All articles by Verdict Staff
Verdict Staff
Region Round-up North America
Customers redeeming the gift cards they received at Christmas 2006 are bolstering retail sales, says the National Retail Federation (NRF)… First Datas consolidated revenues rose by 14 percent year-on-year to $1.9 billion in the quarter ending 31 December 2006 Independent US retailers are being offered POS payments based on Californian biometric payments firm Pay By Touchs fingerprint readers..
Region Round-up: Latin America
POS card transaction volumes of Visa International, Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Region rose by 35 percent to $102 billion in the year to 30 September 2006… Total credit card purchases in Brazil amounted to BRL13.9 billion ($6.5 billion) in January 2007, estimates Banco Ita…
Taiwan’s credit crisis: the calm after the storm
According to recent statistics by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) of Taiwan, Taiwans local banks wrote off $4.93 billion worth of bad loans in 2006 A whopping 70 percent of this, or $3.49 billion, was made up of non-performing credit card loans
Region Round-up: Europe, Middle East, Africa
APACS, the UK payments industry association, has published figures showing that spending on plastic cards over the Christmas 2006 period reached a record £31 billion ($60.4 billion)… The number of credit cards in circulation in Israel rose to 4.2 million at the end of 2005 from 3.8 million at the end of 2004, according to the Bank of Israel Banking Supervision Department…
Fewer, bigger, better?
Justin Bandy explores the background to this reshaping of the cards landscape and looks at how the US experience might translate to other markets.The US credit card industry is among the most concentrated in the global cards landscape By the beginning of 2006, the top three issuers controlled over 61.8 percent of the market as defined by their proportion of outstanding credit card debt, and the top ten issuers controlled roughly 90 percent of the market (see Figure 1)
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Region round-up: Asia-Pacific
Krungthai Card, Thailands largest credit card issuer, believes that its 2007 net profit will improve from 2006 levels given lower operating costs and growing personal lending levels…
Australian interchange – three years on
When interchange levels were reduced in 2002, dire consequences were predicted for the Australian credit card industry While there has certainly been a shake-up, the end result has been adaptation strategies rather than destruction
European Commission backs down on interchange fees
The EC said that the outcome of the inquiry, which covered the payment card industry, payment systems and retail banking products, should boost retail banking competition in the run-up to the creation of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).The report on the Sector Inquiry into Retail Banking stated that the European payment card industry had total sales volume (with card transactions) in 2005 of more than 1.35 trillion ($1.75 billion)
Card technology makes giant strides
Also, technology is helping in the fight against fraud, as advances such as biometric payment are helping to minimise the risk of fraud and are reassuring consumers about the safety of their cards and financial information.Contactless payment It is contactless payment that has received the most industry attention over recent months, as more issuers roll out contactless card programmes not only in the prime markets of the US and Asia-Pacific, but in Europe, where several large-scale pilot schemes are under way in countries such as the UK, the Netherlands and France
UK Office of Fair Trading to expand interchange probes
The news comes after the recent European Commission probe into retail banking and card payments.In a statement, the OFT said: “The expansion of this investigation is consistent with the scope of the European Commissions current investigation into MasterCards European intra-regional interchange fees