The new iPhone 5 will feature NFC, making it a bona fide game-changer for Mobile Payments, according to sources we spoke with at MacWorld/iWorld last week.

Join us at these upcoming Payments Conferences:

17th Annual Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium
March 11-13, 2012
Boca Raton Resort & Club
Boca Raton, FL

Electronic Transactions Association Annual Meeting & Expo

April 17-19, 2012
Mandalay Bay
Las Vegas, NV

24th Annual Card Forum & Expo
May 8-11, 2012
Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate
Orlando, FL

6th Annual Mobile Banking & Commerce Summit
June 10-12, 2012
Westin St. Francis
San Francisco, CA

Jordan Rohan, an analyst from Stifel Nicolaus. In a note to investors, Rohan said that Amazon sold an estimated 6 million Kindle Fires in the fourth quarter of 2011, revised upward from the 5 million units that Rohan had previously projected.

THE GRAND JURY PRIZE WENT TO A DOCUMENTARY CALLED “THE HOUSE I LIVE IN” ( U.S.A., DIRECTOR: EUGENE JARECKI) — FOR OVER 40 YEARS, THE WAR ON DRUGS HAS ACCOUNTED FOR 45 MILLION ARRESTS, MADE AMERICA THE WORLD’S LARGEST JAILER AND DAMAGED POOR COMMUNITIES AT HOME AND ABROAD. YET, DRUGS ARE CHEAPER, PURER AND MORE AVAILABLE TODAY THAN EVER. WHERE DID WE GO WRONG AND WHAT IS THE PATH TOWARD HEALING?

More than 600,000 US consumers have moved their money from big banks to community banks or credit unions, thanks to the much-publicized revolt against debit card fees and the resulting consumer-led Bank Transfer Day last fall, according to an analysis released by Javelin Strategy & Research. Bank of America alone had a 20 percent increase in account closings in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to the same quarter in 2010. Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-bank-transfer-idUSTRE80Q1TU20120127

"Unfortunately, some people are questioning Apple’s values today," CEO Tim Cook wrote in an e-mail to Apple employees. LA Times writes about a series of articles in the New York Times that has brought new focus on Apple’s highly profitable production strategy, which relies heavily on Chinese workers who live in dormlike factories and spend many hours assembling devices. “The safety records and working conditions in those factories have been questioned, and Apple’s labor practices received intense scrutiny in 2010, when more than a dozen workers at Chinese iPhone plants committed suicide.” Read more in today’s LA Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/apple-tim-cook-china-factories.html

The NY Times reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday searched the offices of a New York based corporate advisory firm that specializes in helping Chinese companies sell shares in the United States. Read more: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/f-b-i-searches-offices-of-n-y-adviser-on-chinese-reverse-mergers/

Teams from Wiley College and the University of Southern California will have a rematch Friday of the memorable 1935 debate that saw the small, historically black school prevail over the nationally known, mostly white powerhouse.

The exhibition will be held at Wiley in the small town of Marshall, near Texas’ border with Louisiana. The 1935 debate at USC took place when the nation was heavily segregated and helped inspire "The Great Debaters," a 2007 movie starring Denzel Washington. The movie climaxes with a fictional debate against Harvard that was modeled on the real match in California.

"I think it’s an incredible opportunity for the two teams to get together once again," said Chris Medina, Wiley’s director of forensics. "We owe a debt of gratitude to USC for being ground-breakers in allowing us, an HBCU (historically black colleges and universities), to really, at that point, achieve legitimacy. They were one of the few white colleges that would debate with us." Though experts say there wasn’t a structure for a national debate championship until the late 1940s, USC was known as a nationally competitive debate team, said Gordon Stables, USC’s director of debate and forensics. And Wiley debaters referred to USC as national champions.

The Federal Reserve says it is unlikely to raise interest rates before late 2014, extending a period of record-low rates by more than a year. The Fed says it is keeping rates low to help lift a weak but modestly growing economy.

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CITGO is losing its consumer co-branded MasterCard. The oil company is the latest to join the ranks of refiners whose card is being canceled by Citi, CSP Daily News has reported. Citi also closed ConocoPhillips’ co-branded MasterCard last September, which accounted for 0.4% of all ConocoPhillips’ card sales. Other oil cobrand card programs discontinued by Citi include Sunoco (canceled last February).

Chase discontinued Marathon’s cobranded card in August. Other marketers including Wawa and RaceTrac no longer offer co-branded cards. Bank of America cancelled the Chrysler Visa card a few years ago.

GE Capital Retail Bank continues to offer the Chevron co-branded Visa card, at least for now.