PayTech


Viewpoint: What Does Brexit Mean for Payments?

Brexit likely will cause issues for major processors and cross-border acquirers for whom London has been a key European and cross-border processing hub. That’s in addition to a restricted market and reduced talent pool.

UniRush Appoints Ron Hynes as New CEO

UniRush LLC, a provider of consumer financial services, including the Visa RushCard prepaid debit card and the rapid! PayCard, has named industry veteran Ron Hynes CEO. A 2014 Pay Award Industry Achievement Winner, Hynes previously served as executive vice president of global prepaid solutions at MasterCard Worldwide and, most recently, as president of global markets at Mozido.

Holvi launches MasterCard card for SMEs

Finnish fintech start-up Holvi has launched a debit card, Holvi Business MasterCard. It is available to customers in Germany, Austria and Finland. This follows on from the launch of a mobile banking app for iOS and Android last summer. Holvi, which was founded in 2011, provides entrepreneurs and SMEs with a range of financial and […]

ING and KBC team up for mobile payments in Belgium

ING and Belgian bank KBC have joined forces to launch a new, integrated mobile payments and loyalty platform in Belgium. This will combine ING’s payment app Payconiq with loyalty platforms Qustomer and KBC’s CityLife. Rik Vandenberghe, CEO ING Belgium, says the customer feedback it received about Payconiq and Qustomer “strengthens our conviction that as a […]

Singapore banks to pilot Facebook and Twitter IDs for payments

Banks in Singapore are working together on a new service that will allow users to make payments using Twitter usernames or Facebook IDs. According to the FT, a pilot is due to take place in the first quarter of 2017. Rather than entering an account number and sort code, users will be able to make […]

CFPB: Prepaid Complaints Spike in May

Although the overall number of prepaid card-related complaints continues to represent less than 1 percent of total complaints the CFPB receives, prepaid complaints were up 28 percent in May to 226 from 177 the previous month, according to the federal consumer protection agency’s latest monthly complaint report.

MasterCard Faces U.K. Suit over Interchange

MasterCard faces a $24.5 billion class action suit in the U.K. over its cross-border interchange fees. The suit arrives two years after the European Union labeled the interchange charged by the payment card network as unfair. European interchange caps went into effect in December of 2015.

Torstone’s Inferno backs BNP Paribas in Fed Reserve deal

BNP Paribas Securities Services has become a direct securities participant to the US Federal Reserve through FedLine, its online financial services information and payment service. The company, a subsidiary of the BNP Paribas group, says this completes its direct connectivity to the US market on all securities instruments. BNP uses Torstone Technology’s post-trade securities and […]

Company on the Move: TSYS, The Civic 50

Payments processor TSYS has been recognized as one of America’s most community-minded companies in The Civic 50, an initiative that identifies and recognizes companies for their commitment to improving the quality of life in the communities where they do business.

UniCredit and MasterCard launch mobile payments for insurance agents in Romania

UniCredit Bank, MasterCard and platform provider GoSwiff have launched mobile payments for Allianz-Tiriac Asigurari insurance agents in Romania. The partnership will enable Allianz-Tiriac agents to start accepting card payments with mobile point of sale (mPOS) for the insurance policies issued by the company. The firms say Allianz-Tiriac becomes the “first insurance company in Romania” to […]

Neopay: The Sky Likely Won’t Fall; Offers Brexit Insurance If It Does

The U.K.’s historic decision to exit the European Union (or Brexit) last month has left many businesses speculating what the ramifications will be for them, especially e-money issuers based in the U.K. that have licenses that they passport to EU countries. Neopay, a U.K.-based e-money and payment regulatory consultancy, is hoping to assuage the jitters of new and established e-money companies in Europe with Brexit Insurance.

Tech Titans Fight Back against Biometrics Suits

In a pair of legal battles that could have a ripple effect into the payments and retail sectors, Facebook and Google have invoked a recent Supreme Court decision and the U.S. Constitution to defend against claims that the companies’ facial recognition systems violate a key state biometric privacy law.

ItzCash to Join Integrated Bill Payment Platform in India

Indian payment solutions provider ItzCash Card Ltd. has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to participate in the country’s integrated bill payments platform, known as the Bharat Bill Payments System (BBPS).

