Calling it the "first ever prepaid foreign currency card", Travelex has announced it has teamed with MasterCard and West Suburban Bank to create the Cash Passport Card. The new Cash Passport cards are available in Euros and British Pounds with the exchange rate locked in at the time the card is loaded. Travelex says that for the consumer this means they avoid the risk of currency fluctuations.

Bellco Credit Union has announced that it "is making it easier for members to take care of their banking needs and access Bellco services through their mobile phones with Bellco’s new Mobile Banking. Bellco members can use their Internet-enabled mobile phones or PDAs to visit http://www.bellco.org and check their account balances, view account history, transfer funds between accounts and manage online bill pay."

The Bank of England has published its fourth Payment Systems Oversight Report. "The Oversight Report is an important element of the Bank’s oversight work, increasing transparency about the performance of the systems and acting as a tool to encourage further progress. The report describes the challenges presented to the key UK payment systems over the past year and explains the focus of the Bank's work in this field."

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated. For job opportunities available for payments professionals, visit PaymentsJobs.com. Employers looking to hire payments professionals can post their job openings there as well.

Announce yourself! Have you recently taken on a new position in the payments industry? If you'd like to share the news with your colleagues, be sure to tell us about it. Are you looking for a new payments-related job? Or are you needing to find someone great? Checkout the Payments Jobs job board.

Availity, an e-health information exchange, and TRANSFIRST have announced the general availability of the Availity CareCollect solution for all physicians and health care providers nationwide. According to the two companies, the CareCollect solution is being offered through a partnership with TRANSFIRST, and will provide Availity customers fully integrated payment processing capabilities.

Yodlee has announced that its proprietary DirectPay card payment network now supports over 300 national and regional billers, enabling new revenue generating credit and debit card based electronic bill payments. Yodless says that "the 300 DirectPay billers represent over 40 percent of major U.S. billers by volume and give most consumers the opportunity to pay nearly half of their bills by card each month."

Wondering whether the cell phone is about to replace the wallet? Will the disappearance of international border constraints from the payments landscape open as many doors to potential risk as it does to business growth opportunities?Financial institutions and businesses can choose from more than 130 sessions addressing these and other key industry issues at NACHA’s annual conference, PAYMENTS 08, May 18–21 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

The Airline Payment Summit is being held 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."

In an article titled 'Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business', Chris Anderson writes for Wired Magazine about how more and more things are trending toward free. Here's his view about why micropayments failed: 'The huge psychological gap between 'almost zero' and 'zero' is why micropayments failed. It's why Google doesn't show up on your credit card. It's why modern Web companies don't charge their users anything. And it's why Yahoo gives away disk drive space. The question of infinite storage was not if but when. The winners made their stuff free first.'

In an article titled 'Visa IPO success hinges on share price', Sam Zuckerman writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. He writes: 'Visa Inc.'s upcoming initial public offering is shaping up to be this year's hottest ticket on Wall Street. But should individual investors try to crash the party?'

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated. For job opportunities available for payments professionals, visit PaymentsJobs.com. Employers looking to hire payments professionals can post their job openings there as well.

TowerGroup has announced new research titled "Process and Data Risks in a
Changing Economy: How Credit Card Issuers Can Protect Their Portfolios" that identifies critical steps credit card issuers can take to withstand the current credit storm, and recover more quickly when the economy normalizes.

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated. For job opportunities available for payments professionals, visit PaymentsJobs.com. Employers looking to hire payments professionals can post their job openings there as well.

Deborah Haynes reports for the London Times from Baghdad about prepaid MasterCards being distributed in Iraq by a Baghdad-based financial services company. "The firm has been providing pay-as-you-go MasterCards since 2004, although business started to pick up only over the past year as the country became more secure."

Saar Drimer, Steven J. Murdoch and Ross Anderson, researchers at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge in the UK, have announced a demonstration showing that "Chip & PIN machines are not as secure as the banking industry claims. Two widely deployed models of PIN Entry Devices (PEDs), the Ingenico i3300 and Dione Xtreme, fail to protect customers' card details and PINs adequately." The BBC also reports on this story.

In an article titled 'Exposing the Credit-Card Fine Print', Anita Hamilton writes for Time about credit card issuer practices regarding interest rate adjustments. Hamllton writes that 'with politicians angry with the bankers over the subprime fiasco, the heat is rising on the industry's credit-card segment.'

On the Credit Slips blog, Adam Levitin examines the legislation recently introduced by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) called the The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights of 2008 (H.R. 5244). Levitin says the proposed legislation "is an important first step to reining in an industry that has run wild in a regulatory no-man’s land of outdated and threadbare federal laws, preempted state laws, and somnolent consumer protection by federal banking regulators. The Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights is a major piece of federal consumer protection legislation that will help shield consumers from the worst abuses of the card industry."

Robin Sidel writes for the Wall St. Journal about Visa's planned initial public offering - scheduled for the week of March 17. Randall Smith writes for that Wall St. Journal about the fees ($350 million) that Wall St. firms may earn from the Visa IPO. Eric Dash writes about the Visa IPO for the New York Times.

Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated. For job opportunities available for payments professionals, visit PaymentsJobs.com. Employers looking to hire payments professionals can post their job openings there as well.

Jeff McLaughlin has been named Executive Vice President of Mobile Strategy for Monitise Americas. Prior to joining Monitise Americas, McLaughlin held management positions at mFoundry, McCaw Cellular/AT&T Wireless, BCGI, GetConnected and Refresh Mobile.

Announce yourself! Have you recently taken on a new position in the payments industry? If you'd like to share the news with your colleagues, be sure to tell us about it. Are you looking for a new payments-related job? Or are you needing to find someone great? Checkout the Payments Jobs job board.

Bankrate.com has published findings from a national poll of 1,014 consumers that examined attitudes toward consumer debt. Among the findings, "66 percent of Americans say debt is often the result of unfortunate circumstances beyond a person's control, while 60 percent say it is usually the result of bad decisions."

Edgar, Dunn recently commissioned an independent online survey of 700 individuals in the United States who made Internet purchases during the 2007 end-of-year gift shopping season, and the results revealed a significant shift in consumer use of these types of "alternative forms of payment". A new Insight article by Pascal Burg explores some of the implications of this shift to key stakeholders including alternative payment providers, traditional payment providers, merchants, and consumers. Almost a third of survey respondents used PayPal, Bill Me Later or Google Checkout to make an online purchase during the 2007 end-of-year gift shopping season.

Wells Fargo has announced that it has "extended its Foreign Exchange Online service to small businesses. This service allows businesses to send and receive foreign currency wires in more than 90 currencies using an internet connection."