Customers of Advanced Payment Solutions (APS), a London-based provider of alternative banking solutions, soon will be able to access banking serves through the U.K. Post Office’s 11,500 branches.
Samsung this week announced its purchase of mobile payments startup LoopPay, taking over its technology that enables magnetic stripe cards to be processed as contactless transactions at traditional payment terminals.
A federal judge has ruled that American Express no longer may bar retailers from steering customers toward paying with cards with lower merchant fees.
Pay.gov, the U.S. government’s online payments portal for 90 federal agencies, is expanding to embrace digital wallets, including PayPal and Dwolla, the U.S. Treasury announced this week.
Apple Inc. has filed a patent application indicating plans to add loyalty features to Apple Pay, introducing the option to redeem coupons and tickets via NFC, according to a new report.
Mobile deposit capture (MDC) has gained tremendous ground with consumers looking for more convenient access to funds.
Prepaid may be a more expensive business to enter—as compliance costs increase and margins thin—but that doesn’t mean the entrepreneurialism and innovation that birthed the industry are finished. A panel at All Payments Expo in Las Vegas next week will explore what it takes to enter and succeed in the market amid unprecedented regulatory scrutiny and oversight.
The U.S. government is the latest to get behind Apple Pay as part of its commitment to encourage more secure payments technologies, the White House announced during its Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University on Feb. 13.
Lawmakers last week reintroduced a bill to add congressional oversight for the CFPB, which currently operates independently.
Hackers may have made off with as much as $1 billion in a series of attacks on more than 100 banks and financial institutions in 30 nations.
Green Dot has acquired AccountNow and AchieveCard to expand its active cardholder base and distribution outside traditional retail, the company tells Paybefore.
Wondering what the CFPB’s NPRM emphasizes?
About 60 percent of U.S. POS locations will accept EMV chip transactions by yearend, according to a recent Aite Group survey. The results suggest the push to upgrade terminals in advance of the October 2015 liability shift is “accelerating,” but serious gaps in awareness and planning still exist, especially among small and midsize merchants.
India’s second-largest bank ICICI Bank this week launched “Pockets,” a mobile wallet targeting younger consumers powered by a Visa prepaid card, enabling smartphone users to send and request funds, shop online and pay bills, whether or not they are an ICICI bank customer.
Meta Payment Systems, a division of MetaBank, has announced the recipients of its 2014 Client Spotlight Awards, honoring high-performing prepaid clients for the 2014 calendar year.
Mozido today announced it’s acquiring PayEase Corp., a Beijing-based payments gateway and processor with direct connections to 23 Chinese banks.
PayPal and Shell are partnering to enable motorists in the U.K. to pay for gasoline at the pump via a smartphone app.
Amazon India’s Junglee e-commerce portal is now selling gift cards, the retail giant’s latest move in India, a market the company has described as a focal point for growth.
The UK’s Payments Council has selected Swift to build the country’s new central infrastructure platform in preparation for the next phase of SEPA regulation in 2016, through the provision of an automated central infrastructure platform for collection and maintenance of UK-specific SEPA routing data.
Contactless payments surged in popularity in the U.K. within the past year, with contactless card spending volume tripling to £2.32 billion (US$3.53 billion) from £653.4 million in 2013, while total contactless transactions rose more than 200 percent to 319.2 million in 2014 from 100.4 million a year earlier, the UK Cards Association announced last week.
As bitcoin and other virtual currencies remain subject to heavy scrutiny—and proposed regulation—by various government agencies, a senior Federal Reserve researcher is raising the possibility of the government creating a virtual currency of its own.
he House of Representatives on Feb. 4 passed bipartisan legislation sponsored by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) that she says would require greater transparency in government and would cap the CFPB budget for FY2016 at $550 million, $36 million below its expected funding.
N.J. Governor Chris Christie (R) signed into law a bill that eliminates the collection of consumer ZIP code information for gift cards purchased at the POS, putting an end to a protracted legal battle over unclaimed property rules in the state.
Fear of fraud is the main factor slowing the adoption of smartphone-based payments among UK consumers, though a third believes that credit and debit card payments will no longer be the preferred method of payment in 2020.
Technology consultancy Capgemini has formed a global alliance with First Data to develop payment software based on First Data’s VisionPlus and AccessPlus solutions. The pair say that they expect to begin delivering new solutions in the second quarter of this year.
Merchants appear to be more apt and capable of leveraging their own data today than the preceding several years. And, they are finding that using this data is more effective in combating fraud than traditional validation services.
Apple Pay is a huge catalyst, not only for Apple but also for Android and host card emulation (HCE), First Annapolis’ Lee Manfred said during a keynote at the Smart Card Alliance Payments Summit. He urged issuers and merchants to view Apple Pay as a tool to build their own customized mobile strategies.
MasterCard continued its expansion in India today, with the official opening of the payment network’s new Technology Hub in the city of Pune.
The U.S. migration to EMV is well underway in advance of the October 2015 EMV network liability shift, with EMV card manufacturers shipping 185 million EMV cards last year, up more than 500 percent from 30 million in 2013, the Europe-based cross-industry Smart Payment Association announced today.
Green Dot is considering expanding the financial services it provides to include what Chairman and CEO Steve Streit describes as “modern credit,” with an eye toward using transactional data for underwriting.
The value of all cryptocurrency transactions will more than half this year, falling from $71 billion in 2014 to just over $30 billion. The decline was attributable to the combined impact of exchange collapses, Bitcoin theft and regulatory concerns.
The U.S. payments card industry is on a “critical path” to EMV card migration over the next eight months but several challenges remain, Kimberly Lawrence, Visa’s senior vice president, global corporate initiatives, said today during the kickoff presentation at the Smart Card Alliance’s Payments Summit in Salt Lake City.
A new report from Ingo Money offers evidence to support what many industry observers have long maintained: Offering cardholders robust reload capability is key to driving loads and retention.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wants to increase access to traditional banking services by getting banks to change their account-opening criteria. But broader access to checking and savings accounts doesn’t mean consumers won’t continue to seek out alternatives, including prepaid cards, which may have more features and fewer fees, according to industry observers.
Miami-based YellowPepper has closed a $19 million round of Series C funding to expand its mobile wallet in Latin America, where mobile money services are growing by 53 percent.
Lebanese commercial bank Al-Mawarid has begun a bank transformation project focused on mobile and online banking using the FusionBanking Essence Digital software from Misys.
Bolstered by a nationwide rollout in U.S. Walmart stores, Green Dot Corp.’s GoBank mobile bank account showed strong gains during Q4 2014, with monthly deposits up 600 percent and total debit card spend growing nearly tenfold, according to Green Dot’s latest earnings report.
Google this month extended its Gmail-based money transfer feature to the U.K., marking the search giant’s first P2P foray outside the U.S. If successful, the move could help Google expand awareness of Google Wallet internationally before Apple Pay makes its expected move into the U.K. and other global markets, observers say. Apple Inc. CEO Tim […]
In a Jan. 27 letter to U.S. Rep. Sean P. Duffy (R-Wis.) and several other members of Congress, CFPB Director Richard Cordray said the agency would give the lawmakers’ request for a 60-day extension to the comment period for its prepaid NPRM “serious consideration.” But the rest of the letter suggests that the agency feels 130 days since the proposal went up on its Website will be adequate for stakeholders to comment.
Critics of the DOJ’s controversial Operation Choke Point, which encourages financial institutions to scrutinize clients that operate certain types of businesses, such as payday lenders and firearms sales, may welcome the latest news from the FDIC.
