The CFPB announced today a three-prong approach to ensure consumers are receiving a fair shake regarding checking account access. But what may surprise many in the prepaid industry is that the agency also is providing information to consumers about the prepaid option.
Shortly after the original deadline to reach an agreement expired on Sunday, the EU Commission and the U.S. have agreed to a new Safe Harbor deal. The new framework will protect the fundamental rights of Europeans when their data are transferred to the U.S. and ensure legal certainty for businesses, according to an EU Commission announcement.
In a new twist on card-linked offers, Visa launches Visa Commerce Network, which it says will make it easier for merchants to engage Visa cardholders with reward and loyalty offers. Uber and Dunkin’ Donuts are among the first companies using the tool.
European Union leaders are calling for tighter regulation of prepaid cards and virtual currencies to restrict terrorist financing and anonymous payments. The European Commission—the executive arm of the EU—also said it will consider launching an intra-EU version of a transaction monitoring agreement that has since 2010 helped detect the movement of funds by terrorists between the U.S. and EU.
Arthur Budovsky pleaded guilty in January after it was determined his company, Liberty Reserve, served as a global hub for laundering more than $250 million of ill-gotten funds from cybercriminals, according to the DOJ.
A snapshot of payments-related earnings reports recently announced is available to you below. Click the company name for more details: The Bancorp Inc. MasterCard American Express Co. Meta Financial Group, Inc. PayPal Holdings Inc. TSYS
P2P lending in the U.K. is a booming business that’s doubled in size since 2014 and approximately £2.20 billion (US$3.16 billion) lent to consumers in 2015.
Payments UK has developed a directory to offer UK institutions some of the benefits of SEPA despite the regulation not applying within the country until October. From 1 February, Eurozone banks and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) can process Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments using only a customer’s IBAN (International Bank Account Number). Previously customers were […]
Prepaid cards continued to comprise just a tiny percentage of the consumer complaints received by the CFPB, according to the agency’s latest monthly complaint “snapshot” report. During the month of December 2015, the CFPB received a total of 230 prepaid-related complaints (out of 20,388 total complaints), down 11 percent from the 257 complaints it received in November.
The 15-year-old Safe Harbor data transfer deal has expired, leaving U.S. and European companies at risk for transferring financial and other information across the Atlantic.
Apple Pay is on its way to thousands of ATMs across the country, as Bank of America and Wells Fargo reportedly are working on integrating the mobile payments service into their ATMs. Meanwhile, Chase soon will roll out ATMs that offer cardless withdrawals via the bank’s mobile app.
Financial software provider Misys has appointed Rob Binns as its chief financial officer. Binns joins Misys from HP where he was head of treasury and investor relations. He joined Hewlett-Packard in 2007 from Mercury Interactive and has held a number of senior finance positions in the company including VP Software Field Operations and VP Investor […]
Emprise Bank, based in Kansas in the US, has selected FIS as its new core banking provider. The bank, which has $1 billion in assets and 37 branches, selected FIS on the basis of its need for high levels of support, and capacity to provide a single platform that would integrate a set of technologies. That in turn allowed […]
The online retail services of HSBC have been brought down in a distributed-denial-of-service attack according to the bank. Online services were inaccessible to clients, the second online service problem the bank’s customers have faced this month, following a two-day outage earlier in January that the bank reported was not caused by a cyber-attack. Concern about […]
Distributed ledger technology provider Ripple and Japanese financial services firm SBI Holdings have announced the creation of a joint partnership, which will expand Ripple into the Asian market. Ripple, which focuses on the using blockchain-like technology for payments, is based predominantly in San Francisco with presences in New York, London and Sydney. SBI is a US$28 […]
I talk with a lot of banking leaders who describe their approach to innovation as being a “fast follower. My typical retort is that they are half-right—most of them are definitely followers, but there usually isn’t anything fast about their approach.
For those of us in prepaid, combating misrepresentation of our products in the media is nothing new. A recent news story claiming banks are leaving customers on the hook for fraud if they use a mobile wallet shows there’s plenty of work to do for new payment methods.
Hyperwallet CEO challenges businesses in the booming on-demand economy to make getting paid as easy as ordering a ride on Uber.
