Viewpoint: How Consumers Use Apple Pay
Consumers certainly know of Apple Pay. But recent survey results shed light on how shoppers are employing the mobile payment technology and suggest that challenges to further use remain.
Industry Comment
Clearing contradictions in derivatives regulation
There’s one challenge that regulators seem unable to address, and that is regulation itself. Today’s evolving regulatory environment seems to be beset by a range of internal contradictions. One such contradiction is the banks’ decision to act as clearing providers for derivatives businesses.
Rob Binns to join Misys as chief financial officer
Financial software provider Misys has appointed Rob Binns as its chief financial officer. Binns joins Misys from HP where he was head of treasury and investor relations. He joined Hewlett-Packard in 2007 from Mercury Interactive and has held a number of senior finance positions in the company including VP Software Field Operations and VP Investor […]
Hassan named chief digital officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
Morgan Stanley has appointed Naureen Hassan as chief digital officer for Wealth Management, a new position in which she will lead the strategy and marketing of digital tools and platforms serving the firm’s 16,000 financial advisors and 3.5 million clients. Naureen Hassan served most recently as executive vice president, Investment Services Segments and Platforms at […]
Trader voice – the last bastion of the old world
The largest vendors in the trader voice market are now in a similar position to IBM in the late 1990s: their solutions are proprietary, expensive to maintain, and lacking true open integration …
Viewpoint: Leaders, Learners and Laggards
I talk with a lot of banking leaders who describe their approach to innovation as being a “fast follower. My typical retort is that they are half-right—most of them are definitely followers, but there usually isn’t anything fast about their approach.
Viewpoint: Mobile Wallet Myth-Busting Starts Now
For those of us in prepaid, combating misrepresentation of our products in the media is nothing new. A recent news story claiming banks are leaving customers on the hook for fraud if they use a mobile wallet shows there’s plenty of work to do for new payment methods.
Viewpoint: An Open Letter to the On-Demand Economy
Hyperwallet CEO challenges businesses in the booming on-demand economy to make getting paid as easy as ordering a ride on Uber.
Money market statistical reporting: challenges for 2016 and beyond
Money Market Statistical Reporting presents a fair number of challenges. And firms are pressed for time to prepare for these requirements, according to an overview prepared by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services. Where they may have adopted tactical solutions in the past to meet transaction level reporting obligations, now is a good opportunity to think more strategically about investing in the right platform and infrastructure. This is especially true given that daily reporting obligations will soon be extended in 2018 to include securities and financial transactions
Viewpoint: Balancing Digital Money, Counter-Terrorism and the Future of E-Money in Europe
Following the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, some European member states are calling for swift action, while others are concerned that too much regulation would stifle prepaid card distribution and innovation.
Why is it so hard to know who you’re doing business with?
Every bank wants to achieve a single view of a customer, but no-one has found an easy, cost-effective, scalable way to do it. The simple fact is that there is too much customer information, entering the bank from too many places, to align and maintain into a single view. An effective solution would reduce costs, allow the bank to generate revenue faster, facilitate KYC processes and meet regulatory requirements.
Viewpoint: Terrorist Financing and Prepaid Cards: Ban Them!
When a terrorist spends cash, there is no trace, no history of where it came from, where or how it was spent. But using a prepaid card leaves a trail to follow.
2016: An EMEA regulatory view
If 2015 was all about how the financial sector continued its post 2008 crisis transformation, 2016 looks set to promise even more developments in the same vein across the EMEA region. The ongoing change continues to be remarkable in its depth and scope impacting financial institutions and technology firms like Wolters Kluwer Financial Services who exist to enable banks and others to navigate risk and regulatory complexity
Mismatched trade detection poses risks for banks
While some of us have experienced the speed at which sales are completed on the trade floor, most of us have heard tell of it. So it’s no surprise that mismatched trades is a common challenge for most banks, giving rise to the finance technology industry creating a brand new category – solutions for the management of the P&L trading desk
Viewpoint: The Must-Have Fraud Detection Toolkit for 2016
Stop asking customers what kind of car they owned 10 years ago. Make better fraud decisions—and reduce costly false positives—with behavioral biometrics analysis they never see.
Viewpoint: 5 Banking Trends for 2016
Financial institutions are undergoing a seismic transformation. Digital technology is reshaping what consumers want from their banks and the way they conduct transactions. Let’s take a look at the top five banking trends for 2016.
Viewpoint: Enough with the 2016 Predictions—Let’s Think Bigger!
Forget predictions. We’ve got work to do. There are several significant challenges for payments that need to be solved from fixing cross-border payments to making payments disappear.
Viewpoint: The Future of Payments Is Already Here, So What’s Next?
With more contactless cards in the U.K. than people, the new age of payments is already here. But we’re not done yet, and thanks to biometrics, we could be the next form factors.
Keeping file-based threats out of bank vaults
While mention of bank robberies will often conjure images of masked criminals and high-speed car chases, most modern instances of the crime are being conducted from behind computer screens. In addition to the lure of stealing cash, these criminals are going after banks for valuables such as the personal data of customers, details of mergers and acquisitions between companies and the private tax information of corporations, data is fast becoming an incredibly valuable commodity in its own right
Trust, data, and why marketplace lenders are here to stay
New peer-to-peer platforms that match lenders with borrowers are proving to be more efficient than banks at connecting those with money and to those that need money. Known as marketplace lenders, this new industry is still very much in its infancy, currently representing a tiny proportion of total loans compared to bank lending
Industry Views: 2015 Game-Changers, Priorities for 2016
To kick off the New Year, we asked payments industry thought leaders to tell us what happened in 2015 that will most influence payments in 2016 and to discuss their hottest priorities for the next 12 months. Responses run the gamut from a combined Visa/Visa Europe to compliance, wearables and the impact of Chase Pay.
