Four more startups have been selected for the Commerce.Innovated. program. The companies represent the fourth class chosen by MasterCard and Silicon Valley Bank as part of a program to help startups get their products and services off the ground.
Bitcoin continues to encounter hurdles as its supporters try to facilitate the digital currency’s mainstream acceptance. Though certain states and countries are welcoming bitcoin, or permitting it with certain provisos, Russia is considering a ban.
The Prepaid International Forum (PIF) is celebrating its 10-year anniversary in 2016. Emily Baum, a non-executive board member of the forum and business development director of PrePay Solutions, tells Paybefore more about PIF, where the 23-member group is headed and how the industry is responding to calls for increased prepaid regulation following the Paris terrorist attacks.
Green Dot and subsidiary Santa Barbara Tax Products Group have announced a pair of promotions to make this time of year less taxing on consumers while helping independent tax preparers get more customers coming through their doors. One of the promotions involves up to a $750 free advance toward consumers’ tax returns.
Visa wants to strengthen its commerce offerings by opening up its technology treasure chest to software developers bent on improving consumer experiences. The payment network has launched Visa Developer, an “open platform that gives application developers access to Visa’s payments technology, products and services.”
The money keeps rolling in for fintech. Fit Pay, a wearable payment technology startup, raises $3.1 million in seed capital, while distributed ledger technology companies collectively have raised $103 million.
Cybercriminals continue to target payments providers and retailers, with Gyft and Neiman Marcus among the latest firms to announce separate data breaches. The attacks highlight two major data security issues facing financial providers and retailers: third-party security and the migration of fraud to online accounts as a result of enhanced POS security brought about by the arrival of EMV.
Trade Bank of Iraq (TBI) is working with core banking technology provider Misys to upgrade to develop a digital platform. Misys reports it has previously run two major projects with TBI in 2003 and 2009. The bank, claims to have introduced the market’s first ATM solutions and Visa and Mastercard offerings and is set to […]
The European Central Bank has selected connectivity provider SIA, in partnership with telco Colt, for its connection to TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the delayed centralised European platform for the settlement of domestic and cross-border securities transactions. The European Central Bank is expected to migrate to SIA and Colt’s value-added network infrastructure in June 2016. The two companies will also provide the ECB with a message processing […]
Visa Developer, will offer software application developers will open access to Visa’a payments technology, products and services. The new Visa Developer platform is designed to help financial institutions, merchants, and technology companies meet the demands of consumers and merchants, who increasingly rely on connected devices to shop, pay and get paid. At launch, the new […]
European Central Bank (ECB) figures appear to show that cashless payments transaction volumes in 2014 remained flat at 68 billion payments. However, Deutsche Bank analyst Heike Mai, who specialises in payments and shadow banking, has published a report that corrects this conclusion. Entitled ‘Payments in the euro area: Are they stagnating? – No!’ the report […]
At Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, Visa will promote contactless payments at concession stands and in-seat mobile ordering for fans who don’t want to miss any action. Ingenico also announces a big terminal deal for the game.
ABN AMRO is offering ‘webcare’ via Snapchat, the self-deleting message and picture service, which has 1 million Dutch users. Jeroen van de Ven, ABN AMRO Social Media Manager: ‘If a specific target audience opts for a new channel in such large numbers, we as a bank have to adapt, in an accessible way that fits […]
Western Union continues to extend its digital reach with access to approximately 664 million users of mobile messaging app Viber, which enables its customers to send free text messages, photos, videos and make free calls with its push-to-talk capability, among other features.
Pin4, a cardless ATM withdrawal system, could expand to some 70,000 U.S. cash machines by the third quarter of 2016, up from approximately 15,000 in the first quarter of 2016, says CEO Richard Witkowski.
Electronic payment options for consumers are proliferating, and shoppers expect merchants to accept the full gamut of form factors. But for retailers—especially small and midsize enterprises (SMEs)—it can be tough to keep up. That’s where Poynt comes in.
The European Commission (EC) has presented an action plan to fight the financing of terrorism, including targeted amendments to the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) that was implemented in May 2015. These include an amendment to include a list of all compulsory checks financial institutions should carry out on financial flows from countries having strategic […]
The CFPB announced today a three-prong approach to ensure consumers are receiving a fair shake regarding checking account access. But what may surprise many in the prepaid industry is that the agency also is providing information to consumers about the prepaid option.
Shortly after the original deadline to reach an agreement expired on Sunday, the EU Commission and the U.S. have agreed to a new Safe Harbor deal. The new framework will protect the fundamental rights of Europeans when their data are transferred to the U.S. and ensure legal certainty for businesses, according to an EU Commission announcement.
