbrick. READ MORE

[Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness writes...] I'm in London this morning at the Eleventh Annual Digital Money Forum hosted by Consult Hyperion. This year's Forum is sponsored by Visa Europe and WebMoney with support from ACI.

At this morning's session, about 100 attendees will be discussing a range of payments related topics including innovation in general as well as the future of retail banking, the future of money and, indeed, the future of cash. I'll be participating on a panel discussion at tomorrow's session titled "Meet the Bloggers".

[Update: Colin's blogging from the Forum too - with pictures! So is Aneace!]

[Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness writes...] At Dave Birch's invitation, I'll be heading to London on Monday for next week's 11th annual Digital Money Forum on Wed-Thu April 23-24 in London. I'll be participating on the "Meet the Bloggers" panel on Thursday along with fellow payments bloggers Chris Skinner, Aneace Haddad, Colin Henderson, and Dave Birch himself - moderated by Steve Bowbrick.

Should be fun! If you'll be attending the Forum, I look forward to seeing you there. If you'd like to meet up separately while I'm in London (Friday April 25 is open), just let me know.

In an article titled 'Turning your cell phone into a wallet', Fortune Small Business writer Jonathan Blum profiles Obopay's CEO Carol Realini. Also, earlier this week, Obopay launched the 'Official Obopay Blog'.

Dave Birch writes on the Digital Money Forum blog about what he's learning about business cases for NFC. Dave says that "retail e-payment strategy is, in the long run, mobile payment strategy which is, in the short run, contactless payment strategy."

Denver-based PaySimple has announced a new blog where it says 'small business owners looking for ways to streamline their billings and collections process, find news about electronic payment industry trends, get insights on marketing and teambuilding in a small company, or simply looking for a place to connect with other small business owners.'

Dave Birch, in a post titled "Getting cash on the web", talks about getting cash on the web but he's really talking about innovation in payments and where it's happening (or not). He points out that PayPal, for example, can hardly be called an "alternative" payment system any more - given how significant it has become for ecommerce payments. At Glenbrook, we recently made the same determination - moving PayPal out of the "Emerging Payments" module in out Payments Boot Camp.

Dave Birch has announced that the 11th annual Digital Money Forum will be held in London on 23rd/24th April 2008.

In much of the work that we do, we're fascinated how often the notion of market segmentation emerges as a dominant theme. Dave Birch blogs about that idea, Clayton Christensen and more in his post about how a "one size, fits all" approach to thinking about card payments "might be rather old-fashioned."

On the Digital Money Forum blog, Consult Hyperion's Dave Birch writes about "Where next for UK Cards?" and muses about the issues - security, privacy, disabling a FOB, etc - associated with contactless payments.

Aneace Haddad blogs about a new ad his company - Welcome Real-time - is running that he believes is "probably the first advertisement in the world that specifically addresses interchange protection through new, merchant-centric payment features."

On his blog, Aneace Haddad has posted a presentation he's titled "Making MasterCard's Maestro the preferred debit brand in post-SEPA Europe" in which he discusses the features he thinks any debit product needs to create value for merchants. Aneace's is experimenting with using SlideShow's voice annotated presentation engine for this presentation.

PayPal recently launched a new blog - The PayPal Blog. PayPal CEO Rajiv Dutta says the new blog is a place "to have a conversation with the millions of customers and partners that use PayPal every day."