• A security index from Unisys, the global IT
consultancy, found that Singaporeans were more concerned about
identity and credit card theft than they were about terrorism and
war…
• Ukraine’s UkrGasBank has been certified to
issue chip cards according to the current requirements of
MasterCard. UkrCard Interbank Processing Centre
has also been certified…
Go deeper with GlobalData
• Australian smart card technology vendor
Keycorp says Mexico’s Banamex has
started issuing both Visa and MasterCard EMV chip cards using
Keycorp’s Multos smart card software…
Asia-Pacific
• China Construction Bank will partner with
Bank of America to set up its credit card business
and eventually launch a joint venture. The joint venture will be 63
percent owned by China Construction Bank and 37 percent owned by
Bank of America. The venture is expected to break even its seventh
year of operation. Bank of America spent $3 billion for an 8.52
percent stake in China Construction Bank in 2005.
• Over China’s one-week May holiday, transactions rose 31.4
percent year-on-year, according to payment technology and services
provider China UnionPay (CUP). Transaction value
went up 59.8 percent to CNY46.19 billion ($6 billion) over the same
time period a year ago. Transaction volume outside China – CUP’s
cards are accepted in 24 countries – rose 125.6 percent to 361,000,
while the value increased 79 percent to CNY1.11 billion during the
period.
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By GlobalData• Bank of East Asia (BEA) in Hong Kong has
launched a promotion encouraging customers to sign up for a BEA
current account and credit card. Customers who have their salary
credited to a BEA current account will receive a cash bonus based
on 3 percent of their net monthly salary. The bonus is credited to
the bank’s credit card for the customer to spend.
• India’s entertainment group Pyramid Saimira
Theatre will launch a prepaid biometric identification
card costing INR100 ($2.45) per month. The card will enable
cardholders to watch up to 120 shows a month. The company expects
to enrol 5 million members in the first year.
• Corporation Bank of Mangalore in India is
launching a credit card in association with Visa and aims to have 1
million cardholders in three years.
• India’s UTI Bank has launched a
merchant-driven card rewards programme using technology from
payment software provider Welcome Real-time. UTI Bank Spice
Rewards, as the programme is known, will be available to the bank’s
150,000 credit card and 6 million debit card holders.
• A security index from Unisys, the global IT
consultancy, found that Singaporeans were more concerned about
identity and credit card theft than they were about terrorism and
war. Some 87 percent of Singaporeans said that they were extremely
or very concerned about unauthorised access to or misuse of their
personal information. Another 83 percent said they were extremely
or very concerned about other people obtaining their credit and or
debit card details, while 77 percent said they were extremely or
very worried about the prospects of a health epidemic. The company
surveyed 908 adults aged 18 to 64.
• HSBC has refuted allegations that is the
target of a probe by India’s anti-monopoly watchdog for violating
Reserve Bank of India guidelines by imposing false charges on its
credit card customers. In a statement, the bank said: “We comply
with requisite rules and regulation in the conduct of the business
and strongly deny all the allegations.”
• Aeon, a major retailer in Japan, has begun
issuing Waon smart cards for electronic payments. The card can be
used at 100 Aeon-run outlets in a pilot project and will extend to
23,000 stores by the end of fiscal year 2008. Cardholders can make
purchases up to ¥20,000 ($166) and electronically transfer money to
Aeon through terminals at retail stores. Cardholders will also
receive one point for every ¥100 of purchases. The retailer will
begin operating a banking unit and plans to set up ATMs to accept
the cards. It expects to issue 8 million cards in the first
year.
• In land-scarce Singapore, the Spiritual Grace Memorial
Garden columbarium has introduced an interest-free
instalment plan paid via credit card for niches in which to store
cremated remains. The plan has been introduced following customer
requests for family spaces that can cost more than S$10,000
($6,600). The instalment plan allows people to pay off the amount
over six months to two years, depending on the credit card
used.
