At Shoptalk in Las Vegas this week, young companies showcased their contributions to the evolution of commerce and experts discussed how retailers and payments providers can attract the coveted millennial shopper.
Fitbit Inc. is acquiring the wearable payments platform of startup Coin, with an eye on developing contactless payment features for future Fitbit fitness bands. The deal includes “key personnel and intellectual property” related to Coin’s wearables business, but does not include Coin’s core product—an electronic smart card that can be loaded with multiple payment, gift or loyalty cards, Fitbit said.
SEC head Mary Jo White called cybercrime the biggest threat to the world’s financial markets. Speaking at the Reuters Financial Regulation Summit in Washington, D.C., this week, White said that some major financial exchanges, dark pools and clearing houses lack defenses that are up to the challenge presented by today’s increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals.
Retailer consortium MCX said it will postpone the rollout of its CurrentC mobile payments service and shift its focus to partnering with financial institutions. Results from its pilot in Columbus, Ohio, led to the strategy move as well as the decision to cut about 30 jobs.
PayNearMe is enabling Dallas commuters to pay transit fares in cash at nearly 800 retail locations through a partnership with Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART). Fares can be loaded onto the existing DART GoPass app or the new DART GoPass card, the transit agency’s first reloadable NFC-enabled transit card designed and distributed by PayNearMe and Blackhawk Network.
Can you imagine a world where check-in matters more than checkout when it comes to payments? Some of world’s leading payment experts can, and their ideas, presented this week at the Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas, foreshadow how consumers might buy products in the coming years.
Well, this might hurt: Only 25 percent of U.S. consumers trust banking Websites, and 23 percent of consumers point to POS systems as the top device for fraud risk.
A week from its 2016 annual shareholder meeting, Green Dot has announced plans to split up the role of chairman and CEO. The move comes in the midst of Green Dot’s proxy battle over board seats, propelled by Harvest Capital, which owns 9.3 percent of Green Dot common stock and has proposed three nominees to the board.
Five months after unveiling its own in-store mobile payment service, Walmart has begun rolling out Walmart Pay in Texas and the retail giant’s home state of Arkansas. Available through the Walmart smartphone app for iOS and Android, Walmart Pay can be loaded with any major credit, debit or prepaid card or a Walmart gift card.
Making good on a promise to reimburse cardholders affected by last year’s temporary service disruption, RushCard has agreed to a $19 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit stemming from the outage.
More than seven months after last October’s EMV liability shift in the U.S., customers “are forced to continue using fraud-prone magnetic stripe technology” because chip-reading payment terminals remain idle, charged U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Edith Ramirez.
VocaLink, the payment systems provider, has signed a five-year deal with China’s UnionPay International, which will enable UnionPay cardholders to access ATMs in the UK and continental Europe. Under the deal, VocaLink will provide ATM transaction processing and UnionPay sponsored access. VocaLink says on average, the value of UnionPay card withdrawals from UK ATMs are […]
Swift has warned its customers about a newly identified malware found at a “commercial bank”, which it has declined to identify. This latest development follows yesterday’s (12 May) news where Swift rejected the allegations made by Bangladesh Bank and Bangladesh Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officials about the first cyber fraud scandal in February. Details […]
Many will be surprised by where the biggest transformations in fintech actually come from in the next few years. A true disruption probably won’t stem from a tech start-up that gets hot and rides the wave to a new normal in banking. No, it’ll actually be those old card-issuing behemoths, Visa and MasterCard, which will […]
Banking giant Barclays has announced the launch of its own mobile contactless on Android, and confirmed it will not be joining Android Pay, reports Tim Skinner at Telecoms.com. The bank has been one of the UK’s more innovative financial institutions harnessing mobile payments, and specifically the integration of payment technology into wearable or alternative devices. […]
A Blackhawk Network study finds that more consumers (44 percent) are buying gift cards for themselves, most consumers are familiar with digital gift cards and other innovative payment methods are catching steam, while checks and even cash are declining.
Walmart has filed a lawsuit against Visa Inc. over claims that the payment network is forcing Walmart to offer customers the option to verify EMV debit card purchases via signature—a method the retail giant says is more prone to fraud than PIN verification.
