About 13,000 Visa prepaid cardholders were shocked to find they had been charged $23,148,855,308,184,500 for small purchases like sodas, cigarettes or a light meal. According to the company, the mistaken charges were the results of a software error and have since been stricken from the cards, as have any fees from the transactions. "Erroneous postings have been removed. This incident had no financial impact on Visa prepaid cardholders," the company said. Media reports have pointed out that the amount charged was roughly 2007 times the size of the national debt of the United States and exceeded the gross domestic product for the entire world.

Card Processing Executive Wins Award

The executive director of PSCU Financial Services, Peter Schmitt, has been given an entrepreneurship award for his prior work with Digital Dialogue. Schmitt recently won the 2009 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Central Great Lakes Region. This award recognizes men and women who excel at growing and sustaining market-leading businesses that contribute to community growth and development. Schmitt received the award for his work as the president and founder of Digital Dialogue in Auburn Hills, Mich. Digital Dialogue operated a 24/7 call center that specialized in member service support, new member acquisition, cross selling and automated lending solutions for credit unions. The company was purchased by PSCU Financial Services in 2007 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the cooperative. Its operations were fully consolidated into the cooperative by the end of 2008. "Peter played a leading role in developing innovative cross selling and automated lending solutions that were part of Digital Dialogues' contact center operations. Those solutions made the company an ideal business partner and eventually led to our purchase of their operations. We congratulate Peter on his entrepreneurial spirit and his accomplishments," said David J. Serlo, president of PSCU Financial Services.