There’s no questioning the popularity and appeal of gift cards—especially during this time of the year. Giving recipients the ability to treat themselves to something they really want or need has become prized among gift buyers. What’s even more exciting is how the concept of gift cards continues to evolve as new brands and card types launch.
The CFPB needs to return to its original plans on prepaid regulations and put its proposed rules on a New Year’s diet. By issuing rules focusing solely on disclosure, the CFPB could issue guidance earlier in 2016 that would help consumers, prevent access disruptions, and potentially reduce the size of the landfill needed to for the mountains of noncompliant cards and marketing materials.
The distributed ledger – the central nervous system of the Bitcoin system – is the most sweeping departure from the long-standing financial bookkeeping practices followed since the codification of the Medici’s double entry accounting system.
The CFPB yesterday released its “Safe Student Account Toolkit,” which includes a scorecard to help colleges pick the best school-sponsored deposit or prepaid accounts for their students.
Technology is transforming trust to the point that people find themselves trusting others with whom they’ve had no experience, on eBay or Facebook, more than banks they’ve dealt with their whole lives.
If 2015 is to be remembered as the year regulators challenged boards to demonstrate their strong governance over their risk management, 2016 promises something just as important. In fact, 2016 will arguably be a truly momentous year in the world of non-financial risk as it could well become the year that risk governance silos are finally dismantled
London-based B2B fintech company Currency Cloud recently released a trend report revealing the need for faster, less expensive and less complicated ways to make cross-border business payments. With $18 million in funding fueling its U.S. expansion, Currency Cloud says it’s taking on those cross-border pain points.
Joby Orlowsky is a die-hard Cubs fan—is there any other kind?—but the Chicago native’s optimism extends well beyond baseball. After nearly 20 years at Discover, Orlowsky is animated when he talks about the future of payments and Discover’s place in it. And unlike some, he’s not spooked about a potential fintech bubble.
Millennials – those highly sophisticated, tech-savvy men and women born between 1980 and 2000 – present enormous opportunities for banks and other financial institutions. Yet to be successful, these businesses must understand and meet the needs of a generation that grew up having it all, seeing it all, and being exposed to it all since early childhood – and that is no easy task.
Outdated legacy IT systems are a major stumbling block for traditional UK high street banks as they look to fight back against their often more agile rivals, widely known as ‘challenger banks’, who unhindered by complex, unwieldy IT infrastructures are typically better positioned to innovate.
It’s almost become a holiday tradition for Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to propose prepaid legislation in December. His previous three attempts went nowhere, but this time he proposed his bill in November. Still, more pressing issues, such as spending and cybersecurity, may keep his measure on the back burner for now.
Churn is by far the biggest challenge facing prepaid debit card companies. Issuers can combat it by tapping smartphones and real-time analytics to deliver personalized services through a preferred communication channel.
Poor user experience with EMV could be a boon for contactless cards and NFC mobile payments. But retailers could take immediate steps to improve the UX with contact EMV, starting with cashier education.
When it comes to the payments, there are more choices than sweet treats at Dylan’s Candy Bar in NYC (i.e., the world’s largest candy emporium!). The payments landscape is likely to become increasingly confusing and fragmented as retailers ramp up their efforts to influence buying decisions. If we don’t help our members evolve and understand how things are changing, credit unions risk losing the transaction and engagement.
The European Union’s cap on fees banks can charge retailers for processing credit and debit card payments went into effect today, but there are some questions whether the measure will have the desired effect.
Digital technology is on the verge of transforming banking, in a similar way that Spotify has completely changed the music industry and Netflix has revolutionised broadcast entertainment
Employment prospects in the UK finance and banking sector in the New Year are the brightest in the past three years as high profile data breaches, such as those at TalkTalk and Sony, create a surge in demand for cyber-security experts.
2015 has been a year of extensive discussion about what role blockchain can play in making processes in the financial services industry more efficient. It has also been a year where both banks and start-ups have been testing whether distributed ledger technology can adequately replace costly legacy systems and improve securities processing, writes Brian Collings. […]
As part of the ongoing Basel reforms, the Bank for International Settlements is busy rewriting the rules that govern how much capital banks must maintain in order to mitigate different types of risk. So far the Standardized Approach for Measuring Counterparty Credit Risk Exposures and the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book have garnered the most attention. However, these are just two components of a much larger package of changes to the Basel capital requirements, which banks need to think about holistically and start factoring into their technology programs now
The sensors built into mobile devices offer a whole new way of identifying their users though biometric techniques, according to security expert Uri Rivner.
