Congressional Hearings
On Wednesday, June 3, 2009, Ben Bernanke testified in front of the House Budget Committee on challenges facing the American economy. You can view a related WaPo article here.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney will convene a hearing to examine the Congressional Oversight Panel’s June report to Congress, providing the panel’s assessment of the stress tests and the implications the tests have for the ongoing mission of TARP and those institutions using its resources. The hearing will be held tomorrow, June 9, 2009, at 10 am.
Congressional Reports
The House Committee on Financial Services issued a press release on Monday, June 1, 2009, with respect to the GAO‘s report entitled “New Market Tax Credits: Minority Entities Are Less Successful in Obtaining Awards Than Non-Minority Entities“. The report was requested by Reps. Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, Richard Neal (D-MA) and Melvin Watt (D-NC) in connection with a hearing on minority-owned banks that took place in September 2008.
Data Security
Marshal8e6 has an alert on a phishing attack designed to mimic a Bank of America marketing campaign.
Tim Greene on Network World has a blog post that asks if cloud services can become credit card botnets. Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. For example, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are service providers who constitute some of the major cloud computing companies in the marketplace. A cloud application utilizes software accessible via a web browser on a user’s computer, either at home or in the workplace, thus eliminating software maintenance and customer/tech support. Examples include Skype, Facebook, Google Apps and Microsoft Online Services. For reference, Mr. Greene is a senior editor at Network World.
A related article that takes a look at the pros and cons of cloud computing can be viewed here.
PC Plus has an in-depth article that delves into the murky realm of cybercrime.
A rash of hacked ATMs in the past few months have been infected with malware that lets the attacker assume control over the ATM with the intent to steal data, PINs and cash from the infected machines. Although the trojan seems to be mostly centered in eastern Europe, it appears that the program is headed to the United States and other parts of the world. More details appear in this blog post. Digital Transactions has a related article, viewable here.
Mobile Banking
An article published at Digital Transactions on June 2, 2009 discusses the explosive growth of mobile banking services as a mainstream product for financial institutions.
Prepaid Cards
The Center for Financial Services Innovation released a recent white paper that investigates how much prepaid cardholders spend each month to conduct essential business transactions in comparison to what they would spend if they used only a checking account or check cashing services.
Supreme Court
On Monday, June 1, 2009, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to Bilski v. Doll (08-964), a patent law case with implications for the credit card and payments industries. The issue at hand is whether a “process” must be tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or transform a particular article into a different state or thing, to be eligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. Section 101 and whether the “machine or transformation” test for patent eligibility contradicts Congressional intent that patents protect “method(s) of doing business” in 35 U.S.C. Section 273.
You can view the Federal Circuit. opinion here, the petition for certiorari here, the brief in opposition here and petitioner’s reply here. Various amici briefs have been filed, ranging from the Boston Patent Law Association, Koninklijke Philips Electronics, N.V., to Borland Software Corporation. Patently-O has further analysis here (albeit from 2008) and here (from Jan 2009). Wikipedia has an article here. Law.com has an article that may be of interest (with respect to gift cards). Finally, Broox Peterson writes about the impact on Bilski and prepaid cards here.
REAL ID
The REAL ID Act of 2005 is a U.S. federal law that imposes security, authentication and issuance procedures standards for the state driver’s licenses and state ID cards, for them to be accepted by the federal government for “official purposes”, as defined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. Currently, the Secretary of Homeland Security has defined “official purposes” as presenting state driver’s licenses and identification cards for boarding commercially operated airline flights and entering federal buildings and nuclear power plants. The Act is a rider to an act of the U.S. Congress entitled “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005″.
Network World reports that Oregon will soon join the list of states who have refused to recognize or adopt the REAL ID Act. Here is a related story at Computer World that discusses the balancing act that the Obama administration has with respect to REAL ID. Apparently DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as then-governor of Arizona, was one of the first public officials to publicly call for the rejection of implementation of REAL ID soon after the bill’s enactment.
Credit Unions
Digital Transactions has a report on the effort to extend PIN-debit to e-commerce and credit unions, with an announcement by the Credit Union 24 EFT network that will incorporate technology from Acculynk Inc., a software company based in Atlanta. The network links more than 100,000 ATMs and close to 500,000 point-of-sale locations. With the announcement, Credit Union 24 becomes the fourth largest EFT network to test the Acculynk system to allow consumers to make payments to online merchants with PIN-secured debit card transactions, but it is the first dedicated to linking credit unions.
Technology Corner
This New York Times article reports on how companies use real-time cellphone data in a wide array of areas, ranging from tourism to security to social networking.
Bits, a NYT blog that focuses on business, innovation, technology and society, discusses the Obama administration’s stance (or lack thereof) when it comes to cybersecurity and privacy rights.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader. StoreFrontBacktalk has a feature article on RFID tags that serve as coupons which retailers of all types can use for the purpose of mobile marketing or mobile payments, while a related article at Secure Computing inquires on the possibility of airborne viruses infecting RFID tags.
Interchange Fees
Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Bill Shuster (R-Penn.) today introduced H.R. 2695, aka “The Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2009″. This legislation would allow merchants to collectively negotiate with banks for the cost of certain credit card fees, and ultimately reduce the costs of everyday goods for consumers. View the press release here and the text of the bill here .
MasterCard issued a press release on Friday, June 5, 2009, in response to the legislation. You can view the statement here, while the Electronc Payments Coalition issued its own statement expressing opposition to the bill.
Credit Cards
Adam Levitin has an audio interview at NPR on the effects of the Credit CARD Act signed into law by President Obama. Mr. Levitin is a regular blogger on Credit Slips and is also a professor at Georgetown specializing in bankruptcy and commercial law. His research includes work on credit card regulation, mortgage lending, and identity theft. On the agenda: disclosure as a model for credit card regulation, and the strengths and weaknesses of that approach; universal default; and issues regarding innovation vs. regulation, data mining and privacy rights.
Debit Cards
This article at Digital Transactions focuses on the contrast between growth of debit card usage as opposed to signature debit. This data is particularly striking when the expansion of mobile banking is taken into account.
TARP
Over on Mean Street, Evan Newmark takes a stand with respect to the economy and the aftermath of the TARP bailout. It isn’t every day you hear the phrase “Hank Paulson, national hero.”
Related Posts
- News Roundup — June 8, 2009 to June 12, 2009 - June 16, 2009
- News Roundup — June 15, 2009 to June 19, 2009 - June 23, 2009
- News Roundup — June 22, 2009 to June 26, 2009 - July 2, 2009
- News Roundup — October 26, 2009 to October 30, 2009 - October 30, 2009
- News Roundup — May 18, 2009 to May 29, 2009 - May 29, 2009
