The U.K. government has decided to create a new regulatory body for retail payment systems that will be charged with ensuring a level playing field in the noncash payments market by promoting modernization, innovation and meeting the needs of consumers—all of which might otherwise be stifled by a lack of competition, according to Her Majesty’s […]
The London Stock Exchange is planning to roll out a new millimetre wave wireless communication link between its data centre in the City of London and the Equinix data centre in Slough, in a deal that will provide faster access and benefit HFT firms looking to arbitrage between multiple trading venues.
Don Kingsborough, vice president of retail and prepaid products at PayPal, had a clear message for Money2020 delegates in Las Vegas yesterday: “The future is actually now.”
Sapient Global Markets has released a suite of software and services designed to help companies meet FATCA, the controversial new US regulation that obliges banks to report their US customers so that they can be taxed.
Amex, home of that object of envy, the Black Card, is expanding in an unexpected direction – to provide services to the unbanked and underbanked.
Adoption of alternative payment mechanisms is growing more rapidly in developing economies as they leapfrog the legacy infrastructures deployed elsewhere.
Senior financial industry executives have expressed disappointment at the failure of the US and European securities regulators to realise a deal over derivatives reforms and swap execution facilities, the new category of US execution venues brought in under the Dodd-Frank Act.
The overwhelming majority of US consumers would not use a mobile wallet, according to a survey carried out by consultancy Consult Hyperion during September.
Market data from Germany’s Deutsche Börse and India’s Bombay Stock Exchange will be available under a single licence agreement, following a deal between the two exchanges.
Operator group Telefónica has appointed a financial services veteran to lead up its Digital Financial Services unit. Pilar Aurrecoechea has been in the financial services sector for 25 years and will join the operator group’s innovation arm, Telefónica Digital, reporting into Vivek Dev, CEO of Digital Services. Aurrecoechea joins Telefónica from MasterCard where she was general manager for Spain and Portugal.
Trading firms need to upgrade their technology as often as every three months or face getting left behind by the ferocious pace of competition, according to specialists behind the HFT industry’s breakneck expansion into the world’s emerging markets and untamed asset classes.
The US leads the world in card fraud, at least in part because it has lagged in the adoption of the EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) Chip & PIN standard, and continues to use signatures for verification. One result, said Carolyn Balfany, group head for US product delivery at MasterCard Worldwide, during Money2020 in Las […]
A group of like-minded companies came together this summer to address the recent melee in payroll cards. The work is far from over, but their activity points to the power of pooling resources and relationships for real progress and impact.
Bitcoin is here to stay and will continue to grow, according to experts speaking on separate panels at Money2020 in Las Vegas.
Innovative and mobile-centric financial services are taking center stage this week at Money2020, which has drawn more than 4,500 attendees to Las Vegas.
American Express today announced a relaunch of its Serve prepaid account, packing the card with a raft of new features and benefits, including free cash-reload services at CVS and 7-Eleven stores nationwide, plus online bill payment and money management tools, for $1 a month.
Some of the heaviest hitters in e-commerce, banking and tech have joined together to enhance customers’ experience with card-linked offers. The newly formed CardLinx Association counts among its ranks a number of big names, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Discover, Facebook, First Data Corp., LivingSocial, MasterCard and Microsoft Corp. Announced this week at the […]
Economies around the world are making the move away from cash, and the shift largely is being driven by new technologies, government initiative and consumer preference, according to a new report by MasterCard Advisors. Among the countries the report describes as the most “cashless” are: Belgium, where 93 percent of total consumer spending in 2011 […]
MasterCard and Visa separately have launched prepaid cards this week in Myanmar and Ghana, respectively. CB Bank is rolling out a prepaid travel card for citizens of the Southeast Asian country called the CB Bank EASI Travel Prepaid MasterCard card. The financial institution says the reloadable prepaid card is the first of its kind in […]
Financial information services company Markit is aiming to create the largest financial markets messaging community and remove barriers to cross-market communication through its open messaging initiative and supporting technology, Markit Collaboration Services.
