Banked households—those that have at least a checking or savings account at a bank or credit union—have risen to 93 percent. That’s the good news. But a whopping 57 percent of U.S. households are financially unhealthy, and that financial health impacts even those earning middle-class incomes and beyond.
Instead of leveling the playing field, the Great Fintech Revolution is driving inequality between those with easy access to the digital economy and those without. Luckily, there are some simple but significant ways to change that.
A Pennsylvania appeals court has sided with McDonald’s employees, deciding that the owners of 16 franchises were in violation of the state’s Wage Payment and Collection Law (WPCL) by requiring employees to be paid with payroll debit cards. The court filed its decision Oct. 21, 2016, which stems from a 2013 lawsuit—consisting of a class of 2,380 current and former employees, according to Law360—alleging that franchise owners Albert and Carol Mueller made it mandatory that employees’ wages be paid through payroll card rather than cash or check.
As the holiday shopping season kicks into gear, Dunkin’ Donuts customers now can send gifts via Apple iMessage in iOS 10. The popular chain—and longtime mobile pioneer—is the first national coffee retailer to integrate with the updated messaging service, which enables users to access the Dunkin’ Mobile App within a chat and purchase a mobile gift card using Apple Pay.
Despite Brexit, 72 percent of British banks think London will remain Europe’s financial center in five years, according to new results from a survey the Tabb Group conducted on behalf of consultancy Synechron. Yet 55 percent of the 80 capital market executives polled said their financial institutions have set up committees charged with coming up with relocation plans as the U.K. prepares to leave the European Union.
UK challenger “neo-bank” Pockit says it now has 100,000 customers, “nearly twice as many” as three of its rivals – Monzo, Atom and Tandem – “combined”. On its website, Pockit says it is a “prepaid MasterCard, not a bank”, so the term “neo-bank” may be worth scrapping or explaining. It’s been around for a while, […]
As banks gain a more prominent spot in the mobile payments market, will they become the one wallet to rule them all?
ACI Worldwide has partnered with Turkish Bank UK to power its Faster Payments offering. The UK-based bank will use ACI’s aggregator service to connect to the nation’s Faster Payments Scheme (FPS) – allowing it to process all transfers to and from UK bank accounts “instantly”. It will use the service via ACI’s cloud-based delivery model […]
The payments industry went just a bit blockchain bonkers at this year’s Sibos. Distributed ledger technology (DLT) was a hot topic throughout the week. This was quite astounding given there are very few examples of working blockchain or DLT use cases; most of the initiatives under way are proofs of concept.
The global prepaid card base will increase to 921 million in 2021, up 46 percent from 624 million as of Dec. 31, 2015, according to a new forecast from U.K.-based Retail Banking Research, or RBR. Despite the prepaid surge, debit will continue its dominance of the overall cards market. RBR’s “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2021,” which does not cover closed-looped prepaid cards, found that debit cards in 2021 will account for 72 percent of all payment cards worldwide, up from 70 percent in 2015.
In the wake of a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that shut down hundreds of Websites in October, the Smart Card Alliance has issued a warning on the “critical need” to ramp up security on hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected devices. It’s those devices—which range from cars to refrigerators and make up the Internet of Things (IoT)—that hackers are hijacking and incorporating into their botnet attacks, making attacks large enough to overwhelm Websites’ defenses—as was the case in the most recent attack, which affected major Websites including Twitter, Netflix and Spotify, among others.
New York State’s pioneering BitLicense program could be losing momentum after the departure of New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) head Benjamin Lawsky last year. The state has issued just two BitLicenses since enacting the program in June 2015, shortly before Lawsky left the agency. Another 15 licenses are pending, while four applications have been withdrawn and four others have been denied, according to Reuters, citing an NYDFS spokesperson.
Self Bank, the Spain-based online subsidiary of France’s Boursorama financial services group, said it will register new customers via video-conferencing, biometrics and electronic signatures, a move that could reduce time and costs of the expensive customer-onboarding process.
The name may not be catchy but “The Japan Bank Consortium to Centrally Provide Domestic and Cross-border Payments” has officially launched with 42 member banks. As Banking Technology reported in August, SBI Ripple Asia, a joint venture between distributed ledger tech provider Ripple and SBI Holdings, announced that a Japanese consortium of 15 banks in […]
MasterCard has unveiled its own blockchain as it reacts to arch-rival Visa’s partnership with Chain and seeks to use the technology in payments and trade finance. Its version is currently at the testing stage and offers the usual things in this corner of the fintech world. These include smart contracts – scriptable transactions that automate […]
As part of its mission to improve the U.S. payments system, the Federal Reserve’s Secure Payments Task Force is seeking industry input on ways to beef up security. Industry members can provide comment through online surveys, which are separated into the task force’s three areas of focus: payment identity management, information sharing for the mitigation of payment risk/fraud and data protection.
Election-season politics are taking up ad space typically used to get holiday shopping on the minds of consumers—but observers predict a post-election surge as Americans finally get into the holiday shopping spirit. And much of that spending will be on gift cards—both as gifts for others and for self-use.