Target is moving another step forward in its attempts to put its 2013 data breach behind it.
In a Congressional hearing yesterday, lawmakers examined the role mobile payments technologies are playing in disrupting traditional payments, paying particular attention to how mobile has increased payments security and enabled small businesses and underbanked consumers to access electronic payments.
U.S. shoppers flocked to physical and online stores during the Thanksgiving weekend, with more than 151 million Americans shopping in-store and/or online, based on data from the National Retail Federation. The shopping frenzy is expected to continue, with Cyber Monday deals projected to drive 121 million U.S. consumers to shop online. Average spending per shopper was $299.60, and gift cards were especially popular, comprising a whopping 76.6 percent ($229.56) of that average total.
Instant payments are a step closer to becoming a reality in Europe, now that the European Payments Council (EPC) has submitted and received approval on its proposal for the design of a pan-European instant credit transfer framework.
It’s no secret that past risk management practices and regulatory frameworks failed with respect to the global financial crisis. There were a number of reasons behind this, ranging from an overreliance on quantitative analysis to poor risk governance and frameworks, not to mention a lack of understanding around concentrated risk build-up such as leverage, convexity […]
Quick business successes can be built on the UK’s payment system that will play a key role in encouraging the efforts required to ensure that it achieves the “world class” status the industry is aiming for.
Integrated stress testing is the preferred tool from a supervisory perspective. And that’s on a global basis. It may not be new, but it is featuring increasingly higher on the regulatory agenda and so understanding the technological opportunities is all important. A key building block for effective and integrated stress testing is an integrated balance sheet strategy
There is an uncanny similarity between Prime Minster David Cameron’s emphasis of moving from a “low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, and lower welfare society” and a shifting focus among the asset management community.
It is a well-known fact that banks have two types of technology: Cold War-era IBM mainframes running Cobol-based batch programmes and Evil Genius HFT systems. The mundane truth is that any financial services operation will have a range of hardware and software systems of different vintages and spend a lot of time and money living with the consequences.
It should be no surprise to anyone that gift cards are forecasted to be uber popular again this holiday season. However, it will be crucial for those in the prepaid industry to be mindful of plugged-in shopper preferences to capture holiday spend.
Knowing your customer is taking on new meaning for retailers, If you want to thrive, you must give your customers a personalized shopping experience with a simple integrated payments process.
In 5 years plastic cards will be dead! A bold prediction for sure and likely one you’ve heard in any of a dozen payment mixers you’ve attended over the last year. But for our restaurant brands, we see a more nuanced picture that requires us to execute a simple, perhaps obvious, formula.
The five most important takeaways from Money20/20 that will shape payments for the foreseeable future.
Craig James explains how passporting with an e-money license allows U.S. prepaid companies to conduct business in EU countries.
Retailers argue the semantics between calling a price difference a “surcharge” or a “discount.”
Earlier this year, we recognized the Top 10 Payments Lawyers as voted for by Paybefore.com visitors. In our first profile, we feature Amy Ross Lauck, partner, in the payment systems and consumer financial services practice at Lindquist & Vennum LLP, who discusses the challenges of the CARD Act, prospects for the CFPB’s prepaid rulemaking and innovations yet to come.
Banking and disruptive change go hand in hand. There was the era of deregulation. Then the 2008 crisis and the era of re-regulation. Then PPI. Now there is digital, and no sector is secure from its transformative power, not even a heavily fortified one …
Federal prosecutors have charged a trio of accused cybercriminals in a wide-ranging hacking and fraud scheme Attorney General Loretta Lynch called “one of the largest thefts of financial-related data in history.”
A 30-second advertisement that aired during last night’s Republican presidential debate took aim at the CFPB and likely raised the hackles of the bureau’s proponents.
Eighteen U.S. senators led by Cory Booker (D-N.J.), sent a letter last week to the CFPB urging protections for prisoners released from jail who receive prepaid cards when they exit incarceration.