• Thailand’s Provincial Electricity Authority
will pilot a prepaid electricity meter service that allows
customers to buy a prepaid card costing BHT3,700 ($111) to pay for
electricity. Targeted at owners of resort homes in the provinces,
the prepaid meter will cater for both contact and contactless smart
cards. The authority will buy 3,000 meters worth BHT18.5 million
and the cards will be available at 7-Eleven outlets and other
stores near the resorts.
• Despite the Thai economic slowdown, non-bank credit card
companies in Thailand have expanded their branch network according
to Bank of Thailand, the kingdom’s central bank.
Branch numbers have increased by 83 quarter-on-quarter and totalled
515 as of the first quarter of 2007. Cetelem opened the highest
number of branches.
• Citibank has launched a mobile reload service
in the Philippines which will allow cardholders to reload their
prepaid mobile phones by sending a text message to the bank.
• Thailand’s Bank of Ayudhya has introduced a
cardless ATM money-transfer service in its first product launch
since entering into partnership with GE Money.
Customers can transfer up to BHT20,000 per transaction and
BHT100,000 per day via the bank’s electronic channels by using a
mobile phone. The transaction comes with a BHT30 fee. ATM money
transfers at other banks cost BHT20 to BHT35 per transaction.
• Thanachart Bank, a bank recently formed from
a finance company in Thailand, will launch its credit card business
in 2008 and targets 100,000 customers in the first year. Credit
cards will be the platform the bank uses to cross-sell into other
business such as personal loans. Its Canadian partner,
Scotiabank, is expected to transfer its expertise
in the credit card business.
• Kasikornbank in Thailand plans to target
market campaigns at cardholders who are frequent travellers in a
bid to make its offering stand out. A senior executive at the bank
highlighted that the credit card business in Thailand takes two
years to break even and rapid expansion of the customer base is
important for economies of scale.
• The National Credit Bureau in Thailand is
proposing a revision of credit scoring and reporting laws.
Currently the bureau can collect credit information about
individuals and sell it only to institutions and individual
customers. The proposal allows the bureau to provide credit
information to individuals free of charge once a year. Some 4,000
borrowers have checked their credit reports filed with the bureau
so far, and 250,000 borrowers have legally registered 3 million
credit accounts with the bureau.
Europe, Middle East, Africa
• Qatar National Bank (QNB) has announced the
successful migration of its cards portfolio to Prime 3, the card
and merchant management system of payment processor TSYS
Card Tech. The conversion of the portfolio involved 81,000
card accounts, 32,000 customers and 2,300 merchants. TSYS Card Tech
has 25 financial institution clients in the Middle East region,
where its systems are deployed at the top four banks.
• Ukraine’s UkrGasBank has been certified to
issue chip cards according to the current requirements of
MasterCard. UkrCard Interbank Processing Centre
has also been certified. In the near future, UkrGasBank plans to
issue over 50,000 chip cards for different MasterCard cards,
including Maestro debit card and MasterCard credit cards.
UkrGasBank said it would initialise chip cards using its own
production capacities. The initialisation office of the bank can
also issue chip cards for partner banks, which are served by the
processing centre of UkrCard.
• American Express Middle East has launched an
online payment system that enables Bahrain-based cardmembers to pay
their statement bills online. The online services will be offered
by 11 banks in Bahrain. Through the new online services,
cardmembers will have 24/7 access to their card accounts and can
view their payment history, make bill payments or print a copy of
their statement.
• Denmark’s Danske Bank is removing all charges
on everyday banking services for customers who use the bank’s
online banking system and its ATM network. Danske said customers
will no longer pay to get a Visa/Dankort card, and using the card
in the bank’s ATMs will continue to be free of charge. Fees have
also been removed from a number of American Express and MasterCard
credit cards with insurance schemes, and ordinary overdraft
facilities will be established at no cost, the bank said.