US banking and payments technology specialist FIS has launched a cloud-based real time core banking utility aimed at mid-tier banks in central and eastern Europe, which it says will help client to roll out new products faster and cheaper than ever before.
Leeds Building Society has joined the shared services alliance founded by HP Enterprise Services and the Yorkshire Building Society in September, in a deal that will see the society move its core application for mortgages and savings to the cloud. The deal also marks a growing recognition among the UK’s mid-tier institutions of the power of cloud to help them move with the times.
A new tool designed to help banks and their clients gain a decisive trading advantage over their rivals based on Twitter posts has been launched by UK-based fin tech firm Eagle Alpha.
The explosion of innovation in financial service products is driving a growing reliance on third parties to help process and distribute products that, in turn, is making third-party oversight a key priority integrated with daily operations, according to top prepaid card industry experts at preliminary sessions during Money2020 in Las Vegas on Oct. 6. Because […]
GPR and payroll cards—two of the fastest-growing segments in prepaid—continue to expand as a new GPR program and a new payroll card partnership were unveiled today. In separate announcements, InComm and tax preparer Jackson Hewitt said they’re working together on a new GPR program, while The Bancorp Inc. said it will issue payroll cards to TFG Card Solutions’ […]
When Isis, backed by AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile and Verizon, was announced nearly three years ago, Sprint was notably missing from the group of top U.S. telcos involved in the mobile wallet project.
As the federal government shutdown drags on, the payments industry could begin to feel some impacts of the inaction, according to industry observers. And while those effects currently are relatively limited, the coming Congressional battle over the debt ceiling could have serious implications—especially for recipients of Social Security benefits via the Treasury Department’s Direct Express […]
Contact Solutions LLC today announced a new mobile platform to help cardholders access customer service when they want it and easily switch between self-service and a live agent.
PayPal is belatedly paying some attention to design: in its early days, the company didn’t have designers, so the Pay with PayPal button wasn’t very consistent – sellers could tinker with it and even modify the colour. That’s changing, John Muller, vice president and general counsel, told Money 2020.
Some European money transmitter companies are learning what insurance carriers from outside the US. learned years ago — the country is a nightmare of financial regulations that can differ sharply from state to state. And European companies that are doing business in individual states probably need a license from that state.
Basic security mechanisms in payment and banking systems are poorly applied and are out-gunned by the resources available to cybercriminals, a session at the Money2020 event in Las Vegas was told.
The European Commission has expressed concerns that the US government shutdown is preventing a deal between the EU and US regulator, just as new swaps rules come into force for firms based both inside and outside the US.
Bangladesh’s International Finance Investment and Commerce Bank has chosen a new core banking platform from Misys as it plans to increase its presence in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.
Social media may be a dirty word to most banks’ CFOs. But when 28 hours of a 40-hour week are lost to emails and searching for information, there has to be a better way, according to Tony Zingale, chief executive at Jive Software, which has just launched in Europe.
A new monthly index that measures UK current account switching has been launched by research firm TNS, providing a snapshot of changing consumer behaviour as the UK Payments Council’s switching service begins to take effect.
The credit card industry has largely cleaned up its act in the four years since sweeping new federal rules took effect, though some concerns remain, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau concluded this week. The CFPB’s 102-page report on the impact of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD Act) passed in 2009 found […]
MasterCard and parking services provider Parkeon have announced the launch of a couponing platform that delivers offers from local retailers to consumers as they’re paying for parking. The system is being billed as the first of its kind and will be launched as a pilot next week in Rockville Center, N.Y., with a full-scale rollout […]
Crowdfunding—a term used for a group of people pooling their money, typically through Websites, to support projects—is being used to help finance everything from films to NFC-enabled jewelry.
Australian debit card system eftpos has contracted Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS to build out a new centralized payments hub.
Bloomberg has launched a new information service called First Word Foreign Exchange, which is designed to give FX traders ‘actionable’ news insight that they can quickly process and feed into their trading decisions.
