Enlightened buy-side firms are facing the challenges of high-touch regulation, fragmented liquidity and ongoing cost pressures head on and developing new business models and approaches at every stage of their workflow.
With the rise in mobile payments and wallets, cash is dead and so is the ATM business, right? Not according to the ATM manufacturers, who are all being remarkably sanguine.
Financial software giant FIS is sitting in the middle of the move to mobile, with its customers serving 21 million users. Doug Brown, senior vice president, e-banking, says that’s just the beginning.
If Facebook can garner trust from enough of its active users to adopt Autofill by Facebook, there are billions of dollars at stake. But, no one goes to PayPal to post baby pictures. No one congratulates 12-year-olds for winning a soccer game on Amazon. Facebook wandering into payments easily could be as awkward, especially as users become more leery of how their information is shared between Facebook and its partner sites.
The No. 1 barrier to consumer adoption of flexible spending accounts (FSAs) has been removed. The U.S. Treasury and IRS on Halloween announced they were changing their stance on the so-called “use-or-lose” rule, enabling consumers for the first time to rollover up to $500 from their FSAs instead of forfeiting those funds back to their employers.
MiFID II is almost upon us. Expect it to be the topic of conversation very soon. So what do you need to know about it?
The burgeoning wealth of Asia represents a huge opportunity for asset managers that can scale their businesses across the region, but it will place huge strains on firms’ operations, driving them to explore a new approach to outsourcing.
Swift’s head of banking talks about how the industry co-operative plans to build services based the data flowing through its interbank messaging systems.
Separating customer billing from core systems can have dramatic effects on the bottom line – a study by Boston Consulting Group at one bank found that 17% of clients were unprofitable.
Change is coming to the prepaid card industry, whether by regulation or legislation, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray promised lawmakers this week at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, but he declined to provide a timetable. “[Prepaid cards] are one of the problem areas in consumer financial protection because they’re a hole in the […]
As Ts are crossed and Is are dotted by financial institutions and corporates preparing for the Single Euro Payments Area some recent announcements point to the glittering world of opportunity beyond mundane SEPA compliance.
Conduct risk is gaining teeth, and with MiFID II on the way it’s set to gain a whole load more. But there is just one problem: nobody quite agrees on what conduct risk means or where its boundaries are set.
New OCC guidance reminds financial institutions that third-party oversight is where it’s at.
Compliance concerns are causing nearly one-third of banks to turn away business, according to a new report from Aite Group.
It’s unclear whether the prepaid industry will have the CFPB’s proposed rules for GPR cards by Dec. 31, or if the wait will extend into 2014.
The chaos of the crisis did not spark renewed interest in innovation: no ideas of note were created within banks and surprisingly few people left their jobs to launch start-ups – the innovation gap in the financial sector has been largely filled by the growth of the fintech start-up sector.
Payroll card industry participants should brace for more potential negative news as lawmakers and plaintiffs’ attorneys around the U.S. continue fishing for outlier examples of payroll card abuse, observers say. The industry’s antennae shot up earlier this week when Pennsylvania lawmakers followed through on an earlier promise and proposed legislation to ban payroll cards. Separately, […]
PayPal’s pending acquisition of Braintree will broaden its scope of innovative digital commerce solutions, support its developer platform overhaul and bring P2P competitor Venmo into the fold.
Issuers or program managers that focus marketing efforts on the savings that can be achieved through HSAs could increase account take-up and improve the profitability for those accounts at the same time.
Commodity traders are rapidly adopting new analytics tools to help, testing how a combination of powerful cloud-based processing systems and increasingly sophisticated analytics tools can boost their bottom line.
To prepare for the overhaul to settlement in Europe, financial institutions need to face up to T2S and work closely with their settlement service providers to ensure that they maximise the business benefits. It’s time to seize the opportunities presented by the T2S initiative.