• Benelux banking group Fortis and An
Post, the Irish post office, have announced that Postbank,
their new community-based banking service, has commenced operations
across Ireland. Postbank will extend its banking services
nationally to over 1,000 post offices within 12 months and both
organisations claim it will have the largest retail banking network
in Ireland by the end of next year. Postbank’s initial services as
an independent Irish bank will be based on two financial products,
a demand deposit account and a guaranteed investment product. Over
the next year the bank’s services will be extended in stages
throughout the national network of post offices to include current
accounts, credit cards and ATM facilities.
• Standard Chartered has launched what it
claims is the first global Islamic Sharia-compliant credit card,
the Saadiq Visa gold card. “Based on international banking
standards, the Saadiq gold credit card is tailored to meet our
customers’ needs for an interest-free credit card and has been
developed in strict accordance with the values of the Islamic
faith,” said Owen Belman, head of the bank’s consumer banking, in
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman.
• In Israel, Harel Insurance Investments and
Visa CAL are launching a joint credit card and
lending company. An agreement between Harel and Visa CAL lays down
directives regarding the company’s operations but will need
regulatory approval from the Bank of Israel and the Antititrust
Authority. Previously, Harel had owned 5 percent of Visa CAL but
sold the shares in January 2007 to Israel Discount Bank.
• The European Central Bank (ECB) is proposing
a new framework to oversee all payment card systems using the euro
in the 13-nation currency zone. The ECB said it had been monitoring
risks to which card payment schemes were exposed and had developed
an oversight framework for schemes that process euro payments in
order to “promote a level playing field across the euro area”. The
ECB said that the proposed framework applies to all card payment
schemes including debit and credit cards.
• MasterCard Worldwide has launched Europe’s
first watch equipped with MasterCard’s contactless technology
PayPass, in partnership with Garanti Bank of
Turkey. Consumers can tap their new watches on PayPass readers to
make the equivalent of a credit card purchase at more than 600
merchant locations in Turkey. The PayPass watch allows purchases
under €15 ($20), with no signature or PIN required. Larger
purchases will still require a signature.
• According to figures from MasterCard,
residents of the UAE hold nearly one-third of the credit cards in
the 275-million strong Middle East and Pakistan region, making it
the most important local market for the credit card industry.
Around 8.5 million credit cards have been issued in these emerging
markets. In the UAE, the second-largest Arab nation by GDP, 2.2
million people of an overall population of 4.1 million collectively
own 2.4 million credit cards. This represents 59 percent of UAE
residents.
• Chinese national bank card operator China
UnionPay (CUP) and Austrian payment card operator
Europay Austria have signed an agreement allowing
Europay to perform acquiring for CUP cards at ATMs and POS
terminals in Austria and possibly other European countries. The
agreement is intended to capitalise on the growing number of
Chinese tourists visiting Austria and Europe.
• UK card issuer Halifax has launched a new
version of its One Card product, which will incorporate a 0 percent
anniversary offer. The card also offers 0 percent for nine months
on balance transfers, subject to a 3 percent balance transfer fee
and a typical APR of 13.9 percent, which is 2 percentage points
lower than the majority of standard credit cards in the UK. The One
Card will be available in three different colours to suit and can
be customised at the point of application.
• Visa Europe has launched SEPA HealthCheck, a
new consulting service to help its member banks with the strategic
and tactical choices brought about by the Single Euro Payments Area
(SEPA). Visa said that SEPA HealthCheck will give banks an
objective view of their SEPA programme, reviewing and benchmarking
the practices and performance of core business functions on a
regular basis. Jeremy Nicholds, executive vice-president of
commercial development at Visa Europe, said: “Given the high costs
of SEPA compliance, banking executives need to make sure that their
implementation project is well thought through and stays on
track.”
• German payment service provider ConCardis has
agreed to open its merchants for V PAY, Visa
Europe’s SEPA-compliant debit card. ConCardis will start in summer
2007 to get its customers ready to accept V PAY and to equip them
with V PAY decals for the point of sale. Europe-wide, V PAY cards
are accepted at more than 3.75 million payment terminals and
210,000 ATMs.
