All articles by EPI editorial
EPI editorial
Visa puts its weight behind Monitise
In one of the most significant alliances yet in the mobile payments market, Visa International and Monitise have entered into a development agreement which will be underpinned by Visas acquisition of a strategic stake in the UK mobile payments specialist.The alliance, described by Monitises CEO Alastair Lukies as a landmark in the mobile payment market, includes a five-year contract with Visa worth $13 million to Monitise in addition to ongoing licence, service and development fees As part of the alliance, Visas head of global product innovation, Tim Attinger, is to join Monitises advisory board.Developments targeted under the agreement include payments, money transfer, transaction alerts and mobile marketing offers to support Visas mobile payments strategy.Under the agreement Visa will, together with existing major shareholders UBS Global Asset Management (UGAM) and Capital Group, subscribe for new ordinary shares in Monitise at a price of £0.07 ($0.11) per share The issue, which will raise £5.1 million in new capital, will leave Visa with a 14.4 percent stake in Monitise and UGAM and Capital Group with stakes of 12.9 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively.According to Monitise the £5.1 million raised in the share issue will boost its cash resources to about £15 million
Recession takes toll on remittances to developing countries
Global recession is taking its toll on remittances to developing countries, indicates a study by the World Bank (WB), which forecasts that flows will total $304 billion in 2009, down 7.3 percent compared with an estimated $328 billion in 2008.The forecast is a revision of an earlier WB estimate of a 5 percent fall and comes after growth of 14.8 percent in 2008 and 25.2 percent in 2007.Among major remittance recipients hardest hit is Mexico, which began feeling the impact of the US economic woes in late-2008 For example, growth in remittances into the Philippines slowed from 14 percent in 2008 to 8 percent in the first half of 2009.The WB attributes the continued increase in flows to SEA in part to the fact that the Middle East oil producing region, a major destination for Asian migrants, has not significantly reduced hiring migrants.Assessing prospects for the global remittance market the WB noted that it anticipates a possible recovery in 2010 and 2011. For 2010 the WBs base-case forecast is for growth of 2.9 percent
Neovia bounces back in fine style
Dan Starr, a senior Neovia executive, discussed with EPI progress made and the companys strategy.Shrugging off a mauling by US authorities in 2007, Isle of Man-based payments solutions specialist Neovia proved it remains a force to be reckoned with when it walked off with the award for the Best New Prepaid Card Product Launch at the 2009 Cards & Payments Europe Awards ceremony held in Prague in June.Neovia was honoured at the event organised by EPI and its stable-mate publication Cards International for its Net Prepaid MasterCard, which faced stiff competition from the PayPal Top-Up Card and the M-CubeRyanair co-branded prepaid card programme The Net card was selected by an independent judging panel, comprising representatives from the payment card organisations and payments industry commentators and experts.The Net card has all the functionality of a normal debit card and places Neovia at a considerable advantage over competitors offering conventional prepaid cards, Dan Starr, Neovias executive vice-president, sales, marketing and product, told EPI.He added that since its launch in October 2008 the Net card has enjoyed a strong uptake, a welcome development after the grueling ordeal Neovia went through in 2007.In short, Neovia, then named Neteller, fell foul of the US Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a highly controversial piece of legislation outlawing with few exceptions online gambling by US residents and effectively criminalising online gambling provided by foreign operators.Neteller was taken to task by the US Attorneys Office (USOA) for allegedly having processed online gambling payments executed by American users of its Neteller e-Wallet electronic money product
US takes first steps towards cashless toll roads
The toll road has a traffic flow of some 80,000 vehicles per day, five mainline toll plazas and 16 ramp plazas.All payments on the toll road are now executed by means of the NTTAs TollTag, a radio frequency identification (RFID) device which in 1989 became the US first electronic toll collection system.TollTags, of which about 1 million are in use, are in the form of a sticker and can be used for payment on all Texas toll roads at full highway speeds and at some Dallas parking facilities.Payment of TollTag bills on NTTA toll roads are facilitated by the North Central Texas Council of Government, a local government association, and require users to open an account funded by means of a MasterCard, Visa, or American Express credit card.Hard on the NTTAs decision to go cashless was the E-470 Public Highway Authority (EPHA) in Denver, Colorado which on 4 July ended the use of cash on its 75km E-470 toll road
Latin America’s huge untapped prepaid market
Latin Americas utility and mobile phone sectors present massive growth potential for reloadable prepaid cards according to US-based prepaid specialist NovoPayment in a new study covering 15 countries in the region.Indicative of the opportunity, NovoPayment forecasts that by 2015 these two sectors of Latin Americas prepaid market could potentially be worth upwards of $160 billion annually.For the study NovoPayment took into consideration factors such as size of the labour force, poverty rates, wages, banking and other metrics based on its own experience in the region, where some 200,000 consumers are enrolled in its mobile phone and utility prepaid programmes.The programmes enable payment for services on-demand or via scheduled debits to Maestro-, MasterCard- or Visa-branded prepaid cards.Providing background to NovoPayments optimistic forecast, the companys CEO Anabel Perez said that its research revealed that unbanked consumers spend on average 10 hours per month queuing to pay bills for utility services, a time wasting problem that prepaid cards would solve.NovoPayments research also revealed that between 80 percent to 90 percent of mobile phone network customers in Latin America are already on prepaid plans
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Giving banks the edge in fighting fraud
Executives from the vendors and one of the solutions newest users, Westpac New Zealand, provide insight into the solutions major advantages.Seeking a more dynamic defence against fraud, Australian bank Westpacs New Zealand unit has joined a growing number of financial institutions worldwide to opt for Proactive Risk Manager (PRM), an enterprise risk management solution powered by ACI Worldwide software and running on IBMs System z server platform.A key advance presented by PRM is the transformation of risk management from one undertaken in isolation in each of a banks separate business units the so-called silo approach to an approach where risk is monitored on a unified enterprise-wide basis
Swiss-made and controlled precision
Foreign banks have a combined stake of 23 percent.Formerly operated by Telekurs Group, SIX Groups electronic payments operations span the full gamut of large value and retail transactions.One of the key roles played by SIX Group is the operation of Switzerlands Swiss franc real time interbank payment system, Swiss Interbank Clearing (SIC), on behalf of the countrys central bank Swiss National Bank.The SIC system serves all of the 334 independent banks and 367 local co-operative (Raiffeisen) banks in Switzerland.The SIC system which falls under the SIX Interbank Clearing unit continues to enjoy significant growth with transaction volumes recoding a CAGR of 15 percent between 2002 and 2007.Growth slackened in 2008 with the number of transactions settled by the SIC system increasing by 4.5 percent compared with 2007 to 372 million
Belgacom thinks big in mobile payments
Belgacom has swiftly capitalised on its purchase of a 40 percent stake in Belgian mobile payments specialist Tunz in March with the unveiling of partnerships and initiatives aimed at achieving what it terms a rapid breakthrough in mobile micro-payments.
Irish online banking eroding cheque use
At a steady pace of some 100,000 customers registering each quarter to bank online, the total number of online users increased from 1.5 million in the first quarter of 2007 to 2.2 million at the end of 2008
MasterCard and First Data opt for contactless payments stickers
For its foray into contactless payments stickers, MasterCard has partnered with US mobile payments technology vendor Blaze Mobile which has developed a sticker incorporating radio frequency identification technology for use at some 140,000 merchant locations worldwide that accept MasterCard PayPass contactless payments