The limits of the mobile revolution
Senior financial executives have clashed over the extent to which mobile payments technology has failed to reach its potential – and the best way to fix it.
Worldwide
Mobile opportunities for banks
The emergence of alternative payments providers such as PayPal and the growth of mobile payments systems such as M-Pesa should be seen as a major opportunity for banks, not a threat, according to Ron van Wezel, global head of emerging payment streams at Deutsche Bank.
MasterPass Digital Wallet Heads to Canada (April 11, 2013)
Canadian consumers will be the first in North America to be able to use MasterCard’s new MasterPass digital wallet, the company announced today. Unveiled in February at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, MasterPass offers users a cloud-based mobile solution for online shopping. Consumers can store up to 25 credit, debit or prepaid cards in the wallet—whether […]
Fiserv Launches Solution to Reduce ‘Improper’ Gov’t Payments (April 11, 2013)
Fiserv Inc. this week said it’s launching a new solution to help government agencies cut wasteful spending by improving payment accuracy. Fiserv’s new Payment Accuracy and Fraud Prevention Service, adapting the company’s private-sector fraud-mitigation tools for the public sector, is designed to help federal agencies identify incorrect, redundant and fraudulent payments across diverse channels, the […]
First Data: Lower Gas Prices, Early Easter and Tax Refunds Likely Stimulate Spending (April 11, 2013)
Lower gas prices, an earlier Easter holiday and the arrival of tax refunds, among other factors, likely counteracted any effects of increased payroll taxes as consumer spending was strong in March, according to the latest SpendTrend data released by First Data Corp., an Atlanta-based payments processor. Dollar volume growth increased 6 percent last month year […]
Sen. Durbin Renews Push for Across-the-Board Consumer Loan Interest Rate Cap (April 11, 2013)
Renewing a push to crack down on “excessive interest rates and fees,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and four other senators this week reintroduced a bill to cap interest rates on all credit transactions at 36 percent. The legislation, also proposed last year, mirrors a similar bill Durbin championed in 2009, that would align interest […]
E-Wallets Drive NFC-Enabled SIM Card Shipments (April 11, 2013)
Global shipments of NFC-enabled SIM cards rose 87 percent in 2012 compared with the previous year, according to SIMalliance. The London-based nonprofit trade association, which supports the creation, deployment and management of secure mobile services and applications, this week released a report on 2012 SIM shipments based on data provided by its members, which represent […]
Blog: Tipping Point for M-Payments Hidden in SMS App and Obscure Pizza Promo (April 2013)
By Joseph DeSetto, Emerging Payments Blogger It wasn’t long ago that mobile payments apps for the current generation of smartphones were difficult and time consuming for even experienced programmers to create. Much like the early days of e-commerce, standard ways of protecting user data, providing a consistent interface and user experience that would be trusted, […]
Print is not dead – it’s just turned baaaad
As a rule of thumb, the fastest adopters of new technology are pornographers and criminals (two sets that often overlap). So it should come as no surprise that the latest thing to worry security specialists is 3-D printing. You’ll have seen the stories in the papers about how you can create real working guns with […]
IPS 2013: SEPA benefits hard to see for corporates
As the February 2014 deadline for implementation of Single Euro Payment Area compatible instruments approaches, focus is moving from banks to corporates – and the increasingly clear picture is that few European corporates see any great benefit from adopting the standards involved.
Beyond a joke
A journalist, a politician and a banker walk into a bar … sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? Feel free to submit a punchline: personally, I’m starting to think that it would be a very sour joke. With banker-bashing now an established national pastime, the press having spectacularly fouled their own nest […]
Kalixa Group unveils “disruptive” payments tools
Payments company Kalixa Group has launched a set of tools including an mPOS, e-wallet and acceptance kit, which it says will disrupt the global payments market in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
Welcome to EMIR: the known unknowns of customer classification
With EMIR in force, firms are now wrestling with the challenge of classifying their customers – without an industry viewpoint the dialogue could get ugly …
State banking: reforming the UK infrastructure
At the beginning of March, George Osborne travelled to the English seaside town of Bournemouth to make a speech at the JP Morgan operations centre there. It wasn’t Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day speech, but it may well go down as a watershed moment in the history of the UK financial services sector. Osborne is […]
IPS 2013 KPMG Daily Show Reports
Download daily International Payment Summit 2013 reports from KPMG
Dealing with Generation Y
Banks should pay attention to the needs of a new generation of consumers if they want to secure their business lines for the future, according to Mark Hale, head of payments at KPMG.
Mobile will kill the traditional bank branch says Brett King
Disruptive digital technologies such as mobile and the internet will destroy the established retail banking business models by removing the physical product and replacing it with a digitised bank account, according to Brett King, speaking at the IPS show in London today. “In the old days there was a physical product, and a physical store,” […]
Corporate treasurers demand bank attention
Banks are not good at communicating industry change to their corporate clients, according to a panel of senior industry representatives speaking at the IPS conference in London today.
