Mozido announced the launch of the 'Genius Wallet', a global mobile wallet platform for the unbanked and banked. "Our Genius Wallet(SM) brings every mobile phone user, including the unbanked, into a secure, convenient, and efficient financial ecosystem," says Greg Corona, CEO, Mozido LLC "It offers opportunity and hope for a huge population worldwide, empowering them to enjoy a broad range of banking and financial services often for the first time, using their mobile phone."

In December, Mozido and MoneyGram struck a partnership to include MoneyGram remittance transfer services for approved Mozido mobile wallet applications.

The US Federal Reserve has reported its latest G.19 Consumer Credit statistics - finding that "consumer credit increased at an annual rate of 7.5% in the fourth quarter. Revolving credit increased at an annual rate of 4.5%, and nonrevolving credit increased 9.0%. In December, consumer credit increased at an annual rate of 9.25%."

On the web:

• BC Global Looms as Alternative to Visa For Korean Buyers - Korea Times
• Dwolla Raises $5m Series B Round led by Union Square Ventures (Video) - Silicon Prairie News
• Accel, SV Angel, Y Combinator Put $1.5M In Online Bank Payments Platform GoCardless - TechCrunch

On the wires:

• Text2Pay Mobile Payments Wizard - Easy as 1 2 3!
• mopay and paymentez Forge Strategic Mobile Payments Partnership
• The Perfect Pairing: Wine Enthusiast Uncorks eGift Card Program
• CoVantage Credit Union Deploys Tyfone Mobile Wallet Services to Its Members
• Transcepta Procure-to-Pay Network Selected to Simplify Accounts Payable for Manheim

Note: Headline News is compiled by Glenbrook Partners. Throughout the day, as we spot interesting developments, this post is updated.

Fiserv announced that its ACCEL/Exchange payments network had "another record-setting year, processing more than 1.5 billion transactions in 2011, an increase of nearly 29% over 2010. ACCEL/Exchange payments network from Fiserv is one of the fastest-growing payments networks in the industry, supplying the infrastructure for financial institutions to give cardholders around-the-clock access to their demand deposit account funds at ATMs and the point of sale."

MasterCard announced fourth quarter and full-year results for the Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA) region. "For the quarter ending 31 December 2011, the region drove strong growth in gross dollar volume (21.8%), purchase volume (23.5%), purchase transactions (18.2%), cash transactions (18.4%) and cards issued (12.3%), versus the same period in 2010."

Visa announced that U.S. financial institutions have reported issuing an estimated one million Visa-branded, EMV chip-enabled cards as of December 31, 2011. "Migrating the U.S. market to chip will help build an infrastructure for accepting NFC mobile payments, enhance international acceptance and reduce fraud," said Stephanie Ericksen, head of authentication product integration, Visa Inc. "Since announcing our roadmap last year, we have seen strong interest among U.S. issuers large and small to invest in chip technology, as today's milestone shows. The progress is all the more significant considering that just 18 months ago, there were no Visa-branded EMV contact chip cards issued in the U.S."

Visa also introduced "Visa Chip Services, a suite of new and existing solutions to help issuers implement programs using EMV chip technology, including NFC-based mobile payments."

On the web:

• To Sign Merchants, Square Heads to Campus To Recruit a Sales Force - Digital Transactions
• PayPal Says It's Business as Usual a Month After President Resigns - AllThingsD
• Self-Checkout Footprints Get Smaller For Retail - Point of Sale News
• Citigroup Gets Approval to Issue China Credit Cards - WSJ.com

On the wires:

• Datacard Group Announces an Equity Investment and Strategic Partnership with DeviceFidelity
• INSIDE Secure Chosen by Leading Smartphone Manufacturer
• Navigant Credit Union Selects Acumen from Fiserv

Note: Headline News is compiled by Glenbrook Partners. Throughout the day, as we spot interesting developments, this post is updated.

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness blogs about the new FIS approach to mobile payments: With much of the card payments industry zigging toward an NFC-based solution securing payment card credentials on mobile handsets, FIS is zagging in a different direction with this new solution – one that doesn’t need to wait for NFC and Secure Element (SE) chips to be embedded in mobile phones.

FIS is the world’s largest global provider of banking and payments technologies, serving 14,000 financial institutions in over 100 countries.

MasterCard has announced financial results for the fourth quarter 2011.

• Net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011 was $1.7 billion, a 20.2% increase versus the same period in 2010. On a constant currency basis, net revenue increased 20.8% compared to the same period in 2010.

• Worldwide purchase volume during the quarter was up 15.2% on a local currency basis versus the fourth quarter of 2010, to $648 billion. As of December 31, 2011, the company’s customers had issued 1.8 billion MasterCard and Maestro-branded cards.

• Cross-border volume was up 17.5%.

Press release, supplemental operating results, and an accompanying investor presentation are available on the MasterCard website.

On the web:

• Visa’s Saunders Downplays Merchant-Cost Concerns For Digital Wallet - ISO and Agent
• Report: 798 Daily Deal Sites Folded In The Last 6 Months Of 2011 - TechCrunch
• Amazon Pulls Plug on PayPhrase Service - Mashable

On the wires:

• Valero Corner Stores Get New ATMs and Program Manager in Cardtronics
• Businesses Can Capture Signatures, Easily Calculate Taxes and Tips Using New Sage Mobile Payments 2.0

Note: Headline News is compiled by Glenbrook Partners. Throughout the day, as we spot interesting developments, this post is updated.

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Jacqueline Chilton summarizes and reacts to the CFPB Final Remittance Rule that has been issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "This rule has considerable implications with both intended and potentially unintended consequences."

