OP Financial Group has partnered with Token, a Silicon Valley-based crypto-payment software provider. Token says the agreement will enable the Finnish bank “to innovate in the European open banking market and generate new revenue streams via future payment solutions”.
Cachet Financial Solutions is working with Central Bank of Kansas City again. The two companies, which in March announced a partnership to bring mobile-optimized prepaid programs to community banks, now are working with Rebar Interactive to provide Select Mobile Money-Express, a platform that includes a Mastercard-branded prepaid card.
With the B2B virtual card market estimated at more than $95 billion in gross spending in 2016, payment providers would do well to target the travel sector, which represents the largest single vertical volume of that spending, according to Mercator Advisory Group. One such company, WEX Inc., has found that moving to virtual payments offers travel suppliers, such as hotels, car rental agencies and tour operators, distinct advantages, including getting paid faster, easier reconciliation across borders and improved analytics.
Meezan Bank in Pakistan is partnering with 1LINK Guarantee, an interbank payment network service, to issue PayPak branded debit cards across the nation. PayPak is Pakistan’s “first” domestic payment scheme that aims to provide an “indigenous alternative to international payment schemes”. Ariful Islam, deputy CEO of Meezan Bank, says it “will, inshallah [God willing], develop […]
Australia and New Zealand-based banking group, ANZ, has announced it will be the first Australian bank to introduce voice biometrics on mobile devices to allow higher value transactions. From the middle of this year, customers transferring more than $1,000 through ANZ’s mobile apps will be able to use their voice to automatically authorise high value […]
Grab, a ride-hailing and mobile payments platform in Southeast Asia, will acquire Indonesia-based O2O (online to offline) ecommerce platform Kudo. The Kudo team and platform will be integrated with Grab’s proprietary mobile payments platform, GrabPay. According to Grab, Kudo’s O2O platform allows Indonesia’s unbanked consumers to shop online by connecting them with merchants and service […]
With the growth of “mobile working” and an increasing number of business applications migrating to the cloud, the corporate perimeter has become more porous and vulnerable, driving demand for solutions that manage access and user identities securely and efficiently. This is where identity access management (IAM) technologies come into play. ING’s Sicco Boomsma explores.
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
As mobile payments continue to move into the mainstream globally, new services are rolling out on a steady basis to fill the growing demand for general and more specific use cases. Meanwhile, there’s been a recent surge of activity around “mobile” in a slightly different sense, as providers test drive car-based payments services.
Lighter and brighter – catch up with fintech funding news in our brief round-up. Features Monzo, Quint and Lidya. Mobile-only challenger bank Monzo has raised another £2.5 million from more than 6,000 investors – the highest-ever number of any Crowdcube campaign. This follows its crowdfunding record of £1 million round last year, which closed in […]
Apple Pay has emerged victorious in its long-running feud with four domestic banks over their permission to collectively bargain with Apple and boycott Apple Pay. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued a determination denying authorisation to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Westpac, National Australia Bank (NAB), and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank […]
Child & Youth Finance International (CYFI) and Mastercard have released a guide on banking and payment products for minors. The “Safer Payment Products for Minors” guide offers recommended practices on how financial service providers (FSPs) can develop age-appropriate payment products for minors; promoting responsible spending and financial decision-making. Walt Macnee, vice-chairman Mastercard, says: “Today’s minors […]
At this week’s Smart Card Alliance Payments Summit, experts looked to mobile and transit for a view of how payments will evolve. Here is a dive into the trends that likely will keep making news in the years to come.
A drive through the emerging landscape of in-vehicle transaction projects shows a wide variety of services that could appeal to consumers and push payments forward. But there’s still work to do before automakers are off to the races.
VocaLink’s Pay by Bank mobile payment app will soon be available to customers of HSBC and its subsidiary, First Direct. Pay by Bank app, created by VocaLink’s payment innovation team Zapp, enables people to make “digital debit” payments for goods and services via their banking app, with payment made directly from a current account. HSBC […]
Mastercard is beefing up its transaction security and authentication capabilities in the age of connected devices, entering an agreement to acquire NuData Security, a Pay Award-winning provider of anti-fraud technology that uses session and biometric indicators to verify online transactions.
A little after noon in Brussels March 29, a British ambassador delivered a letter to EU Council President Donald Tusk that set the wheels into motion for the U.K.’s exit from the EU. Today’s announcement makes official the results of the historic vote June 23, when 52 percent of voters in the U.K. stunned many around the world when they opted to leave, or “Brexit,” as it’s commonly called.
