The CFPB announced today a three-prong approach to ensure consumers are receiving a fair shake regarding checking account access. But what may surprise many in the prepaid industry is that the agency also is providing information to consumers about the prepaid option.
Shortly after the original deadline to reach an agreement expired on Sunday, the EU Commission and the U.S. have agreed to a new Safe Harbor deal. The new framework will protect the fundamental rights of Europeans when their data are transferred to the U.S. and ensure legal certainty for businesses, according to an EU Commission announcement.
In a new twist on card-linked offers, Visa launches Visa Commerce Network, which it says will make it easier for merchants to engage Visa cardholders with reward and loyalty offers. Uber and Dunkin’ Donuts are among the first companies using the tool.
European Union leaders are calling for tighter regulation of prepaid cards and virtual currencies to restrict terrorist financing and anonymous payments. The European Commission—the executive arm of the EU—also said it will consider launching an intra-EU version of a transaction monitoring agreement that has since 2010 helped detect the movement of funds by terrorists between the U.S. and EU.
Arthur Budovsky pleaded guilty in January after it was determined his company, Liberty Reserve, served as a global hub for laundering more than $250 million of ill-gotten funds from cybercriminals, according to the DOJ.
A snapshot of payments-related earnings reports recently announced is available to you below. Click the company name for more details: The Bancorp Inc. MasterCard American Express Co. Meta Financial Group, Inc. PayPal Holdings Inc. TSYS
P2P lending in the U.K. is a booming business that’s doubled in size since 2014 and approximately £2.20 billion (US$3.16 billion) lent to consumers in 2015.
Prepaid cards continued to comprise just a tiny percentage of the consumer complaints received by the CFPB, according to the agency’s latest monthly complaint “snapshot” report. During the month of December 2015, the CFPB received a total of 230 prepaid-related complaints (out of 20,388 total complaints), down 11 percent from the 257 complaints it received in November.
The 15-year-old Safe Harbor data transfer deal has expired, leaving U.S. and European companies at risk for transferring financial and other information across the Atlantic.
Apple Pay is on its way to thousands of ATMs across the country, as Bank of America and Wells Fargo reportedly are working on integrating the mobile payments service into their ATMs. Meanwhile, Chase soon will roll out ATMs that offer cardless withdrawals via the bank’s mobile app.
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 …
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.
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.
Hyperwallet CEO challenges businesses in the booming on-demand economy to make getting paid as easy as ordering a ride on Uber.
TSYS continued its push to expand its role in the payments value chain with a big move in the merchant services space, reaching a definitive agreement to acquire merchant solutions provider TransFirst for $2.35 billion from current owner Vista Equity Partners.
U.S. House Republicans have accused the CFPB of bungling payouts meant to settle claims of racial discrimination in auto lending.
The CFPB is accepting applications for membership in all of its advisory groups.
MasterCard has appointed Jenn Ong and Paolo Bortolotto head of consumer credit, Asia-Pacific, and head of debit, Asia-Pacific, respectively.
Mercator Advisory Group has promoted Alex Johnson to director of the credit advisory service, hired Raymond Pucci for the company’s advisory practices division as associate director of research services, and hired Joe Walent as lead analyst for Mercator’s emerging technologies advisory service.
PSCU, a credit union service organization (CUSO), added Phil Davis and Brian Scott to its senior leadership team.
U.S. Bancorp, parent company of U.S. Bank, announced that Andrew Cecere, currently vice chairman and chief operating officer, has been promoted to president.
Green Dot was quick to respond as CEO Steve Streit came under fire with the company’s largest shareholder, Harvest Capital Strategies LLC, calling for his ouster along with that of two board members.
Cybercriminals could be ramping up their attacks on financial services providers, according to a new study. The fourth quarter of 2015 saw a tenfold increase in “bot attacks”—essentially test attacks meant to gauge the security of targeted systems—according to the report by ThreatMatrix, a San Jose, Calif., cybersecurity company.
Two separate cases involving credit card fraud have led to a sentence of 80 months in prison for leading one of the largest credit card fraud schemes and a guilty plea to a charge of stealing credit card data.
National Australia Bank launches a mobile payments service for devices that run Google’s Android operating system. The launch of the Android Pay service comes as Apple Pay fails to find a way into the country.
A survey of more than 3,700 IT security practitioners from more than a dozen major industry sectors found 54% of those firms surveyed had a security or data breach involving payment data, on average four times in past two years. The research, independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of digital security firm Gemalto, also […]
Fiserv will pay $200 million for digital banking and electronic payment technology from ACI Worldwide. The deal, expected to close in the first quarter, includes ACI’s Community Financial Services business.
Big data has proven to be a useful tool for retailers and financial services providers seeking to identify customer habits and preferences—but federal regulators are warning that certain uses of consumer information may potentially violate consumer protection laws.
VocaLink is working with Raphaels Bank to enable access to the Faster Payments Scheme for several U.K. banks, including competing financial institutions. Meanwhile, Italian payments processor SIA announced its mobile money service Jiffy has more than 250,000 users as of the end of 2015.
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
The value of dark equity trading jumped last year despite pending European regulations which will limit a fund manager’s ability to trade shares away from stock exchanges, according to research from equities broker ITG.
American Express will “scale back experiments” that focused on finding new revenue and consumers but continue to focus on prepaid and alternative payments, says a spokesperson for the payments network.
Add another state in play regarding proposed restrictions on payroll cards. Washington state representatives introduced a bill making it unlawful for payroll card providers to charge certain fees.
InComm is bringing its line of Visa-branded gift and reward cards to the digital realm, announcing the launch of new digital versions of the cards for use in incentive and loyalty programs.
A total of 45 banks including Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank and many others have signed up to a new payments innovation initiative headed by Swift, which is due to launch early next year. Announced in December, the initiative aims to dramatically improve the customer experience in correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments.
Financial services are becoming “modular”, with digital distribution platforms, new product providers, alternative sources of capital and a growth in outsourcing likely to reshape the industry, according to a new report by global management consultancy Oliver Wyman.
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.
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.
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.
With mobile devices projected to play an increasing role in in-store shopping, ATM maker Diebold Inc. has unveiled a new self-checkout concept that enables users to make purchases by scanning items via mobile.