Audio-based payments continue to make noise with India’s YES Bank enabling payments via sound waves over its mobile wallet and OCBC Bank becoming the first in the Asia Pacific region to enable secure payments via Apple’s Siri service.
Earthport, a cross-border payments service provider, has revealed its revenues increased 18% to £22.8 million for the full year (FY) 2016 – powered by the rise in payment volume and transaction numbers. For the year ended 30 June 2016, it says payment volume increased to more than $11 billion, a 64% increase prior to the […]
OCBC has become the first bank in Asia Pacific to let customers send cash through Siri. Users can send money with a voice command via Siri, then use the OCBC Pay Anyone mobile e-payment service. It also offers Apple’s instant messaging service – iMessage. No need to stop texting, payments can be made without leaving […]
Fiserv’s GAAP revenue increased 5% in the third quarter to $1.38 billion, with 8% growth in its payments segment and 2% growth in the financial segment, compared to Q3 2015. The firm also released figures for the first nine months of 2016, with GAAP revenue rising 5% to $4.07 billion, with 8% growth in the […]
U.S. consumers’ usage of mobile devices in-store ranks as one of the highest compared with shoppers in other countries. However, their use of mobile devices at the POS drops dramatically, according to the 2016 FutureBuy report, which tracks trends in online, mobile and brick-and-mortar shopping. The results indicate that payments providers have work to do to convince shoppers m-wallets are worth the effort.
Sleek, small, clean and thumbprint-operated—a new Diebold Nixdorf ATM shown off at this week’s Money20/20 show in Las Vegas points toward the future of cash distribution, and speaks to the spreading potential of biometrics in payments.
Last month, Discover Global Network announced its support of two fintech scholarship contests hosted by the Center for Financial Services Innovation, an authority on consumer financial health, and Gefen Capital, an investment group representing U.S. and Israeli investors that focuses on investing in Israeli startups. The contest winners, Lenny, Debitize, and PayKey, received financial awards from CFSI and Gefen Capital, and were given the opportunity to demonstrate their unique solutions in the DGN exhibition booth onsite at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the largest payments and innovation conference in the world.
Financial services research and advisory firm Aite Group has hired Tiffani Montez as a senior analyst in its retail banking and payments practice, where her research will span card issuance for prepaid, credit and debit cards.
Mobile carrier billing specialist Bango has hired Fernando Dias to head its operations in Latin America.
Small business lending fintech provider Bizfi has appointed John Donovan as the company’s CEO.
Central Payments, the payments division at Central Bank of Kansas City (CBKC), has announced that Jo Ann Sowers has joined the company as vice president of client relations.
Discover Financial Services has officially rebranded its payments network to Discover Global Network, representative of Discover Network, Diners Club International, PULSE debit and ATM network, as well as alliance partners around the globe.
Southeast Asian ride-hailing app Grab has named Ming Maa as its new president, based in Singapore.
Real-time push payments technology provider Ingo Money has named Jonathan Donahue executive vice president of business development.
Payments industry veteran Larry Stone has joined the board of directors of JetPay Corp., a provider of debit, credit and prepaid card services.
London-based compliance consultancy Neopay recently opened a U.S. office in Los Angeles to serve clients on both sides of the pond and named Joel Sherwin president of U.S. operations.
Gerd Schenkel has been appointed CEO of Tyro Payments, an Australian financial institution specializing in acquiring, where he will be tasked with leading the company’s growth and public advocacy activities.
Wells Fargo & Co. has formed a new payments, virtual solutions and innovation group, to be headed by Avid Modjtabai.
Spire Payments and Spanish savings bank association EURO 6000 have teamed up to launch a mPOS solution called “Pinpago” in Spain. Pinpago uses Spire Payments’ mPOS device, the SPm20. The device is enabled by a payment mobile app which is downloaded to the merchant’s smart device of choice (phone or tablet) allowing payment transactions for […]
It may come as no surprise that the CFPB’s latest monthly complaint snapshot released Oct. 25 focuses on complaints related to prepaid products, considering the agency released its long-awaited final prepaid accounts rule earlier this month. But despite the bureau’s contention that “the report shows that consumers continue to experience issues trying to manage their accounts and access funds,” prepaid-related complaints to the bureau dropped 21 percent in September.
Samsung Pay is expanding. The mobile wallet early next year will offer the Masterpass online payment service from Mastercard to Samsung Pay users. That comes as Samsung Pay deploys to Malaysia, Russia and Thailand, putting the mobile wallet in 10 countries total, executives said this week at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas.
Payments are moving up the value stream and becoming an engagement platform, moving beyond the transfer and settlement of funds to more deeply connect a consumer and brand. In this environment, payment providers—including those in the gifting and rewards verticals—can leverage the popularity of other brands to improve their own value and stand out from the pack. Those were among the main takeaways from a Money20/20 keynote from Talbott Roche, president and CEO, Blackhawk Network.
With Walmart Pay showing strong growth since launching earlier this year, Walmart’s Daniel Eckert—one of the main architects of the service—provided some insights into the motivation behind creating Walmart Pay and what’s in store for the service. Speaking in a Tuesday afternoon session at Money20/20 in Las Vegas, Eckert characterized Walmart Pay as an effort to improve the checkout experience in particular.
