In ecommerce and money news

During early Asian session Tuesday, the greenback revealed mixed presence against its major counterparts. While the dollar gained against the yen, it edged down versus the euro and the pound. Against the Swiss franc, the dollar firmed in early trading but reversed the uptrend direction around 7:55 pm ET.Read more

Early on Tuesday in Asia, the Japanese unit lost ground despite most of the Asian stocks fell. Generally, if stocks decline, the yen tends to gain on Japan's low interest rate and vice-versa. After a weak start and a subsequent recovery from lower levels, the Japanese stock market is plummeting again Tuesday with investors pressing sales amid concerns over the impact of euro zone's sovereign debt woes on the global economy.Read more

asknet AG, recently ranked as one of Germany's fastest-growing technology companies in Deloitte's "Technology Fast 50" report, reported that now it is offering Alipay as an online payment option to customers in China. "With Alipay, asknet expands its global eCommerce payment portfolio. We are proud to work with China's leading online payment service. This cooperation will greatly ease our customers' entry into the Chinese digital product market and provide additional value to our existing offering to sell online in China", says Michael Konrad, CFO of asknet.Read more

Lloyds Banking Group is currently in negotiations with private stock companies interested in buying a controlling stake in its Integrated Finance unit. So Lloyds is in talks with 3i Advent International and Coller Capital over the  Integrated Finance unit. Read more

In a move to clear its balance sheet of the troubled assets Citigroup held negotiations with some private equity groups and hedge funds. Citi wants to sell its of $3 billion in car loans, according to the report by the Financial Times. It is supposed that Citi offered to provide the buyers of the loans with financing for a few years after the sale. However, in view of no boom at the market for securitized bonds, which are backed by cash flow from loans, these assets were less attractive, as noted by several private equity groups and hedge funds.  Read more

In December consumers in the United States borrowed less for an 11th consecutive month. Americans contracted their credit card spending while increased borrowing for cars and other products. This was taken by analysts as a sign that Americans may soon return to spending, a necessary condition for economic recovery.Read more

The number of retail cashless payments grew by over 160% between 2000 and 2008, to 87 billion transactions. Of these, 90% were in western Europe, 10% were in central and eastern Europe and two-thirds were in the eurozone.Read more

India’s largest software vendor, producing also security systems software, Tata Consultancy Services, has been breached by hackers.  The  hacker published a “For Sale” message on the site written in both French and English.Read more

This weekend Chinese local paper the Wuhan Evening News reported that the authorities closed allegedly the largest hacker training website in the country and arrested three of its members. According to the newspaper the "Black Hawk Safety Net" website taught hacking techniques and provided malicious software downloads for its 12,000 members in exchange for a fee.Read more

Some sources report that Samsung plans to launch its transparent AMOLED laptop it demonstrated at CES within the next year. PlusPlasticElectronics reported that a commercial variant of the concept showcased at CES will be available soon. “We have a lab in Korea that is currently working on developing a laptop with partially-transparent screen,” Samsung Electronics America's Reid Sullivan told PlusPlasticElectronics. “Soon, I imagine that all Samsung's audio-visual products will feature this technology. We want to be the first in this market.”Read more

Now Google is practicing suggestions for "nearby places you might like" on Google Maps. When users looks up a place they like the service offers other options of places within the same vicinity that Google thinks the users will also be interested in trying.Read more

Now the 'Man in the street' can get a part of the action in investment game program industry from the comfort of his home. With an ever increasing number of investment game program playing websites springing up it is difficult to know where to begin. The great news is that most of these investment game programs offer you the chance to play on test plans where you can learn the ins and outs of playing on investment game program industry yet using only a small amount of dollar, thus with a lower risk.Read more

You only bet to lose money if you join this scam investment game program which is known as betandtrading. This program was started on January 7 and offers four types of plans which are 1% - 1.5% daily, 11.7% weekly, and 48% monthly forever.   The owner of this program claims that he is from Austria and he has a team of five people who combine arbitrage trading and forex trading. He also claims that he has tested his system profitably for 3 months. However, all those claimants are not true when the members reported that this program has stopped paying started on February 1.Read more

As a result of false accusations filed by some person eBay and PayPal exposed the information about several of the payment system users. The French authorities were approached by the individual who accused one of the PayPal users of a crime. This accusation resulted into PayPal disclosing several individual accounts and other private information (IP address, physical address, email accounts, phone numbers, transactions).Read more