TSYS will be processing payment authorizations for Optal Financial Ltd.’s virtual card payments business, according to an Oct. 26 announcement. London-based Optal is a global provider of B2B payments services, including virtual account numbers, and is one of Europe’s biggest virtual card issuers, according to the companies.
Toronto-based payments start-up nanopay has completed its $10 million Series A funding round. With this financing and the MintChip platform, which nanopay recently acquired from The Royal Canadian Mint, it is developing new business partnerships to “expand the global utility and acceptance” of MintChip. Laurence Cooke, CEO and founder of nanopay, says its focus is […]
CardOneBanking, a UK-based current accounts and payments services provider, has launched new mobile banking apps built by Degree 53.
BBVA has reached a global agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as it looks to cloud computing to boost its digital banking services. The agreement, which is part of a series of accords that the group is making with providers, turns AWS into its “preferred” cloud infrastructure services provider. AWS will execute the migration of […]
Bank of America has unveiled its new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to help customers make decisions on their finances. Called Erica, a nod to the name America, it will be available inside the bank’s mobile app in 2017. Customers can do the usual AI stuff – chat via text or voice – and it’s all […]
South Africa’s insurance group Discovery has received the green light from the regulators to set up a bank – the anticipation is that a banking licence will be granted within a year.
UK-based Raphaels Bank has chosen FIS’s reconciliation solution to help extend access to Faster Payments. Earlier this year, Raphaels Bank became the first new member of the Faster Payments Scheme (FPS) since its inception in 2008, stating its “aim was to improve access to the scheme”. The bank offers a sponsorship model for “instant connectivity” […]
Fresh off announcing a plan to bring PayPal payments to Facebook Messenger, PayPal Inc. Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready said the move was part of the company’s larger push to serve what he called “contextual commerce”—enabling mobile payments to take place in areas outside of the traditional checkout environment.
Merchants get ready: That was among the main messages at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, during an Oct. 25 roundtable session with executives from the four major payments networks.
The rise of chat bots in financial services and payments continues with announcements this week from Mastercard and Bank of America that each company will be introducing similar technology. Mastercard is launching a bot for client banks’ and merchants’ customers and BofA’s bot, which it says is more of an “assistant” will service its banking customers.
Consumers are getting savvy to the myriad ways gift cards can be used, given, stored and obtained. For example, though 46 percent of consumers surveyed still prefer to hand cashiers a physical gift card, nearly 14 percent would rather load, store and redeem gift cards using a mobile wallet, and 40 percent of respondents were amenable to using mobile or plastic methods, according to a survey released Oct. 24 by the Retail Gift Card Association.
Nebraska-based Farm Credit Services of America (FCSAmerica) has chosen Fiserv’s DNA core account processing platform to support its agricultural lending operations. After evaluating 20 systems, FCSAmerica selected DNA to replace its existing core system. Banking Technology understands the lender has been using Misys’ FusionBanking Loan IQ system for the last five years or so, for […]
Verifone is partnering with Alipay to enable retailers in North America and Europe to accept payments from Chinese tourists. According to Verifone, nearly 100 million Chinese consumers annually travel abroad and use Alipay to make purchases. This latest partnership follows quickly on Alipay’s deals with Zapper and Ingenico – both for the same reason as […]
Pan-African banking group Ecobank has launched its Ecobank Mobile App across the continent – the “first unified app delivered by any institution for use in 33 countries”. Ecobank says the app will give it the “scale and capacity” to achieve its target of attaining 100 million customers. Ecobank Group CEO Ade Ayeyemi says the app […]
Those seeking to innovate in the financial services sector might view the CFPB as more of an obstacle than a partner. But bureau Director Richard Cordray sees the consumer protection watchdog as very much a friend of fintech. During a keynote session capping the opening day of Money20/20 in Las Vegas, Cordray said the CFPB and regulated fintech providers can learn a lot from each other.
Matt Lanford will join Atlanta-based prepaid product and technology company InComm as senior vice president and general manager, overseeing its financial services team, effective Oct. 31. Lanford, who has held numerous leadership roles at Mastercard in the U.S. and in Europe, will take the lead in expanding InComm’s consumer-facing Vanilla brand of gift and GPR products.
Retailers want a bigger seat at the payments table as more consumers use mobile devices to shop and pay. That was the main message Monday morning during a Money 20/20 session in Las Vegas.
Uber has teamed up with MasterCard and Mexico’s first online bank, Bankaool, to launch its own debit card. The latest deal is Uber’s ride deeper into the fintech space. It recently partnered with Standard Chartered to offer the bank’s credit cardholders cashbacks on Uber rides. The UberCard in Mexico is linked to a Bankaool bank […]
Visa has unveiled Visa B2B Connect, a new blockchain-based platform that it is building with US-based blockchain specialist Chain Inc. At present, the solution is in preview mode. It will be piloted in 2017.
