It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Supercard, a MasterCard prepaid card and accompanying mobile app catering to U.K. consumers traveling abroad. Supercard, developed by Wirecard AG and Travelex, enables travelers to earn rewards on the cards they want—except for American Express cards—without paying the typical international transaction fees.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations recently approved its Fiscal Year 2017 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill, and its passage (30-17) most definitely represents a thorn in the side of the CFPB because it delays the bureau’s regulations for payday loans.
With fraudsters setting their sights on digital channels, financial services providers have to walk a fine line to balance security with consumer demand for a fast, frictionless payment experience. A new report canvassed fraud management executives across multiple industries—including mainstream and alternative financial services—to gain insight into the latest techniques and strategies to meet evolving fraud challenges.
Travelex has launched Supercard, a MasterCard and mobile app combo for UK travellers to avoid debit/credit card roaming fees and charges when spending abroad. Supercard will be chip and PIN protected. The security aspect will be taken care of by a payments firm Wirecard. Following a successful pilot, Supercard is now offered to the UK […]
Fintech start-up Neema has issued the MasterCard debit card for migrant workers from the Philippines, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka – which promises to drastically reduce the cost migrant workers pay to send money home. Neema says there are no transfer or foreign currency exchange fees. “One of the biggest expenses for migrant workers is […]
The CFPB wants to make more consumers aware of its watchdog mission and is spending big to ensure that: $15.3 million so far in fiscal 2016, making the federal agency among the biggest government advertisers, according to reports and an online database.
It’s been more than a year since the New York Department of Labor first proposed payroll card regulations, but the agency is expected to follow up with a new payroll card rulemaking in the New York State Register this week. What’s uncertain is whether the regulations will be final or if the state will be following up its controversial proposal with a revised proposed rulemaking for which it will accept additional comments.
Though the focus for most faster payments initiatives primarily has been on P2P and B2B real-time payments, the technology has yet to really be implemented for POS and e-commerce transactions. London-based international payment provider VocaLink and its Zapp technology subsidiary are looking to change that.
Earthport, a cross-border payments service provider, has inked a deal with Commercial Bank of Ceylon to provide local payment capability into Sri Lanka. The deal is part of Earthport’s Asian expansion strategy, with similar money transfer partnerships already secured in Pakistan and India. Sajeev Viswanathan, president, global strategy at Earthport, says the tie-up with Commercial […]
The Bancorp has been named the recipient of the 2015 Data Integrity Compliance Award, presented by MasterCard.
Visa Europe and its innovation hub, Visa Europe Collab, have teamed up with visual discovery and augmented reality app Blippar to bring augmented reality to payments. The new e-commerce solution, unveiled at a recent fashion show in London, enables designer garments to be instantly purchased straight off the backs of models. The pilot fashion brand […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Goldman Sachs to underpin new digital bank with Infosys tech It’ll be the e-Finacle digital banking platform, Banking Technology understands. Infographics: The Euro 2016 guide to e-commerce In the spirit of that football tournament that starts today, we’ve got an e-commerce […]
FIS has published its third annual report, Flavors of Fast, which shows via infographics the growth in the number of real-time payment initatives and usage volumes. Warren Gardiner, VP strategy enterprise payments, FIS, says: “Context is everything: speed without context is just faster; creating context without open data mining is merely an improvement. Speed, context […]
MCX, led by a consortium of large retailers such as Walmart, Target and Best Buy, has announced it’s ending the beta test of its mobile payments service CurrentC, and accounts will be deactivated June 28.
A less powerful CFPB and looser caps on card interchange fees: Those are among the potential features of a bill that Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) plans to introduce later this month that would overturn major provisions of the Dodd-Frank act.
Chase faces a class-action suit filed in federal court this week that alleges the bank’s debit card program for prisoners locks them in a cycle of fees upon their release.
The Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC) has announced the election of Rich Baich, chief information security officer of Wells Fargo and Co., as its new chairman.
Blackhawk Network Inc. has announced the winners of its 10th annual Hawk Awards, which recognize the prepaid industry’s most innovative leaders.
Tristan Blampied has joined Pelican, where he will serve as senior product manager for the firm’s suite of transaction banking, regulatory compliance and corporate payments solutions.
