Mobile payments specialist Zapp is expecting to sign up five of the six major UK banks within the next few weeks, following a deal with acquirer WorldPay, announced this week. However, the platform still has a long way to go to catch-up with rival Barclay’s Pingit, which has a significant head-start, having launched in February 2012.
The challenging ongoing economic climate and the resulting shrinking markets have created an environment of greatly increased competition. In order to deal with the pressures of recession, retail banks are increasingly being forced into a strategic transformation of business structure, culture and practice. How they interact with customers is a prime focus during these transformations, writes Mike Davies, Regional Vice President Sales EMEA North at GMC Software Technology.
With only one in five UK consumers using their mobile to make payments, new research suggests that the technology is being held back by consumer fears over security, lengthy sign-up processes and problems making payments outside of individual schemes.
The payment industry has never seen so much change or opportunity. It continues to be reshaped by shifts in the economic landscape, new technologies and customer needs and this is set to continue.
Visa Europe and its majority-owned mobile money specialist Monitise have signed a deal with IBM in a major mobile banking and mobile payment collaboration targeting Europe’s banks.
Turkey’s Garanti Bank has launched a new ‘socially integrated’ mobile banking service called iGaranti, which connects with Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare to help users send money to friends and family.
A new mobile payments network called YellowPepper has launched in Colombia, marking the beginning of a massive project to bank the unbanked and sweep away the dominance of cash across the Spanish-speaking Americas.
Payments made via mobile devices are fast becoming de rigueur as tablet sales are expected to overtake personal computers by 2017. Shane Fitzpatrick addresses five common myths about m-commerce and how to capture online revenues. Smartphones are already more popular globally than desktop PCs and of the 1.875 billion phones to be sold in 2013, […]
Most debates about High Performance Computing in financial services quickly turn into conversations about high frequency trading, but there are many more reasons for getting the best of out of systems. Electronics and computer technology have always been pushing the boundaries of smaller, faster, cheaper (or at least, ‘more affordable’) and financial services firms have always been quick to take advantage of the latest advances.
A new trading app has been launched by Interactive Data subsidiary eSignal, which promises to help traders use the iPad to obtain information and market data on the move. A subsidiary of Interactive Data, eSignal is based in California. The firm’s technology is targeted at making it easier for traders to get access to real-time […]
As the high-frequency trading arms race continues, some firms are exploring the idea of using lighter-than-air balloons as a faster way of transmitting data.
Canada is seeing a fresh push to promote near field communication (NFC) services after Canadian cooperative financial group Desjardin signed a deal with mobile money solutions provider Monitise and a joint venture with the nation’s three largest mobile operators.
One in three US adults now uses mobile banking in their day to day lives– a rise of almost double since 2011, according to new research from the US Pew Research Centre.
US-based Kearny Federal Savings Bank has chosen to install bank processing and mobile payments technology from specialist firm Fiserv, which it says will help the bank increase efficiency and attract new customers.
French railway operator SNCF has adopted a mobile payments system from Californian tech firm VeriFone Systems, which allows customers to pay for railway tickets using a mobile device.
Telecoms firm Orange is planning to launch a set of mobile payment services in Botswana and other countries in Africa and the Middle East, which it says will easy access to funds around the clock and bring new point of sale, online and ATM transaction options to customers.
Western Union has launched a mobile money service in Nigeria, which it says will help boost financial inclusion and provide new methods of money transfer for people sending and receiving money to Africa.
As the Moscow Exchange launches a new liquidity incentive promotion, Sergey Sinkevich, head of DMA at Russian broker Otkritie, argues that Russia’s move to adopt T+2 settlement is the most important development in the last 20 years for the country’s capital markets.
All of the UK’s mobile network operators have extended their carrier billing offerings by connecting to Gemalto’s direct billing platform, the mobile security solutions provider announced.
Banks should not be afraid to go further and faster in their adoption of cloud computing, says Mohamed Gamil, chief operating officer at Islamic Bank of Britain.
