All articles by EPI editorial
EPI editorial
Deutsche leaps into a mobile future
Further evidence that mobile banking has entered a major uptake phase has been provided by a decision by Germanys biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, to enter the market on a substantial scale. Spearheaded by its Global Transaction Banking (GTB) division, Deutsches goal is to provide its private and corporate customers in 80 European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries with a payments and money transfer service that will be accessible on any mobile device via any mobile network. Launch of the service will mark the first entry of a major commercial bank into the cross-border mobile payments market which consultancy KPMG predicts will, by 2011, achieve a total transaction volume of $21 billion.
Smaller US banks fill a gap
While many big US banks struggle to mend devastated balance sheets the great majority of the countrys small and medium-sized banks are in fine financial form, a situation they are looking to capitalise on A typical smaller bank is Tompkins Financial Corporation (TPC), a New York-based holding company controlling three community banks with 45 branches In 2008 TPC reported total assets of $2.9 billion and deposits of $1.8 billion, up 21.5 percent and 24 percent, respectively, compared with 2007.
ePAY gives Albany a head start
Businesses using the UKs electronic payments system find themselves spoilt for choice between the traditional three-day payment cycle offered by Bacs and same-day payments offered by the Faster Payments Service (FPS) introduced in May 2008.Businesses must, of course, decide which of the two services provides the optimum payment method, something traditional payment gateways which merely link the outside world and internal back office systems are not designed to assist with Addressing the need to choose the optimum payments route UK payments technology developer Albany Software has launched ePAY, a solution which is at present unique in the market, Georgia Leybourne, Albanys sales and marketing director, told EPI.
Banking the UK’s unbanked
Banking the unbanked is not only a challenge facing developing economies but developed economies as well, and has been tackled with notable success by the UK with its Universal Banking initiative At the time of the initiatives launch in April 2003 the British government estimated that 2.8 million households in the UK did not have bank accounts That number has been exceeded in the subsequent uptake of what are termed basic bank accounts.
Data breach calls industry security into question
Alerted by Visa and MasterCard in October 2008 of fraudulent activity surrounding credit card transactions it had processed, Heartland Payments Systems, the fifth-largest payments processor in the US, has uncovered what has the makings of the biggest data theft in history Indicating a sophisticated attack, two forensic audit teams called in by Heartland to conduct an investigation only discovered the existence of malicious software that had compromised its systems in the second week of January. Heartland made news of the data breach public on 20 January in a statement in which it stressed that it does not know how many card numbers were stolen
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Ingenico’s POS-to-processor encryption solution
Scrambling to enhance security in the wake of potentially the worst data breach ever, Heartland Payments Systems has embarked on a project to enable data encryption through the entire processing system, starting at the POS However, French electronic payment terminal developer Ingenicos just-launched solution On-Guard suggests that the US payments processor may at least in part be reinventing the wheel. Available on terminals sold by Ingenico in North America, On-Guard seemingly does what Heartland aims to do.
Banking the unbanked gets a big funding boost
Services such as M-Pesa in Kenya prove beyond doubt that the mobile phone provides a viable solution to meeting the financial services needs of the worlds unbanked Thanks to successes such as M-Pesa, financial support for mobile banking in developing economies is coming to the fore, as highlighted by two significant funding initiatives announced by the British government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in February. First off the mark was the UKs International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander who announced the launch of Facilitating Access to Financial Services through Technology (FAST), a £1.4 million ($2 million) three-year project to bring what he termed branchless banking to millions of the worlds poorest people in Africa and Asia.
Deal puts Sybase into mobile banking big league
Pursuing its ambitions in the mobile technology market, US data management software and services company Sybase has acquired German mobile banking technology specialist paybox Solutions for an undisclosed sum The acquisition of paybox was closed on 30 December 2008, only six weeks after the two companies announced that they had entered into a partnership agreement. Mobile payments are an increasingly critical part of mobile computing, a core component of our Unwired Enterprise strategy, said Marty Beard, president of Sybase 365, Sybases mobile messaging solutions unit into which paybox will be integrated.
Consumer preferences dictate change
No stranger to payments innovation, the UK gave the world the cheque and the ATM, and in 2008 added the Faster Payments Service to its list of achievements Next on the change agenda are mobile banking and contactless payments, both of which face the big challenge of gaining broad consumer acceptance Undoubtedly the most significant development in the UK payments market in some two decades was the launch of the much-awaited Faster Payments Service (FPS) on 27 May 2008
Fundtech shrugs off tough times
Research firm Celent paints a gloomy picture of spending on technology by financial institutions worldwide in 2009, predicting a fall of 1.3 percent to $353.3 billion Leading the way will be Europe with a 3.4 percent decline to $130.3 billion followed by North America with a 2.7 percent decline to $116.7 billion The financial crisis and economic uncertainty have financial institutions tightening their belts, said Jacob Jegher, senior analyst in Celents banking group