Despite what you’ve been seeing in the mainstream media recently, many prepaid card providers have not only lowered fees in the last few years but many are educating cardholders about how to avoid fees altogether.
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) again is urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to prohibit overdraft on prepaid products and limit the ways in which credit and prepaid may be associated.
On 23 April 2013, the markets suffered a brief, sharp drop as algorithms reacted to “news” from the Associated Press’s Twitter handle that President Obama had been injured in a bombing attack at the White House. In a few minutes, the Dow Jones dropped 145 points, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost $136 billion in […]
Patrice Peyret of Banking Up responds to a front-page article in the New York Times, “Paid via Card, Workers Feel Sting of Fees.”
The prepaid industry must seize on the recent media frenzy as an opportunity to inform and educate the public, government officials and other policymakers.
Regulators regulate, and when they do act, it can have dramatic impact on a company’s business model.
Tori Blake and Chuck Rouse explain the new rules of breakage connected to the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board’s upcoming Revenue Recognition Standards.
By Patrice Peyret, Banking Up In the July 1 New York Times story “Paid via Card, Workers Feel Sting of Fees,” reporters Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Stephanie Clifford raise an important question but fail to answer it: Are a significant number of employers forcing hourly workers to use expensive payroll cards? The three key conditions here […]
The past few years have seen major changes to the way we make low value payments, from pre-paid wallets such as the Oyster Card through to contactless cards in retail transactions – thanks to Near Field Communication devices.
The financial services sector’s growing interdependence between internet-accessible clearing and transaction processing infrastructure means that a successful DDoS attack can have far reaching consequences, such as customer dissatisfaction and loss of trust, brand damage, increased operating costs and lost revenue to name just a few.
After a long wait, the first real FATCA implementation deadlines are just around the corner. To meet the new account identification requirements, by 1 January 2014, institutions should be in the process of implementing the necessary upgrades in their onboarding and overall compliance systems and processes.
The last five years have been tough for the UK banking sector, but optimism is slowly returning, writes Ian Byrne, banking director UK & Ireland at Wincor Nixdorf. Capital reserve ratios are largely being met, the prices of bank stocks are becoming more stable, and there is now even talk of the Government divesting its stake in the banks which it bailed out. Indeed the sector has deserved this boost, but it has got a lot of work to do before it can rekindle the relationship with today’s more technology-adept consumer.
The possibility of jail for miscreant top bankers has hit the headlines following publication of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards final report, a compendium of all that is considered wrong with both banks and the regulator …
Responsible for protecting people and assets across single or multiple countries in a range of different environments, the role of security manager in the finance industry is not for the faint hearted.
Mobile wallets get a considerable amount of media attention, but will any of them really drive users to leave the plastic card era behind? I recently did a comparison test of Square Wallet, Lemon and Starbucks’ own mobile app. While all the payment types I used worked surprisingly well, none of them was an experience that elevated shopping into the futuristic world these apps conjure up among payments enthusiasts.
The impact of the internet on the banking industry may yet turn out to be far more important than the financial crisis and the subsequent regulatory overhaul. Viewing statements on-line and making payments electronically is just the very beginning of the revolution.
ISO 20022 has been hailed as the lingua franca in payments and securities for some years now. It offers great potential for re-engineering the payments industry, and for process improvement, but for a standard that promises so much it is still relatively unknown.
Although the network EMV liability shift is about two years out, card manufacturers already are consulting with their U.S. issuing clients to help them make decisions now about how they will approach the transition to EMV. First and foremost is the decision on when to begin, then which cards in their portfolio should have priority. […]
The securities markets are changing rapidly in the face of regulation and technology shifts, and none more so than the fixed income markets.
By Thomas Cornelius, SVP, InComm Today’s consumers are constantly on the go—they’re busier, they multitask more and they have less time to get everything done. As a result, their shopping habits have changed. In fact, according to Forrester, more than 50 percent of in-store retail sales (approximately $1.2 trillion) are now Web-influenced. To meet the […]
Customers expect their interactions to be as short, and as easy as possible, with a satisfactory outcome. This ideal customer experience can be achieved through a combination of the right strategy, the right resources, the right workforce skills and supporting tools and technology . But so many firms still fail to get it right
Much has been said about the ‘bank 3.0’ landscape. We all now know that the Generation Y consumer, or the ‘digital native’ customer, demands a new type of banking. From online, anytime banking, to mobile payments, the face of banking is changing accordingly
While a child as young as nine years old can use Facebook and Twitter (despite rules saying users should be over 13), multi-million dollar financial service companies often fall behind in their adoption of social media.