Warren Humphries has joined M&S for Business, the corporate services arm of U.K.-based department store chain Marks & Spencer, in the role of client relationship manager.
Green Dot Corp. has named Brooke Norton Lais to the position of chief marketing officer.
India-based digital payment platform Freecharge has appointed Govind Rajan as its new CEO.
Dean Schlader has joined the RPG Card Services as vice president of retail services.
Payments technology provider Currency Cloud has appointed Fiona Tee to the role of chief financial officer.
Omnichannel digital banking technology provider Backbase has hired Leonore Van Waaij to be the company’s new chief financial officer, heading all of the firm’s financial, legal and compliance operations.
Four of the UK’s biggest high street banks have signed up to launch Zapp’s “Pay by Bank app” mobile payment service. Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Halifax and Lloyds Bank are working with Zapp, VocaLink’s payments innovation team, to deliver the service. David Yates, CEO VocaLink, says the gang of four join a “growing number of […]
Cater Allen, a London-based private bank and a subsidiary of Santander, is undergoing a major technology overhaul. The bank is going to implement a new core banking system, Temenos’ T24, Banking Technology understands. It is now looking to recruit T24 specialists and project managers to help it with system customisation and implementation, and migration from […]
National restaurant chain O’Charley’s announced it suffered a security breach that may have exposed diners’ payment card information during a three-week period starting in mid-March.
ACI Worldwide is partnering with UK-based Raphaels Bank, opening up access to the Faster Payments Scheme in the UK for financial institutions (FIs), including challenger banks and payment service providers (PSPs). ACI says its relationship with the bank means FIs and PSPs can use ACI as a “technical aggregator” providing real-time access to Faster Payments […]
Not all Olympic athletes will be coming home from the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games with medals around their necks, but they’ll be coming home with rings on their fingers. The first contactless payments ring linked to a Visa-branded GPR account will be given to approximately 45 athletes that are part of Team Visa.
Ride-hailing service Uber has expanded a pilot partnership with Green Dot to all markets in which Uber operates in the U.S.
Prepaid cards accounted for approximately $500 million fraud losses in the past year, translating into 4 percent of U.S. card fraud, an amount that equals $4.70 in fraud loss per card, according to a study released today by LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
With the CFPB’s recently announced NPRM on small-dollar loans expected to have significant effects on the industry, QCash Financial released a white paper to quell concerns credit unions might have about entering the space.
LCH is the first central counterparty clearing house (CCP) to sign up to Swift’s ISO 20022 Harmonisation Charter. The charter is designed to help rollout the ISO 20022 messaging standard and “promote harmonisation”. LCH, which is majority-owned by the London Stock Exchange, is one of 17 financial market infrastructure providers to have “endorsed” the charter, […]
Volante Technologies has launched a new solution – as part of its VolPay Foundation payments platform – for integration with Ripple’s distributed ledger technology. Volante’s software has been Ripple-ready since last autumn, says the vendor, and following “close engagement with Ripple” it has now brought to market an “integration solution wholly designed to simplify the […]
Will everyone really benefit from the real-time payments coming to the US? Can the US regulator mandate the banking sector to adopt it? And what are the chances of this new faster payments system becoming ubiquitous? Banking Technology digs deeper, past the hype. It’s a pretty safe bet that the roll-out of faster payments in […]
Nets and Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane (ICBPI) have joined forces to launch an instant payments solution in Italy. The new offering is set to go live in Q1 next year. It will be based on Nets’ RealTime24/7 platform and will serve the Italian payment service providers (PSPs). “We will provide to the Italian […]
Members of the financial services industry have launched a media campaign in support of a bill they say would provide better protection of consumer data, bring retailer accountability for data breaches in line with the financial sector and supersede myriad state laws pertaining to breach-notification regulations.
The European Commission has granted final approval to Visa Inc.’s planned acquisition of Visa Europe, with the transaction expected to close by the end of this month, Visa Inc. announced.
The Finnish government and Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) have teamed up to launch a new prepaid platform offering cards for use by the country’s prison inmates. Rolled out in May, the program makes prepaid cards available to prisoners upon arrival at prisons throughout Finland.
