“Diners Club International, a part of the Discover Global Network has signed an agreement with Nets, a leading to help expand Discover Global Network acceptance in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Today, Nets offers customers one of the widest ranges of payment brands in the Nordics, including both local payment schemes and international payment brands. With this agreement, Nets will work with current and prospective merchant partners to help provide increased acceptance of Discover, Diners Club International, PULSE and affiliate network cards across these markets.”

“So why are consumers flocking to billers’ websites? First, the payments are made immediately – critical to consumers about to have their electricity or other important services shut off. With only 54 percent of consumers always paying their bills on time, according to Aite, a huge percentage of consumers need last-minute payment options. Second, most big billers offer the choice of paying bills with a credit card –an option employed by one-third of consumers.”

“We all deserve control over our digital lives. That’s why we must rein in the data brokers. In 2019, it’s time to stand up for the right to privacy—yours, mine, all of ours. Consumers shouldn’t have to tolerate another year of companies irresponsibly amassing huge user profiles, data breaches that seem out of control and the vanishing ability to control our own digital lives.”

“A historical shopping street in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, has become the first in China to extensively apply facial recognition in making payments. The government in Wenzhou, a city known as the country’s cradle for private entrepreneurship, has joined with Ant Financial, operator of China’s biggest online payment platform Alipay, and e-commerce giant Alibaba through an agreement signed in May 2015 to jointly develop “a smart business area.””

““We should be open to innovative identity verification methods like document review through a live video connection, use of blockchain, biometrics and other methods that have begun to see widespread adoption in other parts of the economy,” Parmenter comments. “These methods have the potential to prove a person’s identity more securely and accurately than showing physical identification.””

“The NFC Forum has released a new candidate technical specification that is designed to enable a single antenna in an IoT device to be used to manage both NFC communications and wireless charging.”

“Whether a surcharge is added to the price when paying with a credit card or a discount is provided when paying with something other than a credit card, it is a considered a surcharge, says Evan R. Minsberg, an associate at Venable LLP, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm. The card brands may enable merchants to call it a convenience fee or a service fee, but “in state law, it’s still a surcharge.””

“Wirecard has signed a cooperation agreement with watch manufacturer Swatch for “SwatchPAY!”, a solution by which wrist watches will incorporate digital, contactless payment solutions in Switzerland and later throughout Europe.”

“In early 2000, right at the top of the dotcom bubble, the mobile bubble and the broadband bubble, European mobile operators spent €110bn on licenses for 3G spectrum. Now, almost 20 years later, I’ve just got back from CES, and 5G is a Topic. Many of my friends at big companies tell me that ‘what is 5G?’ floats around a lot of corporate headquarters almost as much as ‘what is machine learning?’ does.”

“Analysts are predicting a big year for mobile coupons. More than 142 million Americans are expected to use digital coupons by the end of 2019, a number that continues to increase as shoppers shift from desktop to mobile.”

“quare, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) today announced the launch of Square Card, a free business debit Mastercard that helps businesses manage their cash flow by eliminating the time between making a sale and having the funds available to spend. Square Card also encourages commerce among the small business community by offering sellers a 2.75% instant discount on purchases made at other Square sellers.”

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The acquisition of the family-owned business gives TNS two new offices in Brazil, 65 new employees and an extensive customer base of mPOS, transportation, security and tracking customers that collectively use over 500,000 Link managed SIMs in the country. Combined with TNS’ own SIM network, this means TNS now manages almost a million SIMs around the world.”

“allpago is the first PSP to offer a seamless, real-time payment processing service for one-click and recurring transactions in Chile since the country’s Central Bank introduced regulation for alternative payment facilitators in 2017. Organizations using allpago’s platform in Chile are expected to achieve a 53% increase in authorization rates and revenues from initial payments made by people in the country and a 23% boost in revenue from recurring transactions.”