If you believe that Apple will support near field communications (NFC) on its next iPhone, it’s time to give up on that hope.
The number of new financial services jobs available in London during May was 20% over the previous month and recruitment specialists say that the trend is upwards, but the number of new jobs in May was 59% down compared to the same period last year.
Brazil, according to a long-standing joke, is the country of the future and always will be. Founded by a mixture of Portuguese explorers and colonists, indigenous peoples, and European and African immigrants, Latin America’s largest country boasts a population of 200 million and a GDP that eclipsed that of the UK in 2011. The country’s banking infrastructure reflects both its rapid rise in recent years and its historic status as an emerging market.
As the value of global cross-border payments such as workers’ remittances increases, billions of dollars are being lost to inefficient legacy systems – but that could be about to change, according to Hank Uberoi, executive director at Earthport.
The post-trade infrastructures behind the world’s securities markets face as much, if not more, regulatory driven change as the trading firms in the face of legislation such as the European Union’s European Market Infrastructure Regulation. While some of the effects will be negative, the regulators are showing a constructive approach and recognising that the infrastructure providers came out of the crisis well, says Thomas Zeeb, chief executive of Six Securities Services.
The extent to which a targeted series of acquisitions over the past few years have moved Temenos from being simply a core banking system vendor to a fully-fledged financial technology specialist became clear at its recent annual user event, this year held in Abu Dhabi.
Recent months have seen rising tensions over the seemingly insurmountable demands for collateral prompted by tough new financial regulation. With US Treasury estimates ranging as high as to $11.2 trillion in stressed market conditions, some observers are deeply concerned that the industry could be in danger of sliding into a black hole
As the first deadline for implementation of the Single Euro Payments Area approaches in February 2014, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is pretty much all over – or at least will be by October 2016, when the second deadline arrives. Don’t count on it, cautions Ruth Wandhöfer, global head, regulatory & market strategy, Citi Transaction Services.
In early 2009, soon after the global subprime fallout, the official Vatican newsletter published a rather contextual referral for Islamic banking, observing that the ‘ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service‘, writes Riaz Akhtar, senior consultant, […]
The latest figures from UK retailers show a significant move to debit cards and new mechanisms like PayPal as consumers shy away from cash and credit cards.
The UK retail banking sector is characterised by a continuing lack of competition and resultant limited customer churn between financial services providers. This has made it difficult even for new market entrants to gain market share from long-standing, less popular competitors, due to the inconvenience and complexity involved in switching banks.
Europe’s post-trade infrastructure is undergoing significant change, driven by the implementation of the single settlement platform Target2-Securities and the forthcoming CSD Regulation. As a result, market participants need to review their current back office system capabilities.
Trading and risk technology specialist Cinnober is investing in a financial IT cluster in northern Sweden, centred on the university town of Umeå and initiating a a one-year trainee programme stating in the autumn.
Banks need to cross a psychological barrier and embrace the concept of outsourcing their payments operations if they are to compete on product innovation and customer service rather than simply on cost.
The idea of sending money via email is not entirely new. This month, however, a new financial player entered this arena: Google announced that it will integrate Google Wallet into Gmail.
By Joseph DeSetto, Emerging Payments Blogger In every technology shift, users are confronted with interfaces that were designed for the previous generation. For example, early PCs rendered graphics of Rolodexes, clocks and other analog desk accoutrements. In this tradition, users of today’s smartphones often are presented with a shopping experience that was designed for the […]
By Ginger Schmeltzer, Fiserv For years we’ve been debating why mobile payments haven’t taken off faster. Debaters point out issues with the number of players in the value chain, business model challenges, competing technologies, lack of a compelling value proposition, security concerns and more. All of these points are valid: Business models are all over […]
