Cash has finally succumbed to the rise of the debit card in the UK according to a recent announcement from the UK Payments Council. Sandra Quinn, Director of Communications, Payments Council explained: “Cash is too cumbersome for many consumers these days – they prefer a card for anything more than the smallest transactions. We now expect our debit cards to be accepted everywhere we go – in pubs and clubs, at the corner shop, online and on the high street. Having quickly supplanted cheques, then claimed the scalp of credit cards, they have now usurped cash’s throne too.”

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Travelex has announced availability of “America’s first prepaid foreign ‘currency cards’ available in Euros and British Pounds that utilizes chip & PIN technology.” Travelex’s new Chip & PIN Cash Passport™ MasterCard provides Americans traveling abroad with technological compatibility with overseas merchants that have migrated towards chip-based transactions. The card will also include a traditional magnetic stripe, for those merchants not yet using Chip & PIN technology.

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eWise has announced that Auburn University and Columbus State University have joined the University of Georgia in accepting Secure Vault PaymentsTM (SVP) for tuition payments. “Secure Vault Payments is a great solution for us,” said Lisa McCleary, bursar, University of Georgia. “SVP is a smarter electronic payment option that lowers our risk, allows us to receive money faster, and helps us keep costly and wasteful paper out of our system.” Since implementing SVP, UGA has seen strong utilization rates among enabled students with 17% using SVP to pay their tuition and 48% using SVP more than 5 times.

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Curious about mobile payments, but tired of reading the small print? Glenbrook’s Carol Coye Benson has compiled a collection of how-they-work videos. Included are videos from Bling Nation, PayNearMe, Square, BOKU, Intuit GoPayment, PayPal Mobile, VivoTech, Oberthur, MobilePay, MocaPay, and FaceCash.

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Several new positions for payments professionals have recently been posted to Glenbrook’s PaymentsJobs.com job board in the last 30 days: Group Manager of Risk Analytics – Microsoft – Bellevue, WA Payments Platform Developer – Kabam – Redwood City, CA Senior Product Manager, Payments – Kabam – Redwood City, CA Is your company hiring? Are you in the market for qualified payments professionals? You can reach the best candidates here! Post your job openings for payments professionals on PaymentsJobs.com!

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A recent national poll by the Consumer Reports National Research Center has found that 22% of bank customers holding an ATM or debit card have chosen to opt-in to debit card overdraft protection. “A large majority of poll respondents said they wanted the same right to choose whether to be covered by fee-based overdraft programs for check transactions.”

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Glenbrook’s next Payments Essentials webinar is next Tuesday from 10:30 to 11:45 AM PST. The topic for this session is the PayPal X Platform – what it is and where it fits in PayPal’s strategy. Glenbrook’s Russ Jones participated in PayPal X Innovate 2010 and will be discussing PayPal’s progress with its developers platform since it was launched in 2009. Registration ($149) details are here.

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Global Payments and “la Caixa,” the largest retail bank in Spain, have announced they are forming a merchant acquiring and payment processing joint venture in Spain. “la Caixa”, headquartered in Barcelona, was founded over a century ago, and is the market leader in Spanish merchant acquiring with over 150,000 merchant outlets. “la Caixa” also has the largest consumer banking footprint in Spain with more than 5,000 branches, 10.5 million customers and a 21 percent market share in merchant acquiring.

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Headline News is compiled by Glenbrook Partners: Voila & Unibank Receive All Regulatory Approvals to Launch First Mobile Money Solution in Haiti Zuora Delivers Z-Payments 3.0 Subscription Billing Solution Sentenial and ING launch SEPA mandate management solution for corporates across Europe PayPal Blog: Payments – Coming to a TV Near You Soon? Note: Throughout the day, as we spot interesting developments, this post is updated.

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China UnionPay and American Express have announced that they have “signed a memorandum of understanding that calls for both companies to explore the expansion of their current cooperative activities. For the past several years, China UnionPay and American Express have cooperated within China where American Express Cards run on the China UnionPay network. This new MOU will establish working teams to develop potential new areas of cooperation between the two companies within China and in markets outside of China.”

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