A group of financial services and telecom providers has banded together to launch a new mobile payment service to help increase electronic payments in Nigeria. Known as mCASH, the platform is a joint venture of the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, numerous Nigerian deposit banks and the country’s four main telecom providers: Etisalat, MTN, Airtel and Globacom.
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
Steve Streit, CEO of Pasadena, Calif.-based Green Dot, hailed the third quarter as another strong one for the company, pointing to operating revenue, adjusted EBITDA and earnings per share improving on quarter-by-quarter and year-over-year bases. He also highlighted several Green Dot products and services.
The recent surge of bank-backed mobile wallets continues, with Citi the latest financial institution to announce it’s getting into the game. The bank on Nov. 10 unveiled its Citi Pay app, which will enable customers to make online and mobile purchases using their Citi card accounts via Mastercard’s Masterpass digital payments service.
As an online retailer heading into the holidays with approximately $105 billion in sales up for grabs, competing for spend is a top priority.
PayPal is bringing its users “an early holiday present” – the integration of Siri into PayPal.
Israel’s Bank Leumi is gearing up for the launch of its new digital banking subsidiary, Pepper. It is expected to open its virtual doors for business before the end of 2016. The tech is provided by Temenos.
Fintech companies and challenger banks in the U.K. have a new tool for targeting consumers without traditional banking relationships. Prepaid card issuer Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd., a subsidiary of Wirecard AG, is working with payments processor GPS and Bottomline Technologies to support a digital banking solution called “U,” which was designed by U.K. program manager FFF Ltd.
Visa-backed mobile payments will expand in Africa thanks to a deal with pan-African banking group Ecobank. The agreement follows a similar one the bank struck with Mastercard in 2014.
It may not be surprising that MCX’s largest member will support Chase Pay, but it’s still a coup for the bank-backed mobile wallet, which already has deals with some other retail heavyweights. Walmart will begin accepting Chase Pay starting in 2017.
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
Let’s put the fun in funding by keeping it mercifully brief. A round-up of some key events. KEEN Venture Partners, a new venture capital firm operating from London and Amsterdam, has announced €90 million first close of its inaugural fund. It will use the money to provide early growth capital for tech firms with a […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Weatherbys Bank live with new core banking system EXCLUSIVE. Oracle FSS’s Flexcube flexes its muscles. Mobile payments and European millennials Vocalink reveals millennials’ habits and perceptions. Japan rises to blockchain challenge with new consortium Launches with 42 member […]
As the holiday shopping season kicks into gear, Dunkin’ Donuts customers now can send gifts via Apple iMessage in iOS 10. The popular chain—and longtime mobile pioneer—is the first national coffee retailer to integrate with the updated messaging service, which enables users to access the Dunkin’ Mobile App within a chat and purchase a mobile gift card using Apple Pay.
As banks gain a more prominent spot in the mobile payments market, will they become the one wallet to rule them all?
In the wake of a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that shut down hundreds of Websites in October, the Smart Card Alliance has issued a warning on the “critical need” to ramp up security on hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected devices. It’s those devices—which range from cars to refrigerators and make up the Internet of Things (IoT)—that hackers are hijacking and incorporating into their botnet attacks, making attacks large enough to overwhelm Websites’ defenses—as was the case in the most recent attack, which affected major Websites including Twitter, Netflix and Spotify, among others.
New York State’s pioneering BitLicense program could be losing momentum after the departure of New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) head Benjamin Lawsky last year. The state has issued just two BitLicenses since enacting the program in June 2015, shortly before Lawsky left the agency. Another 15 licenses are pending, while four applications have been withdrawn and four others have been denied, according to Reuters, citing an NYDFS spokesperson.
Self Bank, the Spain-based online subsidiary of France’s Boursorama financial services group, said it will register new customers via video-conferencing, biometrics and electronic signatures, a move that could reduce time and costs of the expensive customer-onboarding process.
Audio-based payments continue to make noise with India’s YES Bank enabling payments via sound waves over its mobile wallet and OCBC Bank becoming the first in the Asia Pacific region to enable secure payments via Apple’s Siri service.
U.S. consumers’ usage of mobile devices in-store ranks as one of the highest compared with shoppers in other countries. However, their use of mobile devices at the POS drops dramatically, according to the 2016 FutureBuy report, which tracks trends in online, mobile and brick-and-mortar shopping. The results indicate that payments providers have work to do to convince shoppers m-wallets are worth the effort.
Sleek, small, clean and thumbprint-operated—a new Diebold Nixdorf ATM shown off at this week’s Money20/20 show in Las Vegas points toward the future of cash distribution, and speaks to the spreading potential of biometrics in payments.
Last month, Discover Global Network announced its support of two fintech scholarship contests hosted by the Center for Financial Services Innovation, an authority on consumer financial health, and Gefen Capital, an investment group representing U.S. and Israeli investors that focuses on investing in Israeli startups. The contest winners, Lenny, Debitize, and PayKey, received financial awards from CFSI and Gefen Capital, and were given the opportunity to demonstrate their unique solutions in the DGN exhibition booth onsite at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the largest payments and innovation conference in the world.
