Across Australia, the proportion of mortgages in arrears by 30 days or more was 1.25 per cent at the end of September, down by 20 basis points from March 2013, according to analysis by Fitch Ratings of data from home loans (prime and non-conforming). Fitch's report noted that delinquency rates across Australia are generally higher than they were a year ago, despite the standard variable mortgage rate being almost one per cent higher back then. Tasmania replaced Queensland as the worst performing state in Australia, while Surfers Paradise became the country's worst-performing postcode, by value of mortgages in arrears, with a 30-plus days' delinquency rate of four per cent. The major banks' satisfaction scores for personal customers have shown marked improvement over the last 12 months, largely because of interest rate reductions for home loan customers and a very high level of satisfaction with internet banking, according to Roy Morgan Research. In the six months to November 2013, the CBA maintained its top ranking of the Big Four with its 81.9 per cent satisfaction rating, followed by NAB (79.4 per cent), Westpac (79.0 per cent) and ANZ (77.2 per cent). Internet banking is now used by far more customers than are branches and with a high level of satisfaction. It is contributing to gains in overall customer satisfaction. Thomas Beregi, chief executive officer of the ASX-listed Credit Corp Group, has been appointed to the board of the Credit Ombudsman Service as a non-executive industry director, effective from December 13, 2013. He replaces lawyer Jon Denovan, who has retired from the board after nine years. Prior to joining Credit Corp, in 2008, Beregi was chief operating officer of the real estate services firm, Jones Lang LaSalle Australia. Mobile Embrace, an ASX-listed mobile payments and marketing company, will team up with SingTel to provide direct carrier billing to the telco's post-paid customers in Singapore. The service is expected to be ready for launch later this month, with plans to expand the Mobile Embrace payment mechanism to other regional carriers within the Singtel group, including Telkomsel (Indonesia), AIS (Thailand), and Globe (Philippines). Mobile payments in the region are forecast for "strong and sustained growth", according to Neil Wiles, managing director of Mobile Embrace. The Big Four banks are losing business customers and foreign exchange market share to specialised boutique competitors such as Western Union, OzForex and AMEX, according to a new report by industry analysts East & Partners. Foreign exchange is the most "banked away from home" product for many businesses, the micro and SME segments, in particular, East said. The research also showed the Big Four banks' overall wallet share of their customers' FX business dropped below 30 per cent in 2013. This is down from the "close to 50 per cent" that was enjoyed by NAB and Westpac, for instance, in 2008.