When the self-described skeptic took over as global head of prepaid for Mastercard earlier this year, Andrew Buckley wasn’t quite convinced that the opportunities ahead were worthy of all the hype. Five months later and he’s among the converted, preaching the gospel of democratization—not just of payments but of innovation.
With increasing global smartphone penetration and a willing consumer base, financial institutions recognize the potential of biometrics to offer more convenience and security to their customers—but a lack of familiarity with the still-new technology among top banking brass remains a significant barrier to adoption, a new report from Mastercard and Oxford University found.
Can a mobile payment service gain users by offering instant access to credit card accounts? Walmart is about to find out. The retail giant has launched a program that enables Walmart Pay customers to spend via their credit lines immediately upon approval instead of waiting for plastic cards to arrive.
Global payments provider TSYS announced June 12 it has launched TSYS Foresight Score with Featurespace, a fraud-prevention and risk-scoring product that integrates artificial intelligence, enabling the software to learn and improve its ability to detect fraudulent behavior while reducing false positives, the company says.
US tech giant Fiserv has offered to buy Monitise, a UK-based mobile payments software and solutions provider. The cash offer to acquire is at 2.90 pence per share – valuing Monitise at approximately £70 million.
The Financial CHOICE Act of 2017 (HR 10), legislation to overhaul the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, was approved along party lines by the U.S. House of Representatives 233-186 on June 8. The legislation focuses on ending big-bank bailouts and supporters say it provides more accountability for Washington and Wall Street, while removing barriers to economic growth.
Prepaid stakeholders from around the U.S.—and beyond—are set to converge on Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel next week for the NBPCA’s sixth annual Power of Prepaid. We’ve got a sneak peek of what’s in store at the prepaid industry’s most important event of the year, including some surprises from industry pioneer Steve Streit.
With its increase in innovation BBVA has created a Global Patent Office (GPO) to protect its intellectual property (IP) – particularly in biometrics and artificial intelligence (AI). The GPO will put the bank’s IP work in a single office and offer collaboration between departments, agents and training. Don Relyea, director of the BBVA global patent […]
It wouldn’t quite be June if we didn’t have rain or Cisco’s annual visual networking index (VNI) forecast. We’ve had plenty of rain, now it’s time to tuck into some stats! Telecoms.com (Banking Technology‘s sister publication) reports that you probably didn’t need us to tell you, but internet traffic is going to grow. The total […]
German payments company AEVI and Australian software firm Moroku have teamed up to offer POS software in AEVI’s B2B app store. Called Marrakash, Moroku’s software is for small retail and hospitality merchants that integrates their business, products, customers and payment systems into one platform. Moroku says it lets firms run their business “entirely from a […]
Mastercard has unveiled a B2B Hub to help small and midsize businesses speed up invoice and payment processes with accounts payable and payment automation tools.
Australia Post is partnering with processor i2c Inc. to “expand and modernize” its digital payments offerings. Under the pact, the Australian postal service will use i2c’s Agile Processing platform to roll out enhanced digital functionality for its payments products, including the Load&Go GPR Visa card, along with gift, multicurrency travel and corporate incentive cards. The i2c platform also will underpin future financial services products from Australia Post.
Moving incentives to virtual prepaid cards is an important trend, but Philip Morris International is taking its incentives a step further with blockchain. The cigarette company and fintech firm Billon Group reportedly have completed a test replacing prepaid cards with the distributed ledger technology, enabling digital and mobile payments.
Mastercard has unveiled its B2B Hub to help SMEs speed up invoice and payment processes with accounts payable and payment automation tools. According to the firm, a majority of all B2B payments in the US are still made via cheque with manual payment processes. The Mastercard B2B Hub, delivered through card issuers, is an automated […]
Craig James, founder and CEO of compliance consultancy Neopay, views compliance like a chess match—you have to know the board better than everyone else, so nothing surprises you.
Fintech funding can be an intense blur of money, jargon and unerringly similar expansion plans. Here’s a round-up that gets to the heart of the matter. Features Plynk, IHS Markit, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Wahed. Ireland’s Plynk, a money messaging app, has revealed a Series A raise of €25 million. Led by […]
Anders la Cour, CEO of ground-breaking payments utility Saxo Payments Banking Circle, which is underpinning the service propositions of a growing number of payments businesses, reports on the payment pain points currently faced by merchants who have ambitions to trade globally.
Apple has made a bold foray into the P2P money transfer market—and Green Dot is helping the tech giant in its bid to unseat Venmo and other established players in the increasingly crowded space.
