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 […]
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.
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 […]
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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.
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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?
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Menlo Ventures, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital investing firm, has announced that Karl Mehta has joined the company as venture partner. Mehta will focus on sourcing investments and serving as an adviser in the financial services, mobile payments, e-commerce and gaming spaces. He developed his expertise in these areas as founder and CEO of […]
The Members Group (TMG), a Des Moines, Iowa-based card processing and payment solutions provider, has promoted three of its senior-level staff members. In their new roles, Georgann Smith, Darron Dunn and Karen Postma will focus on serving TMG’s growing list of clients. Smith has moved from director of marketing and communications to vice president of marketing. She will provide […]
FIS, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based banking and payment technology provider, has named James B. Stallings Jr. to its board. Prior to his retirement in January from IBM after 23 years, Stallings served in a variety of management roles, including general manager of enterprise systems. He also has worked at GE Company and ROLM Corp.; is managing […]
Braintree Inc., a Chicago-based e-commerce payments processor, has announced that Chris Fry, senior vice president of engineering at Twitter, has joined Braintree’s board of directors. With his experience in building world-class developer platforms, Fry will advise on the continued development of Braintree’s payment platform. His expertise will support Braintree as it continues to make it […]
Allied Payment Network, a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based provider of online bill payment services to the financial industry, has announced that Gary Daniel has joined the company as executive vice president and board member, bringing more than 45 years of experience to the firm. Daniel has held management and executive positions at several companies providing data […]
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.
Fiserv Inc. is the latest to offer mobile deposit capture for prepaid cards, with a new program targeting prepaid card processors that includes a check-guarantee service so cardholders may receive funds immediately instead of waiting several days for checks to clear. Fiserv’s Prepaid Source Capture, based on the remote deposit capture it has offered banks […]
Payments processor Global Payments Inc. will support Visa Europe when it launches its V.me digital wallet in the U.K. this spring. The country’s third-largest card payments processor, Global Payments joins WorldPay as processing partners for the U.K. version of the wallet, which launched a pilot with bank partner RBS late last year and is expected […]
As competition among mobile merchant acceptance services in India grows, merchants seem to be responding to the new technology. Bangalore-based iKaaz says that within three months of launching its NFC-based card reader for merchants, the company is processing 800,000 transactions monthly. The iKaaz NFC Reader, available for US$20, plugs into any mobile phone and enables […]
Video game giant Nintendo will launch a series of prepaid cards in Japan that feature characters from the popular Super Mario franchise. The cards will be available in monetary denominations of 1,000 yen (US$10.40), 2,000 yen (US$20.81) and 3,000 yen (US$31.21), and will be available starting in late April from convenience stores and other retailers […]
Fed Staff Interpretation of Reg. II Creates Precarious Limbo for Debit and Prepaid By Marilyn Bochicchio, CEO, and Brad Fauss, EVP and General Counsel, Brightwell Payments It’s April 3, two days past the effective date for the Durbin Amendment exclusivity routing rules for prepaid. And, many prepaid (and, likely, debit) executives in the United States […]
A new generation of ATMs that offer customers more personalised services will provide a core tool for increasing levels of banking competition, according to a new report by business consultancy Navigant.
With government officials considering a FinCEN anti-money laundering rule that would require consumers to report when they transport prepaid cards, along with cash and/or monetary instruments, with a value of more than $10,000 into or out of the country, representatives from three payment card networks went to the White House to request the rule be […]
Online merchants using Minneapolis-based Digital River Inc.’s e-commerce platform may now add paysafecard, a European-based prepaid electronic payment option, to their consumer checkout menus, the companies said. Paybefore Award-winning paysafecard, founded in 2000 in Austria, provides prepaid payment services for more than 450,000 European and U.S. merchants in 33 countries. Adding paysafecard “makes online purchasing […]
London-based prepaid voucher provider Ukash is rolling out a new service that will enable customers to turn their vouchers back into cash. Set to debut later this month, the Cash Withdrawals service lets users turn their game winnings or Ukash transaction change into cash at more than 24,000 PayPoint-enabled retailers throughout the U.K. Previously, Ukash […]
Mobile payments are evolving at different rates around the globe, with Asia leading other regions including Latin America, Europe and North America in growth. However, progress is uneven and it remains unclear which payment technology will prevail worldwide, according to a new report from Amsterdam-based payments consulting firm Innopay. In Japan, for example, contactless payments […]
Many debit and prepaid card issuers are scrambling to make provisions as of today with debit card routing rules under the Durbin Amendment and the General Use Prepaid Exemption. Issuers were caught off guard as a result of FAQs, representing a Federal Reserve Board staff clarification of the requirements, released quietly by the Fed in […]
Consumers and businesses inside and outside of China may have enhanced online payment options now that Chinese online commerce giant Alibaba Group and MasterCard have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work together on e-commerce. In addition to enhancing e-commerce, the companies said key goals of the MOU include working to help combat intellectual […]
Prepaid cards represent “the next chapter” of electronic government payments, according to a new report from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and the Hudson Institute, which outlines ways to make benefit disbursement cards even more beneficial to recipients. One approach to improving benefit cards is by increasing the choice of card products available […]
A new money transfer service is providing Nigerians with a way to manage and access their Western Union remittances via their mobile phones. VCASH subscribers can use the service, which was launched last week by Western Union Co. and Nigerian mobile payment operator Virtual Terminal Network, to transfer individual Western Union remittances up to US$300 […]
Hungary this fall will roll out a uniform system for paying transportation costs via mobile phone. The National Mobile Payments System will be run by Nemzeti Mobilfizetési, a state-run company, while various mobile payment providers will act as resellers, according to a report in the Budapest Business Times. The platform initially will enable mobile payments […]
Barclays has appointed Yera Hagopian as global head of liquidity product within its cash management team. Hagopian joins Barclays from JP Morgan where she was EMEA head of liquidity.
Reports have swirled for the past week or more that the European banks that own Visa Europe might soon exercise an option to sell the organization to U.S.-based Visa Inc. and set up a new network of their own. Although Visa Europe members may be driving the sale, taking control of the European network could […]
