The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has named Beverly Cole as deputy comptroller for compliance supervision. In the role, Cole will be responsible for developing and instituting compliance operational protocols, examination strategies and schedules.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority board of governors has appointed Robert Cook as president and CEO, effective the second half of 2016.
Hoping to encourage fintech innovation, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority has issued a 17-page document that offers guidelines for how financial services firm can use outsourced Web-hosted services without running afoul of regulators.
A transatlantic data-transfer deal has won approval from European Union officials, giving official life to what’s known at the Privacy Shield pact.
Britain’s Speaking Clock, which will celebrate its 80th birthday on Sunday, July 24, was a real fascination for me as a child. Who was this person on the other end of the phone who was always available, any time of day, who could tell me the time down to the exact second? Did they ever […]
The 2016 UEFA European Championship ran from 10 June to 10 July in France. Portugal beat France 1-0 in the final. In the spirit of that football tournament, PPRO created an e-commerce guide to each country that proved very popular throughout the event. Click here to see all the countries: Euro 2016
Big data is a promise. In theory, banks can now know more about every single one of their customers than ever before. There is a real opportunity for them to cement their customer relationships; to create targeted offers and personalised experiences that attract new, and retain existing, customers. UK’s retail banks have increasingly been using […]
Advanced Payment Solutions (APS) has secured a credit licence from the UK’s regulator, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). And whilst APS is not a bank, it competes with them. So is going through the pains for getting a banking licence really worth it, asks Rich Wagner, CEO and founder APS. We regularly see news of challenger finance […]
The key to unlocking the potential of real-time money movement is the delivery of an intuitive and seamless experience across accounts. As demand grows among early adopters—underserved consumers, millennials and those in the “gig” economy—a larger, more mainstream consumer audience will take note and engage.
Sure, mobile payments are taking much of the developing world by storm, giving consumers safer and more efficient ways to handle money. But merchant acceptance lags. Here’s why, along with ideas for improvement.
Brexit likely will cause issues for major processors and cross-border acquirers for whom London has been a key European and cross-border processing hub. That’s in addition to a restricted market and reduced talent pool.
If politicians were held to the same truthfulness and disclosure standards as businesspeople, the U.K. might have avoided its regrettable decision to leave the EU.
Following up on its promise to tighten rules for prepaid cards and virtual currencies in an effort to thwart terrorism financing and money laundering, the European Commission has released a proposal this week to lower the threshold that triggers cardholder identification requirements for prepaid cards and ban the use of anonymous prepaid cards online.
Although the overall number of prepaid card-related complaints continues to represent less than 1 percent of total complaints the CFPB receives, prepaid complaints were up 28 percent in May to 226 from 177 the previous month, according to the federal consumer protection agency’s latest monthly complaint report.
MasterCard faces a $24.5 billion class action suit in the U.K. over its cross-border interchange fees. The suit arrives two years after the European Union labeled the interchange charged by the payment card network as unfair. European interchange caps went into effect in December of 2015.
The UK is home to the world’s leading centre for financial services, and in recent years a thriving centre for fintech innovation. Elizabeth Budd, financial regulation expert at Pinsent Masons, urges the financial services industry to be vocal about the framework it needs to have in place to protect this status, and continue to do […]
The financial institutions have adjusted their service and relationship models by integrating digital interaction and communication tools for private banking customers, writes Alberto Cuccu, chief product officer at Objectway. In Italy, the digitisation of banking services has for many years been focused primarily on propositions aimed at retail customers (such as payment services or home […]
Last week’s federal court rejection of a 4-year-old $5.7 billion interchange fee settlement has retailers applauding, and Visa and MasterCard gearing up for what could be years of ongoing ligation and perhaps a stop at the Supreme Court.
The U.K.’s historic decision to exit the European Union (or Brexit) last month has left many businesses speculating what the ramifications will be for them, especially e-money issuers based in the U.K. that have licenses that they passport to EU countries. Neopay, a U.K.-based e-money and payment regulatory consultancy, is hoping to assuage the jitters of new and established e-money companies in Europe with Brexit Insurance.
In a pair of legal battles that could have a ripple effect into the payments and retail sectors, Facebook and Google have invoked a recent Supreme Court decision and the U.S. Constitution to defend against claims that the companies’ facial recognition systems violate a key state biometric privacy law.
Indian payment solutions provider ItzCash Card Ltd. has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to participate in the country’s integrated bill payments platform, known as the Bharat Bill Payments System (BBPS).
