July 23, 2013 A new prepaid MasterCard is coming to Slovenia, now that Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) has unveiled what it calls the nation’s first domestically issued prepaid card bearing the MasterCard brand. The SmartPayCard Prepaid MasterCard is available in two versions: SmartPayCard Simple, a non-reloadable virtual prepaid card, which can be loaded up to […]
With six months before the 4th Capital Requirements Directive comes into force, many will be asking what technological improvements will be necessary to efficiently manage risk going forward. Before they embark on a costly overhaul of their data systems, firms should look at what regulatory trends are likely to require similar changes in the future and adjust their specification accordingly.
July 22, 2013 Discover cardholders in the U.S. now have free access to cash at 43,000 more ATMs, thanks to a partnership that brings the Discover and Diners Club brands into the Allpoint Network, part of the largest independent ATM provider in the country. The deal enables Discover to provide its cardholders with expanded cash […]
July 22, 2013 With its latest move making it easier for customers to pay using the Square Inc. mobile app, U.S. Bank left no doubt it plans to support multiple digital wallet providers. The Minneapolis bank last week announced that its customers may link a credit, debit or prepaid card to the Square app within […]
July 22, 2013 ICICI Bank customers soon will be able to pay bills, make purchases and reload prepaid airtime from their mobile phones. India’s largest private commercial financial institution today announced a deal with Movida, the joint venture between Visa Inc. and Monitise, which enables consumers to use Movida’s mobile payments technology regardless of phone […]
July 22, 2013 Two distribution deals in the last week promise to increase prepaid card availability for consumers. InComm announced it will be distributing gift cards for Cabela’s through its retail distribution network of 225,000 locations, while rival Blackhawk Network will be rolling out its Gift Card Mall in U.S. Home Depot locations this year. […]
Predicting the future is never easy, but trying to anticipate likely developments in a particular area is essential in order to take timely action. With that caveat, Stephen Lindsay, head of standards at SWIFT, sets a boundary on a discussion on the Future of Standards: “What we are trying to do is extrapolate a little bit from where we are now to where we might be in a few years’ time,” he says.
Cover story: high frequency trading isn’t the only reason to deploy faster technology … Also in this issue: A road to nowhere? The UK’s plans to improve competition in retail banking are not without critics. The lure of the East: opportunities and challenges in the Middle East markets A watching brief: regulators are beefing up their […]
Financial institutions have been battling waves of large distributed denial of service attacks since early 2012. Many of these attacks have been the work of a group called the Qassam Cyber Fighters, which until recently posted weekly updates on Pastebin about the reasons behind its attacks.
With lots of different regulatory benchmark efforts now underway, the industry could be forgiven for not taking a common stance. With IOSCO issuing final principles, ESMA and the EBA are simultaneously consulting on a European set of principles. Meanwhile the UK is moving ahead with its own reforms.
UniCredit and IBM are to form a joint venture company that will offer IT infrastructure services to other financial institutions as part of a “multi-billion dollar”, 10-year agreement.
Despite security concerns, contactless payments technology continues to be rolled out globally. Visa International recently estimated that the volumes of contactless transactions it will process during 2013 will quadruple. MasterCard’s figures show that since 2012 there has been a 50% increase in the number of contactless cards it has issued.
July 18, 2013 The shift to omnichannel retail continues as InComm this week rolled out a pair of services to enable the prepaid provider’s client companies to expand their digital product offerings in stores and on the Web. InComm’s new in-store digital sales program opens the door for merchants to offer products such as downloadable music, […]
July 18, 2013 European consumers are most comfortable turning to their banks when it comes to mobile shopping, according to a new report. The study, commissioned by Monitise and conducted by the Future Foundation in May 2013, polled a sample of 1,500 smartphone users in the U.K., Germany and Spain. Fifty percent of German smartphone […]
July 18, 2013 Responding to growing demand for digital gift cards, CardCash.com has revamped its system for handling electronic gift card sales, including beefing up bulwarks against fraud, the company said. Brick, N.J.-based CardCash.com, launched in 2008, specializes in reselling unused consumer gift cards via the secondary market. In June CashCard introduced an “e-code” sale […]
July 17, 2013 The U.S. Senate yesterday confirmed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) amid growing acrimony along party lines over several of President Barack Obama’s nominations. The vote was 66-34. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late last week filed cloture motions to force votes on seven nominees in […]
July 2013 Payza, an online payment platform, has named Ferhan Patel chief compliance officer and director of global risk and compliance. He will oversee the risk, fraud and compliance departments and be responsible for the company’s AML/CTF, compliance, fraud- and risk-mitigation policies. Prior to his new position, Patel led the company’s product development strategies, marketing […]
July 2013 ecoCard, a U.K.-based global payment solutions provider, has been rebranded ecoPayz to reflect the scope of its diverse range of payment solutions, according to the company. “Over the last few years we have significantly grown and extended our range of payment solutions to incorporate a range of virtual payment mechanisms, not just physical cards, so […]
July 2013 Bank of America Merrill Lynch has named Jennifer Boussuge head of global transaction services (GTS) for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). She has been with the company for more than 19 years, during which time she has held a number of leadership roles, most recently as head of global sales for GTS. […]
The International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA) continues to honor innovators in card manufacturing through its Élan Awards for Card Manufacturing Excellence, and many prepaid programs were recognized as finalists and winners this year. The awards were presented last month during the association’s Annual Card Manufacturing and Personalization EXPO in Washington, D.C. “The graphics on many […]
July 16, 2013 Shanghai-based payment card network UnionPay continues to expand its NFC-based mobile payment offerings, launching a new smartphone app for contactless payments last week. Dubbed simply Wallet, the app enables users to link card accounts from eight participating Chinese banks to NFC-enabled smartphones from China Mobile and make purchases at POS terminals via […]
July 16, 2013 Cloud-based payment processor i2c Inc. has signed a deal to provide prepaid card processing services to Heartland Payment Systems. The collaboration will kick off with i2c taking over processing duties for Heartland’s National Restaurant Association (NRA) Edge payroll card program, which enables restaurant employees to load their paychecks and outside funds onto […]
July 16, 2013 Consumers in Brazil soon will be able to purchase Ukash vouchers in Brazilian currency at participating Petrobas and other independent stores across the country, and spend those vouchers at 3,500 e-commerce and digital entertainment Websites. Ukash, a London-based prepaid voucher provider and Paybefore Award winner, yesterday announced an agreement with Now Prepay Servicos […]
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) again is urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to prohibit overdraft on prepaid products and limit the ways in which credit and prepaid may be associated.