“Thanks to cooperation between Sberbank and Azbuka Vkusa, Russian residents can pay for shopping using their fingerprint at all AV supermarkets that are equipped with biometric POS terminals, regardless of where they signed up for this service. Previously clients could only use fingerprint payment at the supermarket where they registered their biometric details.”

“TD Ameritrade announced an industry first today: the ability for individual investors to instantly fund a brokerage account with Apple Pay through Apple Business Chat in the Messages app on iPhone and iPad. Historically, to fund brokerage accounts, investors have had to endure a multi-day waiting period while funds were verified or manage a complicated wire transfer. TD Ameritrade is the first U.S.-based financial services firm to offer instantaneous funding for brokerage accounts through Apple Pay with just a touch using Touch ID or a double-click of the side button and glance at your iPhone X or later to authenticate with Face ID.”

“Travelers today have access to more ride options than ever before, but with so much variation across services, the payment experience can be confusing. Many transit service providers are considering streamlining the traveler experience with mobility services through multimodal payments convergenceⁱ. The Secure Technology Alliance today released the second resource in its two-part series on multimodal payments convergence, outlining key considerations for successful convergence as well as recommendations for implementation.”

“With the Square Card, which is free to obtain and use, business owners will be able to spend their Square balances immediately in stores and online. Previously, those who used Square for payment processing had to wait several days for their funds to transfer to their banks accounts, or else they could pay a small fee for instant access to their money.”

“Fiserv’s $22 billion deal to acquire First Data creates a company of massive scale. First Data alone processed 6,000 transactions per second during the recent holiday season, and has 4,000 financial institution clients and 6 million merchant locations in 100 countries. It spends $1.5 billion a year on technology, and has the heft to partner with the likes of China’s Alipay. Fiserv controls a third of the U.S. core banking market and has more than 12,000 clients, and the deal with First Data provides a doorway to the international markets where Fiserv had only dabbled strategically before.”

“Sweden’s Klarna Bank AB has turned to Snoop Dogg to promote its online payment services and the U.S. rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, has also invested in the financial technology startup. In a video posted on YouTube Thursday, the 47-year-old artist is renamed Smoooth Dogg, a reference to Klarna’s ambition to enable “smoooth” payments. Snoop Dogg has also become “a minor” shareholder in the company, Klarna said in emailed comments.”

“North American online shoppers expect free shipping, as well as free returns. And, if a merchant’s return policies are not lenient enough, many will head to another merchant’s site or app. A majority (51.0%) of U.S. online shoppers and nearly as many Canadians (49.3%) avoid buying from online retailers who do not offer free returns, according to a survey of more than 2,000 consumers in the United States and Canada from omnichannel services vendor Radial Inc.”

“The app-based offering is aimed at facilitating personal and small merchant payments within countries and across Africa’s national borders. Existing Visa  cardholders can send and receive funds at home or internationally on GetBarter. The product also lets non-cardholders (those with accounts or mobile wallets on other platforms) create a virtual Visa card to link to the app.  A Visa spokesperson confirmed the product partnership.”

“If you have switched many of your transactions to non-cash modes in the last few years, you are not alone. More and more retail investors are switching to non-cash modes—for both person-to-person transfers and person-to-merchant transactions. In the current financial year alone, the number of credit card transactions at points of sale (PoS) has gone up from 132.32 million in April to 145.85 million in November 2018, according to the latest Reserve Bank of India data. For debit cards, the volume is up from 333.77 million in April to 376.57 million in November.”

“Facebook makes it relatively easy for users to find out how the site’s algorithm has categorized their interests via a “Your ad preferences” page.¹ Overall, however, 74% of Facebook users say they did not know that this list of their traits and interests existed until they were directed to their page as part of this study.”

“A ‘subscription trap’ which is causing two million Brits to pay for services they don’t need could soon be brought to an end under a crackdown by one of the world’s biggest payment providers.  Mastercard, which provides more than 600 million customers with payment cards worldwide,  is launching a new notification service which will warn people signing up for “free” trials when they are coming to an end.”