Britain’s payment settlement system for the pound sterling is to be redesigned and rebuilt, Minouche Shafik, deputy governor for Markets & Banking at the Bank of England (BoE) has said in a speech given at the BoE to senior figure in the UK payments business. The twenty-year old Real-Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS), which settles […]
TSYS continued its push to expand its role in the payments value chain with a big move in the merchant services space, reaching a definitive agreement to acquire merchant solutions provider TransFirst for $2.35 billion from current owner Vista Equity Partners.
U.S. House Republicans have accused the CFPB of bungling payouts meant to settle claims of racial discrimination in auto lending.
Payments provider TSYS is predicting high single-figure growth following its acquisition of merchant solutions provider Transfirst in a $2.35 billion all-cash transaction. The deal, announced as TSYS reports its full-year 2015 results, will create a firm with that TSYS claims will be the third largest integrated payments provider in the US – according to a […]
The CFPB is accepting applications for membership in all of its advisory groups.
NAB has launched its new mobile payment service NAB Pay, designed to enable customers to use their mobile phone to make purchases, without the need for a physical card. Customers with a compatible Android mobile device and a NAB Visa Debit Card have been able to start using NAB Pay from 25 January, available as […]
Green Dot was quick to respond as CEO Steve Streit came under fire with the company’s largest shareholder, Harvest Capital Strategies LLC, calling for his ouster along with that of two board members.
Cybercriminals could be ramping up their attacks on financial services providers, according to a new study. The fourth quarter of 2015 saw a tenfold increase in “bot attacks”—essentially test attacks meant to gauge the security of targeted systems—according to the report by ThreatMatrix, a San Jose, Calif., cybersecurity company.
Two separate cases involving credit card fraud have led to a sentence of 80 months in prison for leading one of the largest credit card fraud schemes and a guilty plea to a charge of stealing credit card data.
National Australia Bank launches a mobile payments service for devices that run Google’s Android operating system. The launch of the Android Pay service comes as Apple Pay fails to find a way into the country.
A survey of more than 3,700 IT security practitioners from more than a dozen major industry sectors found 54% of those firms surveyed had a security or data breach involving payment data, on average four times in past two years. The research, independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of digital security firm Gemalto, also […]
Andrew Tyrie, Member of Parliament and chairman of the UK’s Treasury Select Committee has issued a public letter to the head of the UK’s financial regulators arguing that three reforms are needed, without which ”the public will remain more exposed than necessary to the risk of bank failure.” Sent to Andrew Bailey, deputy governor for […]
Fiserv will pay $200 million for digital banking and electronic payment technology from ACI Worldwide. The deal, expected to close in the first quarter, includes ACI’s Community Financial Services business.
Big data has proven to be a useful tool for retailers and financial services providers seeking to identify customer habits and preferences—but federal regulators are warning that certain uses of consumer information may potentially violate consumer protection laws.
VocaLink is working with Raphaels Bank to enable access to the Faster Payments Scheme for several U.K. banks, including competing financial institutions. Meanwhile, Italian payments processor SIA announced its mobile money service Jiffy has more than 250,000 users as of the end of 2015.
American Express will “scale back experiments” that focused on finding new revenue and consumers but continue to focus on prepaid and alternative payments, says a spokesperson for the payments network.
Add another state in play regarding proposed restrictions on payroll cards. Washington state representatives introduced a bill making it unlawful for payroll card providers to charge certain fees.
InComm is bringing its line of Visa-branded gift and reward cards to the digital realm, announcing the launch of new digital versions of the cards for use in incentive and loyalty programs.
A total of 45 banks including Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank and many others have signed up to a new payments innovation initiative headed by Swift, which is due to launch early next year. Announced in December, the initiative aims to dramatically improve the customer experience in correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments.
Following the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, some European member states are calling for swift action, while others are concerned that too much regulation would stifle prepaid card distribution and innovation.
When a terrorist spends cash, there is no trace, no history of where it came from, where or how it was spent. But using a prepaid card leaves a trail to follow.
With mobile devices projected to play an increasing role in in-store shopping, ATM maker Diebold Inc. has unveiled a new self-checkout concept that enables users to make purchases by scanning items via mobile.