First Data has reported its financial results for 4Q2011. "Consolidated revenue for the fourth quarter was $2.69 billion, down $43 million or 2%, compared to a year ago on a $115 million decline in debit network fees. These fees are passed directly to customers and therefore did not impact operating income. Adjusted revenue, which excludes certain items including debit network fees, increased $47 million, or 3% year-over-year to $1.73 billion."

Facebook filed its Form S-1 to IPO today. Here's what they said about their payments business:

• Reported payments-related revenue was $13M (2009), $106M (2010), and $557M (2011). Full year 2011 payments revenue represented 15% of 2011 Facebook revenue.

• They caution that year-to-year comparisons can be very misleading as the payments business didn't hit full deployment until Q42010, and wasn't mandated for on-platform game developers until Q3 2011. To help see the trends, they show quarter-to-quarter payments revenue growing throughout 2011 from $94M (Q1), to $119M (Q2), $156M (Q3), $188M (Q4). At $188M, payments represented 17% of the Q4 revenue.

• Facebook also revealed that it has applied for "certain money transmitter licenses and expects to apply for additional money transmitter licenses in the United States."

Interestingly, Facebook doesn't use the term "Facebook Credits" in the S-1, preferring instead the simple term "payments". Remember also that Facebook does a 70/30 revenue split with developers, implying that the $557M in 2011 payments-related revenue came from $1.867 billion in Facebook Credit redemptions.

SmartCard Alliance 2012 Payments Summit

The 5th annual SmartCard Alliance conference will be held February 8-10 at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

FinovateEurope 2012

The FinovateEurope 2012 Conference returns to London on February 7th, 2012 at the Old Billingsgate Market Hall in the heart of London.

Discover PAYMENTS 2012

The NACHA Payments 2012 Conference will be held April 29-May 2, 2012 in Baltimore, MD at the Hilton Baltimore.

Brand Finance, in conjunction with The Banker, has announced the results of its latest study of the financial value of various banking brands around the world. From this year's report:

• HSBC, the only British bank among the ten most valuable banking brands, knocks Bank of America off the top spot in the Brand Finance Banking 500.

• Wells Fargo is the most valuable banking brand in the U.S. market, and the second most valuable worldwide.

• Chinese banks performed strongly with China Construction Bank, ICBC, Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China maintaining a successful streak for Chinese banking as they secure spots in the Top 20.

• There are now more banks from the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the top 20 banking brands than there are from Europe.

Each bank is accorded a brand rating (a benchmarking study of the strength, risk and future potential of a brand relative to its competitor set), as well as a brand value (a summary measure of the financial strength of the brand.)

On the web:

• WePay: The Online Payment Start-Up Behind Occupy Wall Street - Forbes
• Coopera Signs Eight CUs for Bilingual Prepaid Card

On the wires:

• MasterCard and KeyBank Extend and Enhance Long-Standing Debit Relationship
• Visa Processing Certification for Contis Group Opens International Prepaid Markets

Note: Headline News is compiled by Glenbrook Partners. Throughout the day, as we spot interesting developments, this post is updated.

CardSpring announced a new Application Programming Interface (API) that lets developers add new capabilities to credit and debit cards by programming the CardSpring payment network to link online applications to specific payment events. Because CardSpring runs in the payment network cloud, developers can add applications to any of the billions of existing credit or debit cards without changes to the purchase experience or store infrastructure, enabling any website or retailer to create innovative new online/offline commerce applications at a fraction of the cost and complexity of existing approaches.

The company also announced that it has raised a $10M Series A investment led by Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

Discover has announced that Cashback Bonus rewards continued to trend upward in 2011, with the company "citing a 20% increase over 2010." “Not only did cardmembers respond favorably to the extra Cashback Bonus that more than 70 top retailers offered during the holiday season, but they also appreciated the various enhancements we made throughout the year to ShopDiscover, such as adding merchant coupons and site functionality,” said Dana Traci, vice president of rewards and product management at Discover. “As for increased redemption, cardmembers clearly are seeing there’s great value in redeeming their Cashback Bonus, whether it be for partner gift cards, merchandise, statement credits or on Amazon.com.”

TrialPay has announced that it has raised more than $40 million in its latest round of funding. “TrialPay’s approach to payments is different,” said Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock Partners. “Their tremendous growth in the last year validates the efficacy of the model. We believe that the next generation of e-commerce depends on the ability to maximize revenue from every transaction, and TrialPay is the only company that has successfully leveraged global advertiser relationships to meet that end.”

Visa was also an investor in this round of funding.

On the web:

• FTC to Review Mobile Payments Impact on U.S. Consumers - NFCNews
• Starbucks Says It's Number One in World in Mobile Payments - AuctionBytes
• Experiments in Virtual Currencies - MarketingVOX

On the wires:

• Simply Market Streamlines eInvoicing Through Ariba’s b-process
• Campus Apartments First to Offer Residents Ability to Pay Rent Through Facebook
• Live Gamer Partners with PaymentOne to Expand International Mobile Payment Options
• GE Capital Retail Bank Announces New Agreement to Provide Credit Card Program for Toys“R”Us
• iovation Stopped 50 Million Online Fraud Attempts in 2011, Biggest International Offender: Ghana
• Citi Launches First Account Analysis Tools for Credit Card Users on the iPad
• T-Mobile To Distribute Square Card Readers to Small Businesses
• Sabre Launches Travel Settlement Services Powered by Conferma
• CyberSource Announces Renewed Agreement With Facebook
• New Mercator Report on Next Generation EFT Networks

Note: Headline News is compiled by Glenbrook Partners. Throughout the day, as we spot interesting developments, this post is updated.