Overall holiday sales figures may be a mixed bag so far this year, but gift card sales for the season are on track to hit news sales peaks in the U.S. and the U.K., aided by an uptick in online sales, plus growing popularity for digital gift cards, new data suggest.
The financially underserved market in the U.S. generated approximately $103 billion in fee and interest revenue in 2013, based on consumer usage volume of $1.3 trillion in financial products and services, according to a new study from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and Core Innovation Capital.
After a strong showing in consumer bitcoin spending on Black Friday weekend, Blade Financial yesterday launched what it’s calling the first B2B payment processing platform that extends traditional debit card programs to bitcoin businesses.
Anabel Perez, CEO of prepaid processor and program manager NovoPayment, has been selected as one of this year’s Endeavor Entrepreneurs, which recognizes entrepreneurs who have become role models and give back to their communities as mentors and investors for the next generation of innovators.
Euronext is planning to launch a new service that would allow derivatives to be reported to Euronext and cleared by LCH. Clearnet. The new service will use the Tradexpress platform built by vendor Cinnober, and is due to go live in spring 2015.
Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. has announced that Jane J. Thompson and Richard H. Bard have been elected to its board of directors effective Oct. 6, 2014, when the board expanded to 10 members.
Fiserv Inc. has announced that Marc West has been named president of the company’s digital channels business.
Blade Financial has launched what it says is the first B2B payment processing platform extending traditional debit card programs to bitcoin businesses.
New York City-based Metropolitan Commercial Bank has appointed Mark Colyer vice president of the prepaid card group.
MyECheck Inc., a Folsom, Calif.-based provider of electronic check solutions for Internet and mobile payments, has named Bob Sacco national account manager.
TSYS has announced the promotion of Dannell Mastrean to group executive of major accounts.
Blackhawk Network this week announced a new distribution deal with the U.S. Postal Service, introducing the company’s gift card malls to select post offices in time for the holiday season.
NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based electronic payments association, and the European Central Bank (ECB) independently are taking steps to speed up the payments process with the goal of same-day settlement.
During the feverish shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, even bitcoin had its mad moment.
Spain’s BME is poised to open a new trading route from London to Madrid, which it says will increase the speed of access to the Spanish stock market for investors in London.
With gift cards expected to be a top seller this season, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation, Sprint, GiftCards.com and CashStar are making it even easier for consumer to do their holiday gift card shopping online and on their phones.
U.K.-based mobile money provider Monitise plc has signed a 7-year agreement with Virgin Money to develop digital banking products and services for Virgin Money customers.
Russia is scheduled to begin testing its new National Payment System (NPS) with eight banks next week, and the platform is scheduled to become fully operational in the first quarter of next year.
Faster Payments, the UK payment clearing system, is planning to expand access to more payment service providers in the coming year. The organisation has set out its plans in a new Whitepaper, which explores possible cooperation with the Bank of England to develop new settlement models for non-bank payment service providers.
The FFIEC’s recently updated BSA/AML Examination Manual is emphasizing—as it has in the past—that the buck stops with issuing banks in terms of ultimate responsibility for BSA/AML compliance for prepaid access products, regardless of agreements or contracts with other players in the value chain.
Millions of dollars keep flowing into the payments industry as investors recently showed support for advanced payments cards from Dynamics Inc., Stripe’s e-commerce solutions and a digital-only Atom Bank.
The Reserve Bank of India has issued guidelines for licensing small finance banks in the private sector to, among other objectives, better meet the needs of unbanked and underbanked populations and to provide credit to small businesses, farmers and small industries.
Department store Kohl’s Corp. expects to enjoy the fruits of combining a mobile payments app with loyalty this holiday season.
Fewer than a third of banks are at the implementation stage of projects implementing the Basel intraday liquidity monitoring rules that come into force next month – and most believe that industry collaboration will be needed to achieve a successful outcome.
ICAP is combining its EBS foreign exchange and BrokerTec fixed income electronic trading platforms into one business unit. The change is“an internal management reorganisation” and the platforms will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
Holiday shoppers with PayPal accounts took to their mobile devices in droves last week, with PayPal Inc. reporting a 56 percent surge in mobile sales volume over its platform on Thanksgiving Day compared to last year and a 62 percent jump on Black Friday.
Europe’s biggest payments company is coming to the U.S. Stockholm-based e-payments provider Klarna has announced it will earmark at least $100 million for a U.S. expansion, including a new operations center in Columbus, Ohio.
SpendSmart Networks is pulling the plug on its prepaid card business, citing poor performance amid increasing regulatory pressure and associated costs.
PULSE Network LLC, a Discover Financial Services company, filed a lawsuit against Visa Inc. late last month alleging antitrust law violations it says undercut PIN debit competition. Meanwhile, Target’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit related to its 2013 data breach was denied.
Following its success during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping frenzy this year, alternative currency Bitcoin is gaining popularity and could be poised for major growth in 2015. But the currency still has a long way to go before it catches up with rivals such as PayPal, Visa and MasterCard.
Symphony Communications, a financial industry messaging service provider, has acquired a rival service provided by Markit, a financial data management provider. The move may bolster Symphony’s ability to rival more entrenched, expensive cloud-based chat services used by financial institutions.
A platform for sharing cyber-security threat intelligence among financial services companies has been launched by US post-trade utility the DTCC and non-profit security organisation FS-ISAC. Called Soltra Edge, the platform gathers data about cyber-security threats and converts it into a standardised format for sharing.
China UnionPay continues to take steps to make it easier for its customers to make payments on their mobile devices.
U.K.-based mobile money provider Monitise plc is getting a major capital infusion, landing a £49.2 million (US$77 million) investment from the trio of MasterCard, Santander Group and Telefónica.
Debate on the EU Payments Package, composed of the revised Payment Services Directive and the Regulation on Interchange Fees, recommenced in Brussels on Nov. 19. Although the two pieces of legislation are part of one “package,” they’re at different stages in the legislative process, and depending on how they progress, the transition into law could be smooth for the industry—or not.
The hotly-contested contract to provide a real-time payments system in Australia has been won by Swift, which has announced plans to develop real-time retail domestic payment solutions and compete to deploy them internationally.
While online retailers roll their Black Friday bargains over to Cyber Monday, research shows that an increasing amount of online sales are being made via smartphones and tablets, and this trend is continuing – but this does not mean smaller crowds, as consumers are also switching to ‘click & collect’ services.
Skrill Group, a global provider of online payment technologies to merchants and consumers, has added significant reach to its online payment voucher provider paysafecard with the acquisition of Ukash.
Holiday shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend was slightly lower than the previous year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
UGO Wallet, an NFC mobile wallet developed by UGO Mobile Solutions and Canadian banks President’s Choice Financial and TD Bank Group, launched last week and is available to customers of Canada’s three largest wireless carriers.