The U.S. Justice Department may have dropped its antitrust suit against American Express, but 11 states want to press on in a case that started in 2010. At issue is the company’s push to prevent Amex-accepting merchants from offering shoppers financial incentives to use other card brands.
On the heels of expanding into the B2B sector earlier this year, cross-border payments specialist Flywire has acquired PACE Invoice, a multicurrency invoicing platform provider based in London. The purchase bolsters Flywire’s offerings to enable its business, education and health care clients to more easily link invoices to cross-border receivables, increasing efficiency and savings, according to the company.
Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR said it will buy Sage Payment Solutions, the Virginia-based merchant-services offshoot of U.K.-based Sage Group, for $260 million. Sage Group sells business software, and Sage Payment serves some 100,000 merchants.
Apple has unveiled Pay Cash as it looks to fight it out with PayPal, Square and Venmo in the overcrowded peer-to-peer (P2P) payments market. In a range of updates to its mobile operating system, iOS 11, new features to the iPhone and iPad are coming this autumn. Apple Pay users will be able to make […]
A new instant-issuance product from CPI Card Group promises faster card processing times along with higher resolution printing. Called Precision by Card@Once, the system is designed to improve security and the customer experience.
You’ve heard of wearables—now meet “drinkables.” Global Processing Services (GPS) is helping support a new energy drink marketing campaign featuring special bottles equipped with contactless chips, each preloaded with a credit for a trip on the London Underground. The campaign for the Lucozade Energy brand launched last week, with bottles distributed free at major London train stations and commuter hubs.
Following Airbnb’s acquisition of crowdfunding and social payments start-up Tilt in February, it is now being wound down. Tilt (formerly Crowdtilt) was built with the aim to allow groups and communities to collect, fundraise, or pool money online. It was founded five years ago with high hopes. Its co-founder and CEO James Beshara said at […]
Following Airbnb’s acquisition of crowdfunding and social payments startup Tilt in February, it is now being wound down.
Earning top-of-wallet privileges from consumers requires deeper thinking about the what, when, where, why and how of loyalty rewards. But the most important ingredient is simplicity.
Breathless reports point to a terrifying increase in U.K. contactless fraud. Dig a little deeper, however, and the story changes.
All payment providers and merchants grasp the dynamic nature of fraud. But fraud prevention requires more than the latest software and security protections—it requires active collaboration. Here’s why.
I can scarcely believe we’re approaching the halfway point of 2017. But I can’t think of a better time for the year’s biggest prepaid industry event. On June 21-23, the NBPCA will host its sixth annual Power of Prepaid conference in Washington, D.C. The business of compliance—not to mention keeping up with technology trends—is keeping everyone on their toes, but it’s vital to stop and reflect with colleagues about the state of the industry and its future. It’s also critical to actually talk to those shaping the legislation and regulations that determine the rules of the road.
A.J. Koehn has joined Urban FT Inc., a digital payments platform provider and 2017 Pay Awards winner for Startup of the Year, as its new senior vice president of compliance and program management.
Bank of America is testing a service enabling its customers who use third-party data aggregators to view their financial information in one place. BofA is testing the capability with two financial data aggregators to enable customers to securely connect data from their bank accounts to third-party money management apps.
Visa is beefing up its Verified by Visa authentication service. The payments network said it’s upgrading its back-end to support 3-D Secure 2.0. The 3-D Secure messaging protocol was invented by the network more than 15 years ago and has become an industry standard for online authentication.
About two months after launching in the U.K., Square has introduced its Virtual Terminal service there. The technology enables merchants to accept payments through the Square dashboard, an appealing prospect for online service providers, contractors and other smaller firms that do relatively few face-to-face transactions.
There is no question that the commercial card sector is growing strongly. According to Research and Markets, the US commercial card market in particular is outstripping other B2B payment types. For banks and banking services providers, this presents a huge opportunity to grow revenues while improving customer experience – a vital component in customer retention and increased lifetime value.
Deutsche Bank has named Tommaso Zanobini global head of financial technology.
Fidor, a digital banking solutions provider, has appointed Jeff Hibbard chief product officer. Hibbard’s focus is on driving product innovation for Fidor’s operating system.
PSCU, a credit union service organization, has appointed Chris Shockley associate director to its board.
Mobile payments platform provider Judopay has appointed Ryan Farley CEO.
Mastercard has appointed Shafi Shaikh executive vice president, customer delivery, Asia-Pacific. Shaikh oversees customer support, product delivery and customer relationships.