From training to trendsetting: how institutions reverse the fintech migration
Aspiration doesn’t look like it used to. The face of Eighties ambition was a power dresser, clad in a suit with shoulder pads as they rushed to Wall Street to earn as much as they could, whereas today’s bright young things are more likely to be found sipping lattes at a co-working space in Silicon Valley
Viewpoint: Staying Relevant through Gift Card Innovations
There’s no questioning the popularity and appeal of gift cards—especially during this time of the year. Giving recipients the ability to treat themselves to something they really want or need has become prized among gift buyers. What’s even more exciting is how the concept of gift cards continues to evolve as new brands and card types launch.
Viewpoint: Prepaid Regulations Should Go on a New Year’s Diet
The CFPB needs to return to its original plans on prepaid regulations and put its proposed rules on a New Year’s diet. By issuing rules focusing solely on disclosure, the CFPB could issue guidance earlier in 2016 that would help consumers, prevent access disruptions, and potentially reduce the size of the landfill needed to for the mountains of noncompliant cards and marketing materials.
Blockchain: ushering a new era in fintech
The distributed ledger – the central nervous system of the Bitcoin system – is the most sweeping departure from the long-standing financial bookkeeping practices followed since the codification of the Medici’s double entry accounting system.
2016 – dismantling risk governance silos
If 2015 is to be remembered as the year regulators challenged boards to demonstrate their strong governance over their risk management, 2016 promises something just as important. In fact, 2016 will arguably be a truly momentous year in the world of non-financial risk as it could well become the year that risk governance silos are finally dismantled
Helping millennials chart today’s financial waters
Millennials – those highly sophisticated, tech-savvy men and women born between 1980 and 2000 – present enormous opportunities for banks and other financial institutions. Yet to be successful, these businesses must understand and meet the needs of a generation that grew up having it all, seeing it all, and being exposed to it all since early childhood – and that is no easy task.
Legacy systems – still the big barrier to banking innovation
Outdated legacy IT systems are a major stumbling block for traditional UK high street banks as they look to fight back against their often more agile rivals, widely known as ‘challenger banks’, who unhindered by complex, unwieldy IT infrastructures are typically better positioned to innovate.
Viewpoint: Overcoming Prepaid Debit’s Value Issue
Churn is by far the biggest challenge facing prepaid debit card companies. Issuers can combat it by tapping smartphones and real-time analytics to deliver personalized services through a preferred communication channel.
Viewpoint: EMV’s UX Fail and the Case for Contactless
Poor user experience with EMV could be a boon for contactless cards and NFC mobile payments. But retailers could take immediate steps to improve the UX with contact EMV, starting with cashier education.
Viewpoint: The Payments Landscape: The Friction is Real
When it comes to the payments, there are more choices than sweet treats at Dylan’s Candy Bar in NYC (i.e., the world’s largest candy emporium!). The payments landscape is likely to become increasingly confusing and fragmented as retailers ramp up their efforts to influence buying decisions. If we don’t help our members evolve and understand how things are changing, credit unions risk losing the transaction and engagement.
Could banks become our 24/7 personal assistants?
Digital technology is on the verge of transforming banking, in a similar way that Spotify has completely changed the music industry and Netflix has revolutionised broadcast entertainment
Cyber-security will drive New Year jobs boom
Employment prospects in the UK finance and banking sector in the New Year are the brightest in the past three years as high profile data breaches, such as those at TalkTalk and Sony, create a surge in demand for cyber-security experts.
Blockchain Ready?
2015 has been a year of extensive discussion about what role blockchain can play in making processes in the financial services industry more efficient. It has also been a year where both banks and start-ups have been testing whether distributed ledger technology can adequately replace costly legacy systems and improve securities processing, writes Brian Collings. […]
Time to think strategically about Basel capital calculations
As part of the ongoing Basel reforms, the Bank for International Settlements is busy rewriting the rules that govern how much capital banks must maintain in order to mitigate different types of risk. So far the Standardized Approach for Measuring Counterparty Credit Risk Exposures and the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book have garnered the most attention. However, these are just two components of a much larger package of changes to the Basel capital requirements, which banks need to think about holistically and start factoring into their technology programs now
Enhancing global real-time payments: tackling fraud and AML
Quick business successes can be built on the UK’s payment system that will play a key role in encouraging the efforts required to ensure that it achieves the “world class” status the industry is aiming for.
A lesson in effective stress testing
Integrated stress testing is the preferred tool from a supervisory perspective. And that’s on a global basis. It may not be new, but it is featuring increasingly higher on the regulatory agenda and so understanding the technological opportunities is all important. A key building block for effective and integrated stress testing is an integrated balance sheet strategy
Why 2016 is the year asset managers must take back control
There is an uncanny similarity between Prime Minster David Cameron’s emphasis of moving from a “low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, and lower welfare society” and a shifting focus among the asset management community.
Viewpoint: Holiday Forecast: Gift Cards Continue to Expand the Online and Mobile Landscape
It should be no surprise to anyone that gift cards are forecasted to be uber popular again this holiday season. However, it will be crucial for those in the prepaid industry to be mindful of plugged-in shopper preferences to capture holiday spend.
Viewpoint: Why Your Survival Rests on Customer-Centric Strategies
Knowing your customer is taking on new meaning for retailers, If you want to thrive, you must give your customers a personalized shopping experience with a simple integrated payments process.
