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Payments Cards and Mobile News in Brief
The payments world News
in 60 days:
Wal-Mart Stores’ director of payment services, Jamie Henry, called for the US to move to chip and PIN. He said the US’ biggest supermarket chain rejects investing in “band-aids” such as end-to-end encryption and tokenisation. He continued, “Our position is let’s just cut through this winding road and the rollout of all this expensive technology, and let’s get directly to the end result, which in our view…is chip and PIN.”
India’s HDFC Bank will introduce EMV chip cards in an effort to safeguard its customers against fraud. The launch will focus on the issuer’s premium segment customers – about 500,000 credit cards. The bank began migrating to EMV with its credit and prepaid products that were issued on the Visa network. It plans to launch EMV debit cards soon.
Fiserv says more than 100 financial institutions have committed to offer its ZashPay person-to-person payments service. ZashPay lets consumers send or receive money via their online bank account. It is built into the Fiserv online payment service used by more than 3,100 financial institutions and 16 million consumers.
RegaloCard has entered into a distribution partnership with IDT, the largest national distributor of prepaid products in the US to the immigrant market. IDT will distribute RegaloCard’s products through IDT’s 155,000 retail POSs nationwide. RegaloCard allows consumers to send sums from $10, instantly and free of charge, for specific uses.
Sybase 365 has announced a partnership with Ixe Bank, one of Mexico’s biggest financial institutions, to launch Ixe Net Movil. This is the Bank’s new multi-channel m-banking service.
Banco Santander has agreed to acquire Bank of America’s (BoA) 24.9% stake in Santander’s Mexican unit for $2.5 billion. The deal will increase Santander’s ownership of the Mexican division to 99.9%. Banco Santander Mexico is estimated to be worth $10 billion and the purchase of the BoA stake will boost the contribution the country makes to Santander’s earnings from 5% to 7%.
MasterCard Worldwide and Smart Hub, a subsidiary of Smart Communications, the biggest mobile carrier in the Philippines, have announced a joint venture. Its aim is “to mobilise MasterCard payment solutions for consumers around the world.” The JV will build upon their introduction of the MasterCard Mobile Payments Gateway, an m-payments solution for developing markets.
Juniper Research forecasts that the value of digital and physical goods people buy with their mobiles will reach $200 billion globally by 2012, compared to just under than $100 billion this year. Digital goods include entertainment and tickets, while physical goods include groceries, gifts and books.
The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said that from 1 January 2011, the government will introduce a levy based on banks’ balance sheets. According to the BBC, the levy will apply to the balance sheets of UK banks and building societies, as well as the UK operations of foreign banks. The move is expected to raise £1.2 billion in its first year, rising to £2.5 billion by 2014.
Chancellor Osborne confirmed that the UK’s banking regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), will “cease to exist in its current form”. Sir John Vickers will chair a banking commission reporting to the UK government that will investigate the issue of separating retail and investment banking in a sustainable way by the end of September 2011. Gordon Brown created the FSA when he was Chancellor.
YES BANK has launched Mobile Money Services in Pune and Chandigarh, India, powered by Nokia. They will allow its mobile users to transfer money to another person using their phone number, to top up prepaid accounts for all the mobile services, and pay postpaid mobile and land line bills, utility bills, and shop without cash.
IMS’ report Payment & Banking Cards – World – 2010 found the volume of smart card integrated circuits (ICs) sold into the payment and banking application area is projected to pass a billion units in 2011. This is about 19% more than the volume projected for 2010.
Polish mobile operator PTC partnered Inteligo bank and MasterCard to launch the first NFC payment pilot in Poland. The trial started on 20 May and will run for four months involving 100 PTC and Inteligo customers, VIPs and journalists using Samsung S5230N NFC phones.
ATM operator Bank Machine in the UK has announced the first ATM network solely to distribute £5 notes. It hopes to boost the number of smaller notes in circulation, which has been a concern of the Bank of England and other parties.
A lorry carrying around €2 million in €1 and €2 coins overturned on a main road in southern Italy in early July, shedding its load. Passing motorists lost no time in stopping to help themselves. The lorry was taking the coins from the mint to local banks, when it crashed and its doors burst open on impact, showering the central reservation with its cargo. Press reports reckon drivers had collectively scooped up some €10,000 before police closed the road. The police think as much as €50,000 may be missing.
Four members of a gang that stole card details from tampered with POS terminals at petrol stations in England have been jailed. The terminals copied details from customers’ payment cards, which were used to make fake mag stripe cards for use overseas. The nine months’ fraud, in 2009, was responsible for losses of £725,000. Ringleader Theogenes de Montford got four-and-a-half years.
J.P. Morgan Treasury Services has become a direct member of the Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS), the UK’s same-day payment system. J.P. Morgan is already a settlement bank in the UK Centralized Securities Depository System (CREST) which allows it to settle the cash portions of securities transactions directly within CREST.
Société Générale is holding talks with BPCE about its possible acquisition of Société Marseillaise de Crédit for €872 million. The discussions are being undertaken by the Société Générale Group’s Credit du Nord unit, which will expand its presence in southeastern France if the deal goes ahead. BPCE is the co-operative banking group that was formed by the networks of the Banque Populaire banks and Caisses d’Epargne.
Metro Bank, the first new high street player to enter the UK market for 100 years, will open its first branch – at One Southampton Row, Holborn, London – on 29 July. Branches will be open seven days a week, from 8.00am to 8.00pm Monday to Friday and shorter weekend hours. There will be a 15-minute turnaround time for approved account applications over-the-counter and branch services will be backed up by online services and a 24/7, London-based, call centre.
Payment Card Yearbooks have published their latest editions - European Payment Cards Yearbook 2009-10, containing 33 individual country profiles and Russia and CIS Payment Cards Yearbook 2010-11, containing 10 individual country profiles.
