All articles by EPI editorial
EPI editorial
US consumers have positive attitude to mobile payments
US financial services providers backing mobile devices as a product delivery platform will take heart from a consumer attitude study conducted by Dove Consulting for credit union service organisation PSCU Financial Services (PSCU) The results confirmed our view that mobile services are something that consumers are ready for, said Kent Potterton, PSCUs director of credit and new product development The study, conducted in multiple cities, gauged consumer interest in three key applications: using a mobile device to access banking information, mobile payment at the POS and person-to-person payments using a mobile device to send money to another mobile device.
Confusion reigns in the wake of ruling by European Commission
Dealing a heavy blow to MasterCard, the European Commission (EC), the executive branch of the European Union (EU), has ruled that its multilateral interchange fees (MIF) for cross-border payment card transactions with MasterCard and Maestro-branded debit and consumer credit cards in the European Economic Area (EEA) violate rules on restrictive business practices. MasterCard must comply with the order to withdraw its MIF by June 2008 or face the possibility that the EC may impose daily penalty payments of 3.5 percent of its daily global turnover in the preceding business year.The ECs ruling came after a four-year investigation by the EC which first sent MasterCard a statement in October 2003 detailing its concerns that its MIF were too high and lacked transparency
Cheque imaging goes mobile with Mitek
Hyped as the solution that will enable millions of US consumers to enter the world of remote cheque deposits, image analytic technology vendor Mitek Systems has launched ImageNet Mobile Deposit (IMD), the first application to harnesses the capabilities of camera-equipped mobile phones.
Inside Contactless forges ahead
Nokia Growth Partners, the private equity and venture capital management unit of mobile device manufacturer Nokia, joins Visa International and seven major global private equity and venture capital firms that have already invested in Inside.Investor enthusiasm for Inside is understandable given the French companys decade-long history of being at the cutting edge in its area of specialisation near field communication (NFC) contactless payments
US telecommunications giant joins the mobile banking race
US telecommunications giant joins the mobile banking raceResearch company Celent believes 2007 will prove to be the year mobile banking in the US moved into the mainstream, a prediction that has taken a significant step towards realisation with the entry of AT&T, the USs largest telecommunications service provider, into the mobile banking space The payments platform will enable users to transfer funds, pay bills and view account details from 30 of AT&Ts most popular handsets, representing about 30 million devices in the US.AT&Ts service is the result of what independent telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan termed an innovative and unique partnership between AT&T, payment technology developer Firethorn Holdings, online bill-pay service provider CheckFree and banking groups SunTrust Banks and Wachovia The partnership, said Kagan, may be the tipping point to widespread adoption of mobile banking solutions by consumers.Underscoring his view, Wachovias director of emerging applications, Ilieva Ageenko, said: AT&T takes mobile financial solutions to the next level by extending the capabilities to a much broader base and provides Wachovia customers with an innovative new method of ubiquitous access to their financial information.AT&Ts strengthsExplaining AT&Ts approach, Mark Collins, vice-president, consumer data, for AT&Ts wireless unit, said that when several financial institutions were designing their own mobile banking applications to run on carrier networks, AT&T intentionally chose a different path
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Get industry leading news, data and analysis delivered to your inbox
Postal services flex their muscles
Postal services have provided money order services for decades and play a key role in their domestic low-value remittance markets. However, the role of postal services in the international remittance market has so far been limited, something the Universal Postal Union is working hard to change. Operating 665,000 outlets, delivering 440 billion items each year and employing 5 million people, global postal services represent the worlds biggest distribution network and a marketing platform reaching billions of consumers. Not surprisingly, post offices have long been used to supply financial services.
SWIFT to revamp fees and messaging architecture
The fixed-fee option will be equivalent to 95 percent of the messaging charges paid by the customer for the previous year and will include an entitlement to increase messaging use by 50 percent in value at no additional cost.High-volume customers account for about 80 percent of all messaging traffic exchanged over SWIFT
Bank of America still out front
Despite a spate of US bank mergers, Bank of America (BoA) remains in the lead in terms of online customer numbers reveals a study by specialist internet research firm comScore The study was prompted by the acquisition of failed banks Washington Mutual (WaMu) and Wachovia by Chase and Wells Fargo, respectively For its study, comScore divided online banking clients into two groups based on the number of active customer in the second quarter of 2008:
Single payments area’s uphill road to acceptance
No matter how beneficial new approaches to doing business may be they are often slow to gain acceptance This is well illustrated by many major businesses apparent lack of enthusiasm for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) indicated by a survey of corporate treasurers undertaken by UK transaction service provider VocaLink The first taste of the new payments regime came on 28 January this year with the launch of the SEPA credit transfer scheme
Bling Nation takes on the big guys
If US start-up payments processor Bling Nation has its way, large payment service providers and card issuers are facing the prospect of falling revenues in the US local community bank and credit union market Spearheading Blings drive into this market is a solution which supports payments between small financial institutions local demand deposit account (DDA) customers and their merchant customers by bypassing the conventional debit payment model and replacing it with local closed loop payment network