Clear and effective legislation could result in a beneficial change for business. An unclear and ineffective one would result in another obstacle to a “further integrated and efficient European payments market,” which the commission has set as the first objective the Payments Package should achieve.
China’s miraculous economic catch up since reform and opening up has created an unprecedented generation of consumers. The way this generation has adopted the on-line world in China is very different from that in the West.
Two House Democrats have proposed measures to crack down on money laundering by deterring the use of shell corporations and giving regulators the authority to hold bank executives accountable for misconduct taking place on their watch. The first bill, proposed by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), would strengthen the government’s ability to charge individuals with violations […]
A law prohibiting surcharges on certain types of payments should apply to mobile carriers, an adviser to the EU’s Court of Justice told the Austrian Supreme Court, which is currently deliberating an appeal by T-Mobile after the carrier’s surcharges were ruled illegal by lower Austrian courts. The case stems from a lawsuit filed by a […]
Firms like JP Morgan and HSBC have taken major measures to improve internal controls so that they can comply with new and changing regulations. It won’t end there.
With new regulations on remittance transfers set to take effect next week, the CFPB laid out its standards for examining companies covered by the rules. In Jan. 2012, the CFPB issued its final rule outlining remittance regulations as set by the Dodd-Frank Act. The rule was revised in May 2013 after complaints from industry participants […]
The European Central Bank (ECB) is calling the next three months critical for stakeholders still needing to migrate to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) for electronic payments transactions. The deadline for migration to SEPA credit transfer (SCT) and SEPA direct debit (SDD) schemes is Feb. 1, 2014. “Everybody has to be ready . . […]
Russian telecoms carrier MegaFon has announced the commercial launch of an 8,700 kilometre long terrestrial fibre optic trunk connecting Europe and Asia. The DREAM – Diverse Route for European and Asian Markets – link extends from Frankfurt-am-Main to the Kazakhstan-China border, through Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and was created by MegaFon in cooperation […]
Although retailers traditionally had balked at offering discounted gift cards, many are shifting strategies to keep up with consumer demand and are increasing overall sales.
An ex-Coca Cola chief executive was once quoted talking to staff about the work-life balance – juggling careers, family, health, friends and spirit. In the financial services industry today, work life itself is quite a balancing act.
Cybersecurity and cyber espionage have been in the headlines the past few years as leaked stories relating to government-sponsored activities have appeared and sabre rattling between aggrieved nations has moved to the public domain. At the same time an increased volume of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) on banks and other institutions carried out […]
Online commerce has begun to approach saturation in Western markets, while fraud, competition and a more demanding consumer base are squeezing online payments providers.
The second annual Money2020 in Las Vegas earlier this month had a vibe unlike payment conferences of the past, and not just because of the acrobats roaming around during networking sessions.
Please let me use your camera. Do you mind if I browse through your contacts so I know all your family and friends, and can call or text each at my discretion? To the uninitiated, these eerie questions read like a disturbed love note from a stalker. But these are common permissions requests for many mobile apps. Could they scare off users?
New head of prepaid speaks on his multifaceted career, his view on prepaid and why living in the Bay Area gives him a unique perspective on payments.
One may speculate that with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party having secured a quite remarkable third term in office, the last in a long line of potential hurdles for the advocates of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) in Europe has been overcome
Coming to the US to tell an audience of payments specialists about how the UK has transformed its national infrastructure over the past five years with the introduction of an effectively real-time payment system might have been considered a rough assignment – what can the Brits teach the wider world, particularly the US, about payments […]
Formed earlier this year, Zapp expects to launch next year with the backing of most of the major UK retail banks, Peter Keenan, chief executive of the venture, says that at the time of launch the Pay by Zapp service will be available to 40% of UK current account holders, and it will have the backing of 50% of the nation’s online and mobile retailers – including well-known brands.
There comes a tipping point when market readiness, social behaviour and technology combine to create a sudden, ubiquitous change of behaviour. For mobile payments the tipping point may have arrived – but will there be a dominant solution?