Blackhawk Network has given its incentives business a new identity, renaming it Hawk Incentives, which includes products and services formerly part of Blackhawk Engagement Solutions and the prepaid and payments company’s B2B digital incentive teams, according to a March 28 announcement.
Members of a Danish banking collective, Bokis, have become the first in the country to offer mobile payments using Dankort, the national debit and credit card. Bokis includes 62 banks that form the small to mid-sized banks segment of Lokale Pengeinstitutter (the Association of Local Banks, Savings Banks and Co-operative Banks in Denmark), together with […]
San Francisco-based payments specialist Square has landed in the UK. This is the fifth market for Square, following the US, Canada, Australia and Japan.
Hoping to bring “digital cash to everyone,” Samsung has introduced a chip platform that can enable contactless payments in watches, wristbands, key fobs and perhaps even clothing.
Raiffeisen Bank Romania, a subsidiary of Austria’s Raiffeisen Group, is modernising its channels delivery with Backbase.
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
UnionBank of the Philippines (UnionBank) has launched the New EON, a new digital banking platform (a revamped version of the original EON, launched at the start of the millennium). The mobile biometric authentication tech is provided by Daon.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is closing 30 of its own branches and 128 of its subsidiary, NatWest, putting 470 people out of work. The bank says this decision is a result of the changing consumer behaviour, which has now shifted to digital banking.
While the Indian government works toward a digital economy, the Reserve Bank of India is soliciting feedback through March 31 on guidelines for prepaid payment instruments that could adversely affect issuers of prepaid products, including mobile wallets.
Digital payments app, Samsung Pay, has been launched in India. Access is limited to those who signed up for the early access programme and available only on its mid-segment and flagship Samsung Galaxy devices.
Watch out Siri and Alexa, Samsung has unveiled its own artificial intelligence (AI) solution called Bixby. This will be a new interface on Samsung’s devices – with the imminent Galaxy S8 getting it first – and when an application becomes Bixby-enabled, it will be able to support “almost every task” that the application is capable […]
Walmart recently announced another step toward further developing its e-commerce business with the creation of a technology incubator called Store No. 8 to create new retail online businesses as well as help the retail giant better compete against Amazon.com.
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has become the first U.S. regulatory agency to join the R3 Consortium, a global partnership of banks and other parties working to develop distributed ledger-based applications for financial services. The agency oversees the regulation and licensing of banks and financial institutions, among other businesses, in the state.
New underwriting technology developed by Experian and financial data aggregator Finicity could speed up borrowing and enable millennials and other consumers with thin or no credit files to receive money. The product emerges amid a federal call for more work on helping those potential borrowers build credit scores.
London-based fintech start-up Babb App says it is creating a bank based on a “permissioned” blockchain implementation of a distributed ledger using Ethereum smart contracts. The Babb banking platform will operate a decentralised information model to “minimise costs while maximising data fidelity and security” – i.e. the usual suspects. It expects to do a soft […]
QNB Finansbank, QNB Group’s subsidiary in Turkey, has developed TouchFinans, a core banking application for the bank’s SME division to carry on their Windows tablets.
McDonald’s has made its first step towards the internet of things (IoT) with the introduction of a mobile ordering app as a means of streamlining the in-store customer experience. Banking Technology‘s sister publication telecoms.com reports that using apps to deliver services in this segment is hardly a new idea, though experiences to date have been […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
As India’s war on cash wages on, mobile wallets continue to reap the rewards. Although some experts suggested the advent of the Reserve Bank of India’s Unified Payment Interface platform could make mobile wallets obsolete, a new plan for interoperability could be a boon for Paytm, MobiKwik, Freecharge and other mobile wallet providers.
Retail transactions promise to become more vocal and mobile in 2017, according to a new U.K. survey report. Even so, the mainstreaming of chat bots and other new tools appears a while off, given the relatively low level of awareness enjoyed by those innovative technologies.
Berlin-based mobile bank N26 says its user base grew to more than 300,000 over the last year, tripling in size since the last announcement of 100,000 users in January 2016. As Banking Technology reported late last year, N26 took its business fully across 17 European countries, including Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland and Slovakia. Before that […]
Poland-based mBank will set up the “first” fund in Central and Eastern Europe that will specialise in developing and selling new technologies. The Polish bank says it has an ambition to influence digital transformation in the banking sector and its mAccelerator project will provide €50 million in investment to start-ups. mBank CEO Cezary Stypułkowski says […]
Samsung Pay took another stride this week, with ExxonMobil announcing that its customers can now use the mobile wallet at the pump to pay for gas. This expansion comes only months after Samsung launched a points-based rewards program for Samsung Pay.