Samsung Pay is expanding. The mobile wallet early next year will offer the Masterpass online payment service from Mastercard to Samsung Pay users. That comes as Samsung Pay deploys to Malaysia, Russia and Thailand, putting the mobile wallet in 10 countries total, executives said this week at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas.
Payments are moving up the value stream and becoming an engagement platform, moving beyond the transfer and settlement of funds to more deeply connect a consumer and brand. In this environment, payment providers—including those in the gifting and rewards verticals—can leverage the popularity of other brands to improve their own value and stand out from the pack. Those were among the main takeaways from a Money20/20 keynote from Talbott Roche, president and CEO, Blackhawk Network.
With Walmart Pay showing strong growth since launching earlier this year, Walmart’s Daniel Eckert—one of the main architects of the service—provided some insights into the motivation behind creating Walmart Pay and what’s in store for the service. Speaking in a Tuesday afternoon session at Money20/20 in Las Vegas, Eckert characterized Walmart Pay as an effort to improve the checkout experience in particular.
Bank of America has unveiled its new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to help customers make decisions on their finances. Called Erica, a nod to the name America, it will be available inside the bank’s mobile app in 2017. Customers can do the usual AI stuff – chat via text or voice – and it’s all […]
Fresh off announcing a plan to bring PayPal payments to Facebook Messenger, PayPal Inc. Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready said the move was part of the company’s larger push to serve what he called “contextual commerce”—enabling mobile payments to take place in areas outside of the traditional checkout environment.
Merchants get ready: That was among the main messages at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, during an Oct. 25 roundtable session with executives from the four major payments networks.
The rise of chat bots in financial services and payments continues with announcements this week from Mastercard and Bank of America that each company will be introducing similar technology. Mastercard is launching a bot for client banks’ and merchants’ customers and BofA’s bot, which it says is more of an “assistant” will service its banking customers.
Verifone is partnering with Alipay to enable retailers in North America and Europe to accept payments from Chinese tourists. According to Verifone, nearly 100 million Chinese consumers annually travel abroad and use Alipay to make purchases. This latest partnership follows quickly on Alipay’s deals with Zapper and Ingenico – both for the same reason as […]
Without the right digital strategy, small and midsize banks risk ceding built-in advantages to larger competitors. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to successfully move into the digital realm and retain customer engagement (and sales). Mobile banking has become an imperative for retail bankers looking to keep pace with the industry and satisfy customers’ needs. It […]
Jargon defeated. Unnecessary words deleted. A brief payments round-up. LeFinance, a division of Beijing-based tech firm LeEco, has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation for cross-border payments on the latter’s blockchain network. The deal means Stellar expands into China. LeFinance will also use Stellar’s network to monitor credits for usage across their various devices and […]
The number of households without bank accounts fell to its lowest level since the FDIC first began conducting its biannual survey in 2009. Seven percent of U.S. households were unbanked last year, according to the FDIC’s 2015 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, released Oct. 20.
Chase said on Oct. 19 that Wakefern Food Corp., a supermarket chain based in New Jersey, will soon accept Chase Pay mobile payments. CVS Health, meanwhile, is rolling out its in-house CVS Pay service across the United States
Words cut. Time saved. A round-up of key events in the payments enclave. Azimo, the money transfer service, has launched a new version of its mobile app for Apple and Android users. On the iPhone, the app will allow users to transfer money through the voice-activated Siri system. Customers can transfer money by telling Siri […]
Wirecard AG and Orange have launched a parent-supervised, prepaid mobile payment service for teenagers called Orange Cash Jeune. Parents go online to create an account for their children who are younger than 18, signing up via the Web interface of Orange Cash before the app is installed on their children’s smartphones.
A new mobile payments platform from FIS aims to make shopping easier for consumers at gas stations and convenience stores. Called BuyWay, the technology “unites all points of contact within a transaction to deliver seamless, secure, personalized shopping experiences at thousands of gas stations and convenience stores across the nation,” FIS said this week.
Despite the 60 percent growth of mobile e-commerce to $120 billion in 2015 from 2014, many merchants are doing little to sway consumers to use their apps versus using a mobile browser, according to a Javelin study. Last year, consumers’ purchases via Web browser totaled $75.3 billion, while retailer apps accounted for just less than $47 billion.
Experiments with mobile order-ahead continue to be on the menu for many companies in the fast-casual dining vertical, with popular burger chain Shake Shack launching a test run of the service this week as part of its first-ever app. At the moment, the order-ahead function only works at one Shake Shack location, in midtown Manhattan, which the company said will serve as a market test for the service before rolling it out to “additional markets.”
Online commerce accounts for 8.5 percent of all card transactions but 45 percent of fraud, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. As more transactions move to online and mobile channels, fighting fraud in those channels will become even more challenging. Discover Global Network discusses the latest fraud-prevention tools that offer protection without adding friction.
