Sibos 2019: “We don’t get rid of anything in this industry”, says Fiserv director
“We don’t get rid of anything in this industry,” says Fiserv director of product Trevor LeFleche on the evolution of payments and the current uses of cash, card and digital channels at Sibos London in an exclusive interview with FinTech Futures.
LeFleche is confident the world will never get rid of a payment process. Instead, he says, despite the industry always inventing new ones, it also “always invents new techniques to extend the life of old payment instruments”.
Processes such as taking pictures of checks reinvent old traditions, says LeFleche, who goes on to point out the value of card in an increasingly digital transacting society like the UK.
“I think people start to realise the value of card when they experience fraud in other channels,” he says, using the example of faster payments. If people suddenly want to get their money back, they can’t, because the transaction doesn’t come with the expected consumer protection. “That is a huge benefit of card,” says LeFleche, “because you have a process that actually allows the transaction to be consumer friendly”.
As money moves faster and faster around the world, with the release of products such as Swift’s cross-border payments gpi, LeFleche feels more regulation will need to be put in place to ensure payments don’t go missing on a regular basis.
“Fraud in the UK can happen in seconds, hundreds of thousands of dollars can be swept out of the country and banks are missing it. This is not an acceptable outcome,” adds LeFleche.
Fines and prison time for the subsequent money laundering which happens as a result of this fraud are increasing in the UK. *Reuters* revealed the average length of prison sentences for offenders convicted of money laundering has risen 32% in the past decade, from 20.5 months to 27 months. In terms of fines, earlier this month British company Touma Foreign Exchange received a record £7.8 million fine from HM Revenue and Customs.
When it comes to the topic of Libra and whether they’ll succeed in an increasingly regulated environment, LeFleche says “it would be great to have Libra, but we can’t have all the consequences of undoing everything that needs to be done [i.e. regulation]”.