In our world of 100%+ mobile penetration, companies in Latin America will soon need to think like their next wave of prospective customers, most of whom are unbanked. This means understanding their lifestyles, habits and needs in order to decide how to best generate value.
Orange and oil and gas group Total have forged a partnership in Africa and the Middle East, providing access to Orange Money services at all Total service stations in the regions, spanning a total of 13 countries to date.
A mobile wallet offering built by Kalixa Group claims to be able to turn just about any phone – including the iPhone – into an NFC payment device. The toolkit has launched in the UK, marking the first step in the firm’s plans for Europe-wide NFC mobile payments.
India’s ICICI Bank is to launch a mobile payments service built by Movida, the Indian joint venture between Visa and mobile money specialist firm Monitise, that will draw on the potential to reach unbanked customers in the country.
Mobile operator EE is launching a UK mobile payments service called Cash on Tap, in a move that highlights recent efforts across Europe to make mobile payments a reality.
Predicting the future is never easy, but trying to anticipate likely developments in a particular area is essential in order to take timely action. With that caveat, Stephen Lindsay, head of standards at SWIFT, sets a boundary on a discussion on the Future of Standards: “What we are trying to do is extrapolate a little bit from where we are now to where we might be in a few years’ time,” he says.
Cover story: high frequency trading isn’t the only reason to deploy faster technology … Also in this issue: A road to nowhere? The UK’s plans to improve competition in retail banking are not without critics. The lure of the East: opportunities and challenges in the Middle East markets A watching brief: regulators are beefing up their […]
UniCredit and IBM are to form a joint venture company that will offer IT infrastructure services to other financial institutions as part of a “multi-billion dollar”, 10-year agreement.
The on-going turf wars that have held back the adoption of using mobile phones as a payment device at the point-of-sale will soon be a thing of the past if the progress made in Bratislava over the past year is any indication. The success of a project involving Visa Europe, Tatra Bank, Telefónica Slovakia’s O2 operation and a substantial number of retailers makes the Slovakian capital a showcase market for contactless technology.
Mobile payments looks set to receive a boost in Poland after six banks announced they will collaborate to create a new standard in the country.
The financial services sector’s growing interdependence between internet-accessible clearing and transaction processing infrastructure means that a successful DDoS attack can have far reaching consequences, such as customer dissatisfaction and loss of trust, brand damage, increased operating costs and lost revenue to name just a few.
For the first three months of 2012, Misys was the subject of a protracted bidding war. Misys is clearly not the company it was a year ago:the firm has endured some painful change, but it has at least been quick. It has also produced what promise to be tangible benefits for users …
The impact of the internet on the banking industry may yet turn out to be far more important than the financial crisis and the subsequent regulatory overhaul. Viewing statements on-line and making payments electronically is just the very beginning of the revolution.
Spanish bank Sabadell has released a mobile app that lets consumers withdraw cash without a debit card.
ISO 20022 has been hailed as the lingua franca in payments and securities for some years now. It offers great potential for re-engineering the payments industry, and for process improvement, but for a standard that promises so much it is still relatively unknown.
Next Bank Madrid has chosen the finalists for a competition that seeks to find the best financial services startup companies from the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world.
Speakers at the Digital Services Conference hosted by Informa in London on Tuesday expressed frustration at the lack of progress made by mobile wallets in the UK and called for more innovative solutions to bypass the impasse.
Brokers will need to spend more on risk management over the remainder of 2013 if they are to survive incoming financial regulation and new technologies will be required to make that possible, according to new research by Tabb Group.
Innotribe, the Swift-backed initiative to enable collaborative innovation in financial services, has announced the names of the five contenders from the US leg of its annual Startup Challenge to compete at Sibos 2013 in Dubai in September.
Much has been said about the ‘bank 3.0’ landscape. We all now know that the Generation Y consumer, or the ‘digital native’ customer, demands a new type of banking. From online, anytime banking, to mobile payments, the face of banking is changing accordingly