Ingo Money is teaming up with Visa again, this time to enable corporations, merchants, financial institutions and governments to make payments directly to more than 4 billion consumer prepaid, debit and credit cards, and mobile wallet accounts.
Here’s a shocker: Gift cards will be a popular item during the holidays and a bright spot for retail sales. New survey stats released Oct. 20 from InComm show that 95 percent of consumers expect to give two or more gift cards this year, a slight increase from last year.
Jargon defeated. Unnecessary words deleted. A brief payments round-up. LeFinance, a division of Beijing-based tech firm LeEco, has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation for cross-border payments on the latter’s blockchain network. The deal means Stellar expands into China. LeFinance will also use Stellar’s network to monitor credits for usage across their various devices and […]
Google has launched its Android Pay service in Hong Kong with support for MasterCard and Visa cards. It works with cards from BEA, DBS, Dah Sing Bank, Hang Seng Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong. Users can add multiple cards and Google says there’s no limit to how many can be added. […]
R3 and twelve of its blockchain consortium member banks have trialled Ripple’s Digital Asset XRP for interbank cross-border payments. Using XRP, Ripple says it can enable near real-time value exchange anywhere in the world, providing “liquidity on demand and reducing associated costs”. David Rutter, CEO of R3, says the prototype “paves the way for a […]
The number of households without bank accounts fell to its lowest level since the FDIC first began conducting its biannual survey in 2009. Seven percent of U.S. households were unbanked last year, according to the FDIC’s 2015 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, released Oct. 20.
Online shoppers in the U.K. looking to get their hands on the latest athletic apparel now, but who might not have the funds to purchase them until later, can pay in installments.
Chase said on Oct. 19 that Wakefern Food Corp., a supermarket chain based in New Jersey, will soon accept Chase Pay mobile payments. CVS Health, meanwhile, is rolling out its in-house CVS Pay service across the United States
Dubbed PayItNow, the white-label service is fully integrated within the existing digital platform COCC provides its client financial institutions.
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
Words cut. Time saved. A round-up of key events in the payments enclave. Azimo, the money transfer service, has launched a new version of its mobile app for Apple and Android users. On the iPhone, the app will allow users to transfer money through the voice-activated Siri system. Customers can transfer money by telling Siri […]
Payments services provider Circle has commenced its operations in Europe, starting with euro availability in Ireland and Spain. The expansion will enable people in the EU/EEA region to send and receive person-to-person (P2P) payments with native Euro support to friends and family within their countries and across borders instantly – with zero fees.
Want to save some time but be in the know of the latest funding initiatives in the fintech space? Then read on.
BFC Bank, a subsidiary of the Bahrain Financing Company money transfer group, has received authorisation from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as it finalises its launch as a UK bank. For its technology, BFC will be using an outsourced “bank in a box” version of ERI’s Olympic core banking system. […]
India-based microfinance entity Ujjivan Financial Services is converting into a small finance bank (SFB), and has signed for Financial Software and Systems’ (FSS) end-to-end payments solution.
Wirecard AG and Orange have launched a parent-supervised, prepaid mobile payment service for teenagers called Orange Cash Jeune. Parents go online to create an account for their children who are younger than 18, signing up via the Web interface of Orange Cash before the app is installed on their children’s smartphones.
A new mobile payments platform from FIS aims to make shopping easier for consumers at gas stations and convenience stores. Called BuyWay, the technology “unites all points of contact within a transaction to deliver seamless, secure, personalized shopping experiences at thousands of gas stations and convenience stores across the nation,” FIS said this week.
Despite the 60 percent growth of mobile e-commerce to $120 billion in 2015 from 2014, many merchants are doing little to sway consumers to use their apps versus using a mobile browser, according to a Javelin study. Last year, consumers’ purchases via Web browser totaled $75.3 billion, while retailer apps accounted for just less than $47 billion.
Experiments with mobile order-ahead continue to be on the menu for many companies in the fast-casual dining vertical, with popular burger chain Shake Shack launching a test run of the service this week as part of its first-ever app. At the moment, the order-ahead function only works at one Shake Shack location, in midtown Manhattan, which the company said will serve as a market test for the service before rolling it out to “additional markets.”
Online commerce accounts for 8.5 percent of all card transactions but 45 percent of fraud, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. As more transactions move to online and mobile channels, fighting fraud in those channels will become even more challenging. Discover Global Network discusses the latest fraud-prevention tools that offer protection without adding friction.
Payments technology and expense management specialist Fraedom is on the journey to tap into the $110 trillion B2B market opportunity that remains untapped today. “If the technology is both powerful and intuitive, people will use it,” states Kyle Ferguson, Fraedom’s CEO.