As the country’s Unified Payments Interface threatens to leapfrog mobile wallets in the country, one mobile wallet provider wins a capital gain, while another wallet program launches.
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
Blackhawk Network was ranked 18 of 25 “non-tech” firms in the Bay Area by the Bay Area News Group in its 2016 “Silicon Valley 150” (SV150) list, a four-spot jump from Blackhawk’s ranking last year.
Payments solutions provider JetPay Corp. has appointed Diane Faro to its board of directors.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) presented its second annual Law Enforcement Awards in a ceremony at the U.S. Department of the Treasury on May 10.
Gene Fredriksen, chief information security officer for credit union service organization PSCU, has been selected to help represent the nation’s credit unions in the Global Forum to Advance Cyber Resilience, a public/private initiative bringing together industry, business, government and critical infrastructure leaders to operationalize cyber resilience and cybersecurity.
San Francisco-based Affirm has hired former eBay vice president Carl Gish to be its first chief marketing officer.
Clutch Group, a global legal, risk and compliance analytics and consulting firm, has hired Priti Parekh to serve as the company’s Global COO.
Chilean biometrics company TOC has joined the FIDO Alliance, the association aiming to develop global standards for online authentication based on methods that are more secure than simple passwords.
Amidst the mass of humanity at Money 20/20 Europe in Copenhagen, Olivier Sery, general manager Iberia for TAS Group, took a few moments of his time to discuss the company’s software solutions for electronic money and payment systems; and its future plans. “We’ve done the investment, but now is the time to grow our footprint.” […]
Forget traditional measures like credit scores and net worth. A new report from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) identifies eight key indicators that it says provide a better understanding of consumers’ financial health that can help financial services providers and nonprofits design products and services to help consumers get ahead.
The mobile payment service, once confined to American Express cardholders, now is available to MasterCard, Visa and Interac customers. Apple has signed deals with four banks for Apple Pay.
Dashlane, a password manager with offices in New York City and Paris, announced on May 9 that its digital wallet has surpassed $5 billion in online consumer spending. Could this digital identity company become a leader in the wallet wars?
The sale of the unit to the restaurant management technology company comes amid financial woes for Groupon. The deal makes Upserve the industry’s largest cloud-based restaurant management platform, serving more than 6,000 restaurants in every U.S. state, according to the company.
The State Bank of Pakistan has issued new prepaid card regulations in a bid to promote prepaid for financial inclusion and enhanced security. Meanwhile, Stockholm-based mobile payment specialist Seamless Distribution AB has been granted an e-money issuing license by Sweden’s financial supervisory authority for its SEQR mobile wallet.
Green Dot’s positive financial results for the first quarter of the year included growth in the prepaid segment, the launch of the company’s revamped MonkeyPak reload product and several new partnerships. But the company’s strong quarter wasn’t enough to silence its loudest critic, as activist investor Harvest Capital sends yet another letter to shareholders blasting what it calls Green Dot’s “smear campaign” against its board of director nominees.
A new report makes the case for using alternative data to judge whether consumers are good risks for loans.
The National Retail Federation finds that 66 percent of small business owners find regulations difficult to understand. Only 44 percent of respondents said government regulations help businesses.
With news on blockchain and bitcoin appearing thick and fast, here’s a round-up of key events to save you time. The Swift Institute has published new research on the practical application of blockchain (or mutual distributed ledger) in securities markets. The paper, “The Impact and Potential of Blockchain on the Securities Transaction Lifecycle”, is based […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Atom Bank adds another system to its tech set-up; readies mobile app Bank has just launched, but already has problems. Monitise looks to be profitable in H2 2016 But did it grow too big too fast? EFG and BSI […]
The CFPB today released a proposed rule that would place restrictions on arbitration clauses in financial services contracts.
We’ve compiled your nominations for the Smartest People in Payments and need your final votes to determine which executives will be featured in our Smartest People in Payments profile series in the Fall issue of Pay Magazine. Write-ins welcome, but your votes must be received by May 20.
As printers and other devices start replacing supplies on their own, and giants such as Amazon make big bets on the evolution of self-sufficient retail, an expert ponders whether the Internet of Things needs its own payments infrastructure.
