Banking Technology Dec 2016 / Jan 2017 issue out now
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
A New York State law setting fee and expiration date restrictions on “gift certificates” could spell big trouble for providers of several types of open-loop prepaid products in the state, and may even render certain types of products impossible to offer in New York, according to industry experts.
President Obama signed a health care bill into law on Dec. 13 after the U.S. Senate—despite its lame-duck status—overwhelmingly approved legislation that’s been called the largest health care reform since the Affordable Care Act.
On Dec. 1, retailers involved in long-standing litigation against Visa and Mastercard asked the Supreme Court to reconsider a landmark $7.25 billion settlement that was rejected by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year.
Home Depot has scored a victory in the legal fight that followed the retail chain’s 2014 data breach. The retailer’s investors cannot sue its board of directors via a shareholder derivative suit, ruled a federal judge in Georgia, the home state of the chain.
At last week’s RegTech Futures summit in Amsterdam, organised by FinTech Futures and supported by Banking Technology, the potential of regtech innovators to re-imagine compliance – reducing the cost, creating more robust systems and creating new opportunities for deeper digitisation – was discussed in depth.
The European Banking Authority working with the European Central Bank has released a consultation paper on guidelines for payment service providers to follow in the event of security breaches. Among the suggested mandates is notifying authorities of an incident within two hours from the moment the breach is detected—that’s significantly faster than the breach notification requirements set to go into force next year, which mandate notice within 72 hours and applies to some U.S. companies.
The U.K.’s Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) plans a sea change to the U.K. payments system after determining an inability for new payments infrastructure projects to compete as alternatives to the three interbank payment systems, Bacs, Faster Payments Service (FPS) and LINK.
Cybercriminals have stolen about $31 million from Russian Central Bank accounts, according to a Reuters report. The hackers broke into bank accounts after faking a client’s credentials, a bank spokesman said at a briefing, disclosing few other details. In a separate instance, Russia had recently warned about a plot by foreign countries to wage cyberattacks on its financial institutions.
UK-based core banking and anti-money laundering (AML) software vendor International Financial Systems (iFinancial) is implementing its AMLtrac solution at Global Fidelity Bank.
Fintech companies seeking charters would have to fulfill multiple requirements under the proposal, including performing core banking services.
Incentives that banks offer employees to increase sales can pose “significant” risks to consumers, the CFPB warned this week in a new bulletin following record fines assessed to Wells Fargo for opening millions of unauthorized consumer accounts.
Apple has scored a big win in Australia for the company’s mobile wallet. That country’s competition regulator has denied a request by big local banks to collectively negotiate over the introduction of Apple Pay there.
The European Banking Authority in January is set to release its online transaction rules in response to the revised Payment Services Directive, or PSD2, which calls for “strong customer authentication” for online payments. Visa also opposes the measure.
Dinosaur Merchant Bank, a UK-based investment management, brokerage and advisory firm, has deployed Ancoa’s surveillance platform to monitor its equity trading activity for instances of market abuse and to meet their obligations under Market Abuse Regulation (MAR).
The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 17 ruled in favor of allowing an antitrust class-action lawsuit against Mastercard, Visa and their bank partners proceed after a lower court ruled that the consumer plaintiffs had no standing, according to a Reuters report.
Republican legislators and business associations, emboldened by Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid, have set their sights on the CFPB, an agency that’s been in Republicans’ crosshairs since the day it was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act. Meanwhile, retailers are calling on Congress to steer clear of introducing legislation that would repeal financial services reforms they say are critical to U.S. businesses and consumers.
The size of the financially underserved market in the U.S. increased by nearly 6 percent in 2015, reaching an estimated $140.7 billion, according to a just-released study from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and Core Innovation Capital.
With a growing number of products and services available to help consumers manage their finances electronically, being able to do so means sharing their digital financial records.
Now that Visa’s EMV debit card routing has come under Federal Trade Commission investigation, eight U.S. retail trade groups are pressing the payments network to say how it will fix the problem.
The Federal Trade Commission has charged NetSpend with deceiving cardholders and denying or delaying their access to funds, but the prepaid provider says any delays stem from federal regulations and that consumers are not being deceived.