There are three options of a road ahead for the payments industry players: 1) to carry on as they are and watch their margins erode; 2) to transform into a utility; 3) to have a long hard look at their value chain. If you choose the latter – what do you see, asks Sapient Global Markets’ Leda […]
Blockchain is disrupting the financial services (FS) industry. Deloitte recently called it one of the year’s most controversial and debated topics. Yet, despite the hundreds of millions being invested in blockchain technology by companies from all industries across the globe, there is still much confusion around how the technology works and the effects it will […]
Woman In Technology (W.I.T) Award recognises an outstanding contribution made by a female to the fintech industry. The W.I.T. Award celebrates the spirit of inclusion, diversity and creativity in the fintech industry Supported by a worldwide network of FemTechLeaders To be presented at the Banking Technology annual awards ceremony and gala dinner on 1 December. […]
When I first started travelling for my job, it wasn’t too afield. I was working in Australia so it involved trips to New Zealand, Singapore and not much more. However, in only a few years, my travel grew to where it became routine to visit the US, Germany and the UK, but with the aircraft […]
Visa has filed a lawsuit against Walmart in a dispute over customers’ use of signatures or PINs to verify purchases with EMV-equipped debit cards at Walmart. Last month, Walmart sued Visa, claiming the payments network required the retailer to offer EMV debit users the option of signature or PIN verification in violation of the Durbin Amendment.
That would provide some long-awaited certainty to financial service providers and tech companies like Google and Facebook that handle consumers’ personal information.
While the benefits of big data are well understood for compliance and fraud prevention, the technology can also deliver very useful insights into customer behaviour. Thanks to big data analytics, retail banks can monitor how customer behaviour evolves and any significant patterns that can inform which products to market and offer. In the UK, Lloyds […]
U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) are demanding answers from Green Dot, MasterCard and Walmart about a May outage that left Green Dot-issued Walmart MoneyCard customers without access to certain prepaid services. The senators also asked MasterCard to distinguish the circumstances between the Green Dot outage and the one RushCard experienced October 2015 when it switched to MasterCard’s processing platform.
First filed in 2011 by a consortium of consumers, independent ATM operators and the National ATM Council, the suit alleges that payment networks’ ATM fee policies suppressed competition by barring ATM operators from offering discounts to users who transact via networks other than MasterCard or Visa.
In fiscal year 2015, 98 percent of the $3.98 trillion remitted to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Services came through electronic payments.
This great infographics, created by BTC Media, maps out the bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem of 2016 – it is a crowded metropolis! Click on the image to enlarge. Source: BTC Media, LLC
By a slender majority of 51.9% to 48.1% the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union. The move will have ramifications for banking and financial services internationally as the country renegotiates its relationship with the EU and could topple London’s standing as a leading global financial centre. Nothing will change immediately, but in […]
The technology world is evolving from a cathedral-like structure dominated by major technology vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, to a bazaar-like ecosystem where new paradigms, platforms and tools emerge constantly and are adopted quickly. Though it is a cliché to say that the pace of change is accelerating in IT, it is also […]
During the two-day MoneyConf event in Madrid, there was an exclusive Banking Technology interview with Matteo Cassina, member of the global executive committee at Saxo Bank. Deputy editor Antony Peyton spoke to him about his opinions on the show and the industry. In terms of MoneyConf 2016, Cassina says: “I do believe there are a […]
The people have decided and the U.K. is splitting from the European Union, raising serious concerns for the payments industry. Among those concerns is how passporting will work when the U.K. is no longer part of the EU since the majority of European e-money issuers have licenses in the U.K. that they passport elsewhere. Fifty-two percent of voters opted to bow out, or “Brexit,” as it’s commonly called.
As voters head to polling places today to decide whether the U.K. should split from the European Union, the referendum is top of mind for members of the payments industry around the world. Several issues for the industry would be in flux should the U.K. decide to bow out, or “Brexit,” as it’s commonly called.
Canada’s open-loop prepaid market saw CAD$3.1 billion (US$2.4 billion) in total card loads in 2015, according to a new market-sizing report offering insights into the country’s fast-growing prepaid industry.
This nifty infographics, courtesy of MBNA, is a whistle-stop tour of credit wonder and woe over the last 4,000 years – from ancient Babylon to modern Britain – and what people had to do to get a little credit.
Digital technology is increasingly seen as the key to transforming banking into a customer-focused industry befitting the modern age, and a new role of chief digital officer (CDO) has evolved to help implement this change. However, although many banks have used IT to build more customer-friendly interfaces on apps and websites, there is scope to […]