In a new twist on card-linked offers, Visa launches Visa Commerce Network, which it says will make it easier for merchants to engage Visa cardholders with reward and loyalty offers. Uber and Dunkin’ Donuts are among the first companies using the tool.
European Union leaders are calling for tighter regulation of prepaid cards and virtual currencies to restrict terrorist financing and anonymous payments. The European Commission—the executive arm of the EU—also said it will consider launching an intra-EU version of a transaction monitoring agreement that has since 2010 helped detect the movement of funds by terrorists between the U.S. and EU.
Arthur Budovsky pleaded guilty in January after it was determined his company, Liberty Reserve, served as a global hub for laundering more than $250 million of ill-gotten funds from cybercriminals, according to the DOJ.
A snapshot of payments-related earnings reports recently announced is available to you below. Click the company name for more details: The Bancorp Inc. MasterCard American Express Co. Meta Financial Group, Inc. PayPal Holdings Inc. TSYS
P2P lending in the U.K. is a booming business that’s doubled in size since 2014 and approximately £2.20 billion (US$3.16 billion) lent to consumers in 2015.
Payments UK has developed a directory to offer UK institutions some of the benefits of SEPA despite the regulation not applying within the country until October. From 1 February, Eurozone banks and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) can process Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments using only a customer’s IBAN (International Bank Account Number). Previously customers were […]
Prepaid cards continued to comprise just a tiny percentage of the consumer complaints received by the CFPB, according to the agency’s latest monthly complaint “snapshot” report. During the month of December 2015, the CFPB received a total of 230 prepaid-related complaints (out of 20,388 total complaints), down 11 percent from the 257 complaints it received in November.
The 15-year-old Safe Harbor data transfer deal has expired, leaving U.S. and European companies at risk for transferring financial and other information across the Atlantic.
Apple Pay is on its way to thousands of ATMs across the country, as Bank of America and Wells Fargo reportedly are working on integrating the mobile payments service into their ATMs. Meanwhile, Chase soon will roll out ATMs that offer cardless withdrawals via the bank’s mobile app.
Financial software provider Misys has appointed Rob Binns as its chief financial officer. Binns joins Misys from HP where he was head of treasury and investor relations. He joined Hewlett-Packard in 2007 from Mercury Interactive and has held a number of senior finance positions in the company including VP Software Field Operations and VP Investor […]
Emprise Bank, based in Kansas in the US, has selected FIS as its new core banking provider. The bank, which has $1 billion in assets and 37 branches, selected FIS on the basis of its need for high levels of support, and capacity to provide a single platform that would integrate a set of technologies. That in turn allowed […]
The online retail services of HSBC have been brought down in a distributed-denial-of-service attack according to the bank. Online services were inaccessible to clients, the second online service problem the bank’s customers have faced this month, following a two-day outage earlier in January that the bank reported was not caused by a cyber-attack. Concern about […]
Distributed ledger technology provider Ripple and Japanese financial services firm SBI Holdings have announced the creation of a joint partnership, which will expand Ripple into the Asian market. Ripple, which focuses on the using blockchain-like technology for payments, is based predominantly in San Francisco with presences in New York, London and Sydney. SBI is a US$28 […]
I talk with a lot of banking leaders who describe their approach to innovation as being a “fast follower. My typical retort is that they are half-right—most of them are definitely followers, but there usually isn’t anything fast about their approach.
For those of us in prepaid, combating misrepresentation of our products in the media is nothing new. A recent news story claiming banks are leaving customers on the hook for fraud if they use a mobile wallet shows there’s plenty of work to do for new payment methods.
Hyperwallet CEO challenges businesses in the booming on-demand economy to make getting paid as easy as ordering a ride on Uber.
Britain’s payment settlement system for the pound sterling is to be redesigned and rebuilt, Minouche Shafik, deputy governor for Markets & Banking at the Bank of England (BoE) has said in a speech given at the BoE to senior figure in the UK payments business. The twenty-year old Real-Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS), which settles […]
TSYS continued its push to expand its role in the payments value chain with a big move in the merchant services space, reaching a definitive agreement to acquire merchant solutions provider TransFirst for $2.35 billion from current owner Vista Equity Partners.
U.S. House Republicans have accused the CFPB of bungling payouts meant to settle claims of racial discrimination in auto lending.
Payments provider TSYS is predicting high single-figure growth following its acquisition of merchant solutions provider Transfirst in a $2.35 billion all-cash transaction. The deal, announced as TSYS reports its full-year 2015 results, will create a firm with that TSYS claims will be the third largest integrated payments provider in the US – according to a […]
The CFPB is accepting applications for membership in all of its advisory groups.