On 23 April 2013, the markets suffered a brief, sharp drop as algorithms reacted to “news” from the Associated Press’s Twitter handle that President Obama had been injured in a bombing attack at the White House. In a few minutes, the Dow Jones dropped 145 points, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost $136 billion in […]
July 15, 2013 In a protracted battle over several of President Barack Obama’s nominations, including his appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last week filed cloture motions to force votes on seven nominees in an effort to bypass what he called “blatant […]
July 15, 2013 China’s central bank has granted new third-party payment licenses to 27 companies, including the first-ever foreign-funded payment service providers to receive licenses—Edenred China and Sodexo Pass China (Shanghai). Since the Peoples Bank of China (PBC) began issuing the licenses in May 2011, a total of 250 nonbank institutions have been granted the […]
July 15, 2013 A group of 16 U.S. Senators are calling on government regulators to investigate the fees and practices association with payroll cards. In a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Labor, the Senators said that all fees attached to prepaid cards must be clearly disclosed to employees who have […]
July 15, 2013 TIO Networks Corp., a Vancouver, B.C.-based expedited payments service provider, announced on Friday it will acquire Globex Financial Services Inc. and its Global Express Money Orders business. TIO expects to close on the deal for the Silver Spring, Md.-based bill payment services provider later this year. TIO plans to cross-sell its mobile […]
Patrice Peyret of Banking Up responds to a front-page article in the New York Times, “Paid via Card, Workers Feel Sting of Fees.”
July 11, 2013 Another major piece of MCX’s jigsaw puzzle fell into place today with the announcement that payments technology provider FIS will provide the payments processing platform, including transaction routing and settlement, for the retail consortium’s evolving mobile commerce system. Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS will execute mobile payments at participating retailer outlets in combination with […]
July 11, 2013 By the end of 2013, European consumers will be making more than 52 million contactless transactions every month, according to a projection by Visa Europe. That would represent a marked increase from 2012, which saw a total of 147 million contactless transactions. The rapid increase in NFC-enabled smartphones and digital wallets coming […]
July 11, 2013 Consumers continued to demonstrate strong spending habits in June, according to the latest SpendTrend data released by First Data Corp., an Atlanta-based payments processor. Wet weather that dampened demand on the East Coast in the early part of the month was offset by warmer weather across the rest of the U.S., leading […]
July 11, 2013 Seattle-area Metro riders who bike to transit stations have a new option for storing their cycles, thanks to a series of new “eLockers” that can be rented on an hourly basis using a stored value card. The lockers—located at 10 Metro stations throughout the Seattle area—are provided by BikeLink, a secure on-demand […]
Uncertainty over the mechanism for calculating the Libor benchmark in future remains in the wake of the generally applauded appointment of NYSE Euronext as its new administrator.
July 9, 2013 Money transfer giant Western Union Co. continues to expand its payment product offerings and grow its global footprint, unveiling a new payroll card in the United Arab Emirates and money transfer services in India. In the U.A.E, Western Union and Commercial Bank of Dubai have announced a new, co-branded prepaid payroll card […]
July 9, 2013 Prepaid processor and program manager TransCard has announced a new self-service gift card kiosk targeted for placement in shopping malls. Known as RUBY, the automated kiosk enables shoppers to select a gift card denomination, enter payment and receive the card without the assistance of a customer service mall employee. “After studying the […]
July 9, 2013 A Bitcoin wallet developer in Kenya this month launched a service enabling locals to send and receive the virtual currency to most nations around the world using any Internet-enabled mobile phone or desktop computer, with the capability of converting Bitcoins to M-Pesa, Kenya’s popular mobile money service. Nairobi-based Kipochi Ltd (Kipochi means […]
July 9, 2013 State Bank of India (SBI) has partnered with Indian forex firm UAE Exchange and Financial Services Ltd. to launch a co-branded prepaid card enabling users to receive remittances directly on the card. The State Bank Xpress Money Card, which runs on the Visa network, can be loaded with up to Rs50,000 (US$831.90) […]
July 8, 2013 With security among the most important issues for providers and users of mobile payments, a group of banks is working to develop a new standard to improve mobile transaction security online and at POS. The Clearing House (TCH), a banking association and payments company whose 22 member banks include Bank of America, […]
