Nadia Oehlsen

Card issuers continued to snatch up the private-label credit card portfolios of retailers last year and to settle into relationships with merchants whose cards they bought in previous years.

Anyone curious about Japanese travel habits should track where JCB International targets its merchant-acceptance efforts. Outside its home turf of Japan, the issuer has expanded acceptance to 190 countries throughout the Asia Pacific and in parts of the United States, Europe and the Middle East-destinations long popular or becoming popular with Japanese travelers.

After a year of lackluster performance in 2005, Discover Financial Services burst into action in 2006, boosting profits, launching new products and expanding merchant acceptance.

Card security from the point of sale to settlement remains a balancing act between ideal security practices and calculated risk in the face of limited budgets, industry experts say. Merchants decide which security upgrades to make now or try to delay, card networks and acquirers decide how much slack to allow retailers in meeting security deadlines and, when data breaches do occur, card issuers decide how many compromised cards to reissue or monitor closely for fraud.

PayPal is optimistic enough about the "virtual" debit cards it is testing for online purchases that it is increasing the number of eligible users.

It did not take long for MasterCard Inc. to reap financial gains from its initial public offering last May. Just months later, its stock was hovering around $100 per share, more than double its original price.

Lunch time in the cafeteria of Golf Middle School is a daily scene of controlled chaos. Children file through the line, cheering or wrinkling noses at the day's food offerings. Friends sit in their usual spots while school staff members good-naturedly enforce civility. A well-timed joke causes milk to shoot out a child's nose, creating a lifetime memory for the spewer and his pals.

In the beginning, Second Life was a computer-generated wilderness populated by a few thousand settlers raising homesteads and crafting worldly goods from the fat of the digital land. Three years later, Second Life is hot virtual real estate, claiming more than 1 million characters generated by individuals who move money from the real world into the virtual world and back out again.

Talk of enabling mobile phones to initiate contactless credit and debit card payments is turning to action in the United States. Pilots are moving out of card networks' and issuers' corporate cafeterias and into the public arena, though such migration on a broad scale could take time.

Cashiers have been able to convert checks into electronic transactions at the point of sale since 2000. But many multilane retailers have rejected the inherent requirements of the automated clearing house point-of-purchase process as being too complicated.

Imagine Microsoft Visa Corp. How about Google MasterCard Inc.? Picture the next big thing in payments, with everyone's mobile phone a well-stocked wallet of cards and ACH-payment options. No, those corporate names do not exist any more than the flying cars science fiction once predicted would be common by now. And cell phones used for payments? Well, there are some efforts under way to bring that potential to fruition on a large scale. Indeed, there were some big changes and incremental shifts this year that have set up intriguing possibilities for the payments industry in 2007 and beyond. How will MasterCard going public this year and Visa's announcement that it plans to do the same affect the outcome of the consolidated merchant lawsuit over interchange? Will merchants turn more to ACH networks as alternatives to the card networks? Top payments industry analysts peer into their crystal balls for some educated guesses on the trends likely to emerge.

Each fall, companies typically enable their employees to make changes in health-insurance coverage for the coming year. And those that offer flexible-spending accounts, health reimbursement accounts and health savings accounts explain the purpose and use of those tax-deferred benefits, too.

As the first universal payment card issuer, Diners Club in 1949 had to explain to consumers how the cards worked. "Your Diners' Club Card is a master credit card at these and one hundred other superb eating places in the metropolitan New York area, Chicago and other key cities," read a newspaper ad published early in the brand's existence. "Receive one monthly statement reflecting all charges."

Not long ago, universities could impress their students by enabling campus identification cards to pay for a handful of on-campus products and services. Students could swipe it in the dining room to pay for lunch, at the college bookstore to buy textbooks and at dorm vending machines for late-night snacks.

Before the dust had settled from the World Trade Center collapse in Septem-ber 2001, First Data Corp. called the FBI to offer its assistance. That is the first assertion on the first page of a new book recounting worldwide terrorist hunts, war and tough issues of liberty versus national security stirred up by the worst terrorist attacks on American soil.

The weekday lunch hour rush is just beginning at PLS Check Cashers, a check-cashing store in a bustling neighborhood on Chicago's Near South Side. A string of customers in business and casual attire enter to convert cash into money orders, buy stamps and get quarters. One slips a money order and a telephone bill into a mail envelope. Another cashes her paycheck for a percentage fee, pays her local phone bill for an additional $1 and receives two fee-free money orders, one for $525 and one for $25.

It is not fun to sell gas nowadays. Despite increasing demand for decreasing supply, many consumers blame even single-store gas-station owners for setting fuel prices unreasonably high. Petroleum merchants, though, say they wince with each gas-price increase just as consumers do.

In many ways, the trends in executive compensation in the payments industry last year were similar to those of 2004. Bonuses and stock-option grants continued to rise, but they were more likely to be tied to performance, thanks to continued U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission pressure for clearer and more comprehensive disclosure of executive compensation.

Pity poor American consumers, stuck late at work, overnight at hospitals or preparing for drives home after long days at amusement parks. With no cash but ATM-crisp $20 bills, they gaze, longingly, into vending machines stocked with food and beverages that could satisfy them, if only the machines accepted plastic.

Ask most analysts about Diners Club, and they probably would say, "I see their logos everywhere, but I don't know anyone who has one."