Latin America
• American Express (Amex) has named Carlos Pascual Jr as
regional president, Global Network Services for Latin America and
the Caribbean. Pascual is responsible for growing Amex’s local
currency card business through alliances with financial
institutions throughout the region.
• Australian smart card technology vendor
Keycorp says Mexico’s Banamex has
started issuing both Visa and MasterCard EMV chip cards using
Keycorp’s Multos smart card software. Richard Cusson, Keycorp’s
general manager, smart card technologies, tells CI that Banamex
will be issuing several million EMV cards a year using Multos. “We
have implemented Multos in our card personalisation centre so that
we can issue both MasterCard and Visa cards using the same smart
card platform,” Luis Cirerol, Banamex’s new technologies manager,
says in a statement. Cirerol says Banamex has also launched a
contactless payments pilot using a Multos dual-interface card (see
CI 378, p6).
• Banamex has rolled out 2,250 Opteva 520 ATMs
since the Mexican bank started deploying the Diebold-manufactured
cash dispensers in November 2004. In February 2007, Banamex also
began rolling out Diebold Opteva 720 ATMs which enable customers to
deposit cash into their bank accounts and pay Banamex credit card
bills 24 hours a day (see CI 376, p6). Jesus Berumen Cantu,
Banamex’s vice-president, remote banking, tells CI that so far the
bank has installed 28 Opteva 720 ATMs. “Transactions involving
these advanced ATMs are linked in real time to our customers’
accounts,” he says.
• Market research company Euromonitor predicts
that the total number of payment cards in issue in Latin America
will rise from 632.8 million in 2006 to 993.4 million in 2011. The
total value of Latin American payment card transactions will rise
from $697.9 billion in 2006 to $972.3 billion in 2011, it says.
Euromonitor’s figures include debit, credit, charge and store
cards. It says Latin American debit transactions will rise from
$106.6 billion in 2006 to $167.9 billion in 2011.
• French transactions and payments solutions provider
Ingenico says it has received orders for 90,000
Aqua POS terminals as well as a commitment for another 100,000 from
customers in Latin America. The company says that it currently has
over 50 percent of the Latin American POS terminal market and that
it has developed strong business relationships with the region’s
main acquirers. The Aqua is a new POS terminal designed for
emerging markets.
• Innova Card, a French developer of secure
chips for POS terminals and PIN pads, has signed an agreement with
Brazilian smart card technology company Planeta
Informática. The deal calls for Planeta Informática to
distribute Innova Card’s chips in Brazil to local manufacturers of
smart card readers, PIN pads and POS terminals.
• According to Euromonitor, three Chilean store card issuers –
the Falabella, Ripley and Almacenes París retail chains – had three
times as many credit cards in issue as all the combined Chilean
Visa, Diners, MasterCard and Amex bankcard issuers in 2006. Several
store card issuers including Ripley, Falabella and La Polar have
signed agreements with Chilean banks to allow their store
cardholders to use the banks’ ATMs to withdraw cash, Euromonitor
says.
• Brazil’s Banco Itaú says that in the first
quarter ending 31 March 2007, its credit card business posted a net
income of BRL162 million ($80 million), up 9 percent from BRL153
million in the fourth quarter of 2006. The figures relate to credit
cards held by Itaú current account holders, including Itaúcard,
Redecard and Orbitall customers. In the first quarter of 2007, the
total volume of Itaú credit card transactions fell by 12.1 percent
to BRL5.6 billion from BRL6.4 billion in the fourth quarter of
2006. Traditionally, credit card volumes are higher in the final
quarter of the year, Itaú says. In March 2007, 82 percent of Itaú’s
credit cardholders were active, according to the bank.
