Payments


PSR pushes for greater payments competition and innovation

The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) is calling for even more competition and creativity in the sector over the next 12 months. At the launch of its “Annual Plan and Budget for the year 2017/18”, held at the Barbican Centre in London, it summarised its achievements and set out its ambitions to build on the […]

SCOTUS Won’t Revive Settlement in Interchange Case

A legal battle between merchants and payment networks over interchange fees that has been raging for more than a decade will continue now that the Supreme Court has declined to restore a $5.7 billion settlement agreement that was tossed out by a lower court.

Blackhawk Renames Incentives Division

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.

Federal Judge Dismisses CFPB Suit against Payments Processor

A federal judge has dismissed an unfair practices lawsuit filed by the CFPB against a North Dakota-based payment processor. The federal agency had accused Intercept Corp. of permitting unauthorized and other illegal withdrawals from consumer accounts by its clients.

Bokis in mobile payments first with Dankort card

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 […]

Square launches in UK

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.

Fintech funding round-up: 28 March 2017

Enjoy a word-lite delight with our brief fintech funding round-up. Features Clarity Money, The Glue and OOjiBO. US-based Clarity Money, a personal finance app, has announced a $11 million Series B funding round led by RRE Ventures and Citi Ventures. This financing comes three months after Clarity Money launched its product and eight months after […]

Webinar recap: for prepaid issuers, agility is a process(or)

In last week’s Paybefore Spotlight Webinar, attendees representing markets from across the globe said the No. 1 challenge to growing their prepaid businesses is differentiation. Find out what experts from Celent’s banking practice and global processor i2c had to say about creating dynamic prepaid products to compete in the changing payments landscape.

Infographics: the new £1 coin

It’s infographics time! This nifty infographics, created by Mastercard, outlines some interesting facts and figures about the new £1 coin, compared to the old one (introduced back in 1983).

Germany’s KfW Bank in €5bn money transfer error

KfW, a German government-owned development bank, which gained publicity for erroneously transferring more than €300 million to Lehman Brothers the day it filed for bankruptcy, has done it again, according to Bloomberg. KfW mistakenly transferred more than €5 billion to four banks because of a technical glitch that repeated single payments multiple times, according to […]

Samsung makes your wedding ring a payments plaything

Samsung, Smartlink and Ingenico have unveiled their “contactless companion platform” (CCP) to let people pay for things using anything they’re wearing — such as a watch or a wedding ring. It has been built with a dual interface smart card chip for multiple applications and form factors. Users tap the wearable on an NFC card […]

Fintech funding round-up: 23 March 2017

Fintech funding news comes thick and fast, so here are four stories in one to save you time. Featuring Revolut, Jirnexu, Airpay and Quantexa. UK-based payments start-up Revolut has launched its 2017 funding round. The latest bout takes place almost a year after it raised £1 million with 10,000 investors registering, pledging in excess of […]

Comedy comes to cash machines for Comic Relief

A man walks into an ATM. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, and well it could be as Comic Relief, one of the UK’s biggest charity fundraisers, is getting help via interactive comedy on cash machines. ATM marketing firm i-design and Cardtronics UK are donating advertising space on cash machine screens to promote […]

Criminals turn their attention to online fraud in the US

Criminals have deepened their focus on U.S. online transactions since the country’s October 2015 EMV liability shift, with card-not-present fraud expected to hit $6.4 billion in 2018, according to a new report from the U.S. Payments Forum. The expected total would represent a 23 percent increase from fraud losses in 2017, and a 68 percent increase from 2016.

Proposed M-Wallet Rules Don’t Hinder Samsung Pay Launch

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.

EdgeVerve calls for fintech’s magnificent seven

EdgeVerve Systems, a product subsidiary of Infosys, has launched Finacle FinTech Connect and the chance for firms to integrate their solutions into Finacle’s banking suite. Companies are invited to register for a partnership evaluation process and stand a chance to present at its event Infosys Confluence 2017 in May in San Francisco; along with joint […]

UK cheque tech goes breakneck

The Cheque and Credit Clearing Company (C&CCC) has launched an industry-wide image-based cheque clearing system to speed up processing for customers across the UK. The new system will go live with some banks and building societies from 30 October 2017. Then, at some stage in the second half of 2018, all of the UK’s banks […]

Samsung Pay makes its India debut

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.

Earthport revenue and payment volume power up

Earthport, a cross-border payments service provider, has reported a massive rise in its number of transactions and payment volume for the six-month period ended 31 December 2016. The number of transactions reached five million, a growth of about 85% over the prior year period. Payment volume increased by 97% to $7.80 billion and revenue per […]

Tug of love turns to group hug for banks and fintechs

With the EU’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and open architecture framework set to come into force next year, regulation may well tip the scales between banks and fintechs for customer loyalty, according to a new report conducted for Temenos by the Economist Intelligence Unit. In the 36-page study, “Symbiosis: Your bank has your trust. […]

Payments Canada picks Accenture for revamp plan

Payments Canada, an organisation that operates the country’s payment clearing and settlement system, has selected consulting firm Accenture to help it lead “Modernization” – its initiative to improve Canada’s payments ecosystem. Jan Pilbauer, executive director of Modernization and CIO at Payments Canada, calls Accenture a “strong consulting partner”. In December, Payments Canada released its plans […]

Will the CFPB’s Proposed Six-Month Effective Date Extension Be Enough?

In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the CFPB proposed pushing back the effective date of the final prepaid accounts rule to April 1, 2018. The six-month delay provides industry participants more time to handle the difficulties of complying with certain provisions of the rule and for the CFPB to assess whether any additional adjustments to the rule are appropriate. Comments are due by April 5, 2017.

CFPB Stares down another D.C. Challenge

House bill 1009 would require the CFPB and other independent federal agencies to submit regulations annually to a White House office for review, in the latest push to reform the CFPB and otherwise reduce regulatory burdens for the financial and payments industry under the Trump administration.

Samsung moves on Siri with Bixby AI

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 Pushes Omnichannel Shopping with New Tech Incubator

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.

Illinois Regulator Joins Global Virtual Currency Consortium

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.

Wells Fargo Faces New Pressure from Top Democrat over Fake Accounts

The top Democrat on the U.S. House Financial Services Committee wants to interview executives from Wells Fargo over a scandal about fake accounts its employees set up for customers. Last year, the CFPB announced a $100 million fine against Wells Fargo for what the agency called “widespread unlawful sales practices.” The agency said the fine was the largest such penalty it has ever issued.

Bank of England teams with Ripple for cross-border payments

The Bank of England’s (BoE) fintech accelerator has teamed with Ripple for a cross-border payments proof of concept (PoC). As Banking Technology reported last year, the accelerator was set up to harness innovation for central banking. In this latest development, the PoC with Ripple is intended to demonstrate the synchronised movement of two different currencies […]