Your bank faces more competitive pressures than ever before. Regulations nowadays regularly cost financial institutions billions. You know this. What may be unclear is how IT can help, not hinder, your competitive position. As data becomes the roadblock for compliance, so too it can become your competitive advantage. The latest techniques for handling compliance processes […]
Electronic payments providers in India are celebrating the Indian government’s abolition of the Rs 500 ($7.46) and Rs 1,000 ($14.92) currency notes, which went into effect Nov. 8, because it’s driving transactions to their platforms.
With a victory that took the pollsters by surprise, Trump’s win sent the markets plummeting overnight. Although reports suggest markets are steadying, what’s in store for the U.S. payments and financial services industry in the wake of this election?
Prison cards are under fire again, this time in Arizona. Bank of America has been named in a proposed class action lawsuit over claims the bank charged excessive fees on prepaid cards issued to former prison inmates in the state.
U.K.-based Tesco Bank was the victim of a security breach over the weekend that exposed thousands of customer accounts, half of which had money removed. The bank’s fraud security systems detected “suspicious activity” Nov. 5, affecting approximately 40,000 accounts, and 20,000 of those accounts had money stolen from them, a Tesco Bank spokesperson tells Paybefore.
California already has a way to protect consumers from predatory lending practices while also encouraging the kind of innovation that leads to increased access to responsible and affordable credit—especially for those most often left out of the financial mainstream.
Oct. 5, 2016, the CFPB released its final rule governing prepaid accounts. The final rule and its commentary come in at nearly 1,700 pages. Find out what products are covered under the rule, what triggers Reg Z and what still needs clarifications before the regulations go into effect Oct. 1, 2017.
Amidst tightening regulations, the latest hack of the Bitfinex Bitcoin exchange has highlighted ongoing difficulties for the sector. Bourn Collier, associate, and Oliver Yaros, senior associate at Mayer Brown International LLP, explore. A few years ago media reports in Britain drew attention to the unfortunate plight of James Howells, a Welsh IT worker who had […]
Regulatory technology (regtech) is winning the race to combat regulatory compliance exposure and mitigate conduct risk – especially in digital business environments. Join us for a webinar to debate this hot topic.
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 […]
A Pennsylvania appeals court has sided with McDonald’s employees, deciding that the owners of 16 franchises were in violation of the state’s Wage Payment and Collection Law (WPCL) by requiring employees to be paid with payroll debit cards. The court filed its decision Oct. 21, 2016, which stems from a 2013 lawsuit—consisting of a class of 2,380 current and former employees, according to Law360—alleging that franchise owners Albert and Carol Mueller made it mandatory that employees’ wages be paid through payroll card rather than cash or check.
Despite Brexit, 72 percent of British banks think London will remain Europe’s financial center in five years, according to new results from a survey the Tabb Group conducted on behalf of consultancy Synechron. Yet 55 percent of the 80 capital market executives polled said their financial institutions have set up committees charged with coming up with relocation plans as the U.K. prepares to leave the European Union.
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.
As part of its mission to improve the U.S. payments system, the Federal Reserve’s Secure Payments Task Force is seeking industry input on ways to beef up security. Industry members can provide comment through online surveys, which are separated into the task force’s three areas of focus: payment identity management, information sharing for the mitigation of payment risk/fraud and data protection.
Financial crises are not new, but the global financial crisis of 2008 exposed the over-leveraged interconnectedness of our modern digital age. It reflected the failure of a laissez-faire economic and regulatory philosophy that had increasingly influenced policy circles during the past three decades; that banks could and should manage their own risk with little outside […]
It may come as no surprise that the CFPB’s latest monthly complaint snapshot released Oct. 25 focuses on complaints related to prepaid products, considering the agency released its long-awaited final prepaid accounts rule earlier this month. But despite the bureau’s contention that “the report shows that consumers continue to experience issues trying to manage their accounts and access funds,” prepaid-related complaints to the bureau dropped 21 percent in September.
French software firm Dassault Systemes has named the seven finalists for its “3D FinTech Challenge” 2016 to address anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) issues. This is its fourth annual accelerator programme in collaboration with senior finance executives, regulators and “influencers”. As Banking Technology reported in August, Dassault Systemes invited start-ups to apply. […]
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.