• MasterCard says its debit, credit and charge
card programmes in Latin America grew 21.8 percent year-on-year in
their gross dollar volume (GDV) to $34 billion in the three months
to 31 March 2007. Purchase volume totalled $16 billion at the end
of the first quarter of 2007, up from $13 billion in the first
quarter of 2006, while cash volume was $18 billion, up from $15
billion a year earlier. The total number of purchase transactions
involving MasterCard cards in Latin America rose to 354 million in
the first quarter of 2007 from 294 million a year earlier.
• In March 2007, credit card lending by Mexican banks totalled
MXN226 billion ($20.91 billion), up from MXN155 billion in March
2006 and MXN221.3 billion in February 2007, Banco de
México says in its latest monthly bulletin. Credit card
lending rose by an annual rate of 40 percent between March 2006 and
March 2007 in real terms, the central bank says.
• In 2006, BBVA Bancomer recorded the largest
increase in a past due loans ratio of all the major Mexican banks,
according to a Fitch Ratings report on Mexican banks. BBVA
Bancomer’s past due loans ratio rose from 1.6 percent in 2005 to
2.2 percent in 2006, which is largely explained by its dominant
position in credit cards and other retail products, Fitch says.
• France’s Oberthur Card Systems, providers of
card-based solutions, software and applications, has won the 2006
Best Vendor Award from Santander México. Since
2004, Oberthur has supplied Santander with over 1 million smart
cards for its EMV migration process, participating in all the
Mexican bank’s EMV projects.
• Payment systems provider PayPal says that
customers in 87 new countries, including Belize, Colombia, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and
Suriname, can now send money online with PayPal. In addition,
customers using PayPal.com can view the site in Spanish, French and
simplified Chinese.
• Scotiabank Mexico says its credit card and
unsecured personal lending rose by 25 percent to MXN18.18 billion
in the three months to 31 March 2007 from MXN14.6 billion in the
first quarter of 2006. In the three months to 31 December 2006,
Scotia-bank Mexico’s credit card and unsecured lending book stood
at MXN17.9 billion.
• Visa International LAC says at the end of
December 2006, 21.4 million Visa EMV-compliant smart debit cards
were in issue in LAC. From December 2003 to December 2006, the
number of Visa EMV cards in issue in LAC increased annually at an
average of 129 percent. Currently, 20 percent of all Visa credit
cards in LAC are smart cards, and there are over 1 million EMV card
acceptance locations in the region, Visa says.
North America
• US consultancy Packaged Facts says that the
number of contactless credit and debit cards in circulation in the
US will rise from 27 million in 2006 to 109 million in 2011. It
says that total US contactless card purchase volume was nearly $15
billion in 2006 and 777 million contactless transactions took place
last year.
• Discount store Costco is offering a 5 percent
annual rebate on sales of petrol at Costco petrol stations for
customers using co-branded Costco-Amex TrueEarnings Business cards.
Other benefits of the True-Earnings card include 3 percent cashback
for spending at restaurants; 2 percent cashback for airline travel,
hotels and car rentals; and 1 percent cashback on other spending.
The rebate is received as an annual coupon that can be redeemed at
branches of Costco.
• First Data has made an investment in
ViVOtech, a US-based provider of near field
communications-based wireless payment systems. First Data is acting
as lead investor in ViVOtech’s Series C round of financing. No
financial terms were disclosed.
• JPMorgan Chase’s Chase Card Services unit has
appointed Robert Paterson as Canada card executive for Chase
Canada. Paterson will be responsible for expanding Chase’s credit
card business in Canada and managing day-to-day Canadian operations
including marketing, customer service and strategy.
• Chase Card Services has given a $38,500 grant
to The George Washington University School of Business to support a
research programme examining the factors that contribute to a
successful debt management plan. The grant to the Washington,
DC-based university is part of an overall $3.9 million in financial
literacy grants that Chase is donating over three years to US
organisations.
• US prepaid card processor eCommLink and South
Dakota-based First Bank and Trust have developed a
prepaid debit card that enables cardholders to transfer money
between the card and their prepaid mobile phone account. The
MasterCard-branded card will be launched in August 2007, eComm-Link
says. Converting mobile phone airtime minutes to cash or cash to
minutes using the card takes a few seconds, it says.