Competition regulation will stifle payments innovation
Proposed policies intended to promote competion in payments could stifle innovation and standardisation in the payments and transaction banking sectors, according to a partner in a leading law firm. Dermot Turing, partner in the international financial institutions and markets group at Clifford Chance, told delegates at the International Payments Summit in London that moves by […]
State banking
Banking is too important to be left to banks – can governments do any better Also in this issue: Profile: Grand designs – Arun Jain, founder of Polaris Financial Technologies Same day, same settlement: same day payments are being adopted worldwide. What does that mean for D+1 settlement in Europe? Riding the OTC rollercoaster: new […]
Card Forum: Discover/PayPal Rollout to Begin April 19 (April 9, 2013)
PayPal and Discover will begin the rollout of PayPal as a payment option at the point of sale, starting April 19, Don Kingsborough, PayPal’s global vice president and general manager of retail and prepaid, said yesterday. Speaking at Card Forum in Boca Raton, Fla., Kingsborough shared the stage with Discover’s Joe Hurley, senior vice president, […]
Card Forum: Put Your Durbin FAQ Plan in Writing (April 9, 2013)
Card Forum kicked off its 25th annual conference in Boca Raton yesterday with “Prepaid Day” and not surprisingly, the Fed’s FAQs on Reg. II came up during a session on regulation. The guidance, which came out two weeks before the April 1 compliance deadline for network routing rules, appears to require PINs to be issued […]
KFC Tests Mobile Payment App in U.K. (April 9, 2013)
Yum! Brands Inc.’s KFC is the latest fast-food giant to pilot a mobile payment app, launching its first such effort near London. Consumers will be able use their smartphones to place orders and pay ahead of time, then pick up their food upon arrival at the store. KFC joins Starbucks Corp., Burger King Corp., Dunkin’ […]
Orange, Vodafone Customers Can Pay with a Beep on Bucharest Subway (April 9, 2013)
Orange and Vodafone customers now can use their mobile phones to pay for trips on the subway in Bucharest, Romania. The system this month is being expanded to the city’s entire 51-station metro network after testing in seven stations last year. Customers can purchase tickets by sending a text message to a special number. A […]
LevelUp Pilot for Student Dining Launches at Pair of Colleges (April 9, 2013)
Students at two colleges have a new way to pay for campus meals, thanks to a pilot being launched by food service manager Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services and mobile payment and loyalty network LevelUp. The program—undergoing a test run at Buffalo State University in Buffalo, N.Y., and the Curry Student Center retail dining venue […]
Same day, same settlement?
The Payment Services Directive in Europe mandated next-business-day settlement – D+1 – for payment transactions between EC states from Jan 2012. But with some European countries already using faster operating standards, Neil Burton and Gareth Lodge ask: is D+1 good enough?
Venn Partners unveils structured products risk tool
Credit advisory and investment partnership Venn Partners has launched Venn Risk Analytics, a financial analysis platform that it says will provide an independent and transparent approach to the analysis and valuation of structure finance products.
Mirror, mirror: how does your risk data look?
Following the release of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation, middle and back office professionals in major financial centres now find themselves with a number of difficult questions, that senior management must be able to answer and evidence.
Citi sets out segregated collateral service
As tough new rules requiring the collateralisation of OTC derivatives take hold in Europe and the US, Citi has retooled its OpenInvestor investment services to include segregated collateral custody accounts – a move the bank says will help mitigate counterparty risk and improve collateral efficiency.
Grand designs
Arun Jain, chairman and chief executive of Polaris Financial Technology, is a great believer in the power of design to transcend ordinary development work and deliver superior results – results that pay. Banking Technology caught up with him at the opening of the firm’s new design centre in Chennai.
Swift Innotribe Challenge London names semi-finalists
Swift’s Innotribe project has announced the fifteen semi-finalists for its startup challenge, which aims to help innovative new companies in financial services to get started.
Blackhawk IPO Could Fetch Up to $220 Million (April 8, 2013)
Ahead of its planned IPO, Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. has set a stock price of $20 to $22 per share, numbers that could lead to the prepaid card provider and third-party distributor raising up to $220 million. Grocery chain Safeway Inc., which owns 96 percent of Blackhawk, revealed plans last year to sell a stake […]
Green Dot, UniRush Prepare ‘RushCard Live’ GPR Card Rollout (April 8, 2013)
Aiming to capitalize on the combined strengths of two of the prepaid industry’s most potent marketing forces, Green Dot Corp. and UniRush LLC today unveiled the RushCard Live Reloadable Prepaid Visa Card, which will be rolling out later this month at thousands of Green Dot retail partner locations. Leveraging the popularity of UniRush LLC co-founder […]
U.K. Bans ‘Excessive’ Payment Card Surcharges (April 8, 2013)
A U.K. ban on merchants imposing “excessive” surcharges when consumers pay with credit or debit cards that went into effect April 6 could mean fewer surprises for consumers that previously complained about getting stung with unexpected transaction fees when paying for airline and rail tickets and other online purchases. But some observers say the new […]
Alegeus: CDH Accounts Up 63 Percent Since 2010 (April 8, 2013)
With consumer directed healthcare (CDH) accounts on the rise, the use of payment cards linked to those accounts also is increasing. And Waltham, Mass.-based Alegeus Technologies, which offers healthcare benefit and payment solutions that feature healthcare spending debit cards, is seeing robust growth, the company announced today. During the three-year period from 2010 to 2013, […]
North America drags feet on big data says Celent
Despite its potential, the vast majority of financial services firms have still not implemented big data tools, according to new research conducted in North America by analyst firm Celent.
Bloomberg builds twitter feed for financial services
Bloomberg has added real time twitter feeds to its Bloomberg Professional service so that market participants can use twitter updates from corporations, executives, governments, media outlets and other sources to help make investment decisions.
Bank of America launches video banking ATMs
Bank of America has launched a new ATM service that will allow users to have a video conversation with a human teller at the machine.
London goes contactless
The announcement earlier this week by Transport for London that Londoners have paid for more than 700,000 bus fares using their contactless bank cards since the option for contactless payment was introduced three months ago is proof that contactless payment is finally here, says Bernhard Lachenmeier, head of products and marketing at SIX Payment Services. So why does it feel like this isn’t the case?
Oddo & Cie embraces SmartStream risk management
French bank Oddo & Cie has chosen SmartStream Technologies to help improve its risk management and increase levels of automation in its reconciliations processing.