Why payments can no longer be “an industry”

There are three options of a road ahead for the payments industry players: 1) to carry on as they are and watch their margins erode; 2) to transform into a utility; 3) to have a long hard look at their value chain. If you choose the latter – what do you see, asks Sapient Global Markets’ Leda […]

Three firms win Innotribe’s first Latin America start-up challenge

Bitso, Quotanda and Destacame have won the first Innotribe Start-up Challenge for Latin America – and a handy prize of $10,000 each. The event was held in Mexico City in partnership with Swift’s Latin America Regional Conference (LARC). Based in Mexico, Bitso connects the nation’s “traditional” banking infrastructure to bitcoin and blockchain for international cross-border […]

Wirecard moves into North America with Citi Prepaid Card Services acquisition

Wirecard has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Citi Prepaid Card Services – giving it an expansion into North America. The firm says Citi Prepaid card services have launched over 2,500 client programmes, associated with global companies and brands, but primarily in North America. Subject to the usual regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to […]

All that glitters isn’t just our clothes!

When I first started travelling for my job, it wasn’t too afield. I was working in Australia so it involved trips to New Zealand, Singapore and not much more. However, in only a few years, my travel grew to where it became routine to visit the US, Germany and the UK, but with the aircraft […]

Top fintech stories this week – 1 July 2016

Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Brexit threat to UK jobs at Visa Should I stay or should I go? Swift hackers steal $10m from Ukraine bank Massive attack. New challenger bank readies for launch in UK Atten-shun! UK military personnel, veterans and their […]

Nets’ mobile wallet gets nod from Danish banking collective

Nordic digital payments firm Nets has been selected by a Danish banking collective to launch a new NFC mobile wallet solution. The collective, known as the Bokis partnership, 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 […]

Panin Bank launches digital banking service with Fiserv

Panin Bank, a retail and business bank in Indonesia, has launched new digital banking products and services using Fiserv’s Mobiliti and Corillian Online. Ken Ng, director of retail banking, Panin Bank, says Fiserv has allowed it to develop an “innovative, feature-rich and integrated digital banking service that consumers have come to expect in the modern […]

Visa Lawsuit Alleges Walmart Plan to Eliminate Signature Verification

Visa has filed a lawsuit against Walmart in a dispute over customers’ use of signatures or PINs to verify purchases with EMV-equipped debit cards at Walmart. Last month, Walmart sued Visa, claiming the payments network required the retailer to offer EMV debit users the option of signature or PIN verification in violation of the Durbin Amendment.

Bottomline unveils universal aggregator for payments

Bottomline Technologies has launched its Universal Aggregator for payments and the accreditation of its “Faster Payment” processing capability. Bottomline Universal Aggregator has been designed to give banks, corporates, governments and non-financial banking institutions an “easy plug-in” to an array of payment clearing and settlement systems around the world. The “first-of-its-kind” service provides a single interface […]

Hackers use access to Swift network to steal $10m from Ukraine bank

Hackers have used the Swift network to steal $10 million from an unnamed Ukrainian bank, according to an independent IT monitoring organisation that spoke to the Kyiv Post. This latest incident is part of a spate of thefts when the banks’ access to the Swift network was used to execute them. Recently, investigators said they […]

Android Pay arrives in Singapore

Android Pay has launched in Singapore, making it the first country in Asia to get the system. Pali Bhat, senior director of product management at Google, says Singapore was chosen as the third market worldwide after the US and UK due to the number of mobile phone users and highly developed infrastructure. Android Pay will […]

Wirecard Stakes Claim in North America with Citi Prepaid Buy

Wirecard AG has been making numerous deals and acquisitions over the past several months to expand its global footprint, but today’s news that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Citi Prepaid Services puts it firmly on the map in North America.

Senators Want Answers on Prepaid Outages

U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) are demanding answers from Green Dot, MasterCard and Walmart about a May outage that left Green Dot-issued Walmart MoneyCard customers without access to certain prepaid services. The senators also asked MasterCard to distinguish the circumstances between the Green Dot outage and the one RushCard experienced October 2015 when it switched to MasterCard’s processing platform.