• The Massachusetts Bankers Association has
launched a class action law suit against US retailer
TJX to recover the multi-million dollar cost of
replacing cards compromised in the company’s data breach (see CI
378 p7, CI 376 p7, CI 374 p7). The Connecticut Bankers Association
and the Maine Association of Community Banks are co-plaintiffs in
the class action which was filed in the US District Court in
Boston, Massachusetts. The three associations together represent
around 300 banks. TJX says that information on at least 45.7
million cards was stolen from its data systems.
• MasterCard has teamed up with global
technology company TRX to develop a tool for
reporting and analysing corporate travel expenditure. The Travel
Dashboard is a web-based data reporting tool that draws data from
MasterCard’s corporate card programme to create reports and charts.
The tool will help corporations to improve agreements with travel
vendors and ensure compliance with travel policies, TRX says.
• Jim Baumgartner, president and CEO of Canadian processor
Moneris Solutions, has been elected president of
the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), with effect from 1
June 2007. The ETA is a trade association for payment processors
and has over 500 members from seven different countries.
• The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC),
the independent body that oversees the global Payment Card Industry
Data Security Standard (DSS), is to hold a three-day meeting in
Toronto in September. The council was set up by Visa, MasterCard,
American Express, JCB and Discover in 2006. The standards provide
mandatory criteria for the storage and processing of payment card
data.
• Payments processor Tempo Payments (see CI 377
p11) is expanding the reach of its retailer-issued and -branded
debit cards by signing an agreement with US acquirer Chase
Paymentech. Tempo cards can be used at 200,000 US merchant
locations which are linked to the bank-independent Tempo Payment
Network. The agreement with Paymentech extends the reach of the
Tempo network by another 600,000 merchant locations.
• Bill payment network Tio Network’s financial
services kiosks located at Exxon and Mobile convenience stores
across the US are offering reloadable MasterCard prepaid debit
cards. The cards, which are aimed at unbanked customers, are issued
by Meta Bank and processed by NetSpend. Once they have bought a Tio
card from a Tio kiosk, cardholders can load funds onto their cards
at retailers that belong to NetSpend’s US prepaid card reloading
network. They can also deposit their pay cheques onto the cards.
Tio’s 2,000 automated self-service kiosks in the US also offer bill
payment, money transfers and cheque cashing.
• The US president’s Identity Theft Task Force
has published its plan to reduce identity theft. Recommendations
include reducing the use of Social Security numbers by federal
agencies and educating consumers as well as public and private
agencies on consumer data protection. The task force is calling for
more effective prosecution of identity criminals and the provision
of assistance to victims of identity theft.
• Wells Fargo says it is the first US financial
institution to make clean, renewable energy reward options
available to its cardholders. The Wells Fargo Rewards programme now
allows the bank’s consumer and business credit card and debit
cardholders to redeem reward points to support renewable energy
projects.
• US consumer credit excluding mortgages rose by $13.5 billion –
or 6.7 percent year-on-year – in March 2007 to $2.425 trillion, the
Federal Reserve says. By contrast, consumer credit
rose by $5.5 billion in February 2007 and the annual increase for
the whole of 2006 was 4.5 percent. Revolving loans, which include
credit and charge cards, rose by 9.2 percent in March to $888.2
billion, compared to a 2.9 percent rise in February 2007 to $881.4
billion.
• Six additional US vending companies are installing USA
Technologies’ e-Port cashless payment technology on their
vending machines so they can accept MasterCard
PayPass cards and devices. The companies participating in the
MasterCard/USA Technologies roll-out are North County Vending, Five
Star Food Service, A & B Vending, First Class Vending,
Mid-Atlantic Vending and PGI Services. These new vending machines
are part of a roll-out of 5,000 PayPass-enabled vending machines
announced last year by MasterCard and USA Technologies.