“If you thought you’d heard this story before, you’re not wrong. Back in November, another telecoms company, Voxox, exposed a database containing millions of text messages — including password resets and two-factor codes. This time around, it’s a different company: Voipo, a Lake Forest, Calif. communications provider, exposed tens of gigabytes worth of customer data.”

“UPI crossed the Rs1 trillion ($14 billion) milestone for monthly value in December, growing nearly eight times over the previous year. It also achieved a monthly volume of over 600 million, four times the volume of UPI transactions in December 2017, according to data released by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The total payments industry saw a rise of 27% in volume and a fall of 1% in November 2018 over November 2017, according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India. The forms of payment include cards, mobile wallets and mobile banking.”

“The new set of requirements actually has two major components—The PCI Secure Software Standard and the PCI Secure Lifecycle Standard—and is under the umbrella of what the Wakefield, Mass.-based PCI Council calls its new Software Security Framework. The Council has been working on updating software security for more than a year, and indicated last month that new standards would be published in early 2019.”

“Americans are becoming less reliant on physical currency. Roughly three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) say they make no purchases using cash during a typical week, up slightly from 24% in 2015. And the share who say that all or almost all of their weekly purchases are made using cash has modestly decreased, from 24% in 2015 to 18% today, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that comes as some businesses experiment with becoming cashless establishments.”

“The Omaha, Nebraska-based financial firm said on Tuesday it was allowing customers to fund their accounts with a debit card in their Apple Pay digital wallets. Using the wallet and a system called Apple Business Chat, TD Ameritrade customers with Apple devices can transfer up to $10,000 a day to their accounts and have access to it immediately, a feature the brokerage says is a first in its industry.”

“The Montreal-based start-up offers contactless payment acceptance on smart devices, without the need for external hardware. It says its “bring-your-own-device technology” provides an alternative to traditional point-of-sale offerings. Earlier this year, Mobeewave signed a partnership agreement with Samsung Electronics making the Canadian firm’s platform available for commercial use on more than 250 million Samsung devices around the world.”

“More than one billion people leave behind trails of information on WeChat every day as they use the messenger to chat, read, shop, hail rides, rent umbrellas and run many other errands. And the Tencent app has quietly started using this type of signal to determine whether a user is worthy of perks such as deposit-free renting services.”

“Czech Republic’s two largest banks Česká spořitelna and Komerční banka, along with mBank, MONETA, and Air Bank, will reportedly be among the first financial institutions to offer Apple Pay to customers in the Czech Republic. Equa Bank and Banka CREDITAS may follow suit within the first half of the year. “

“Japanese restaurant-booking app Pocket Concierge has been acquired by US card issuer American Express for an undisclosed sum. In addition to handling online reservations for high-end restaurants, the app also provides users with in-depth information on things like restaurant decor or whether establishments are child-friendly.”

“The department of industrial policy and promotion recently released Press Note 2 of 2018, wherein it has reviewed and clarified the foreign direct investment policy for e-commerce. The changes are set to come into effect from 1 February. The question that plagues the industry is what will be the impact on the sector. Here’s a closer look at the three major changes in the new policy:”

“The U.S. Federal Reserve is wary of giving “fintech” firms such as OnDeck Capital Inc (ONDK.N) or Kabbage Inc. access to the country’s financial infrastructure, putting the central bank at odds with other regulators looking to bring them into the fold.”

“Deutsche Bundesbank, the German central bank, is using Swift MyStandards and Readiness Portal to support the European banking community migrate payment flows to the ISO 20022 standard. The central bank will use the platform to ensure a smooth transition for community members. Deutsche Bundesbank is a member of the four central bank service providers for the Target services. The Readiness Portal will enable all banks and market participants in the Eurozone to access documentation and test their payments messages related to the Target2 real-time gross settlement system, in preparation for the T2/T2S consolidation project in 2021.”

“Customers of Dutch bank ABN Amro can now connect a wide range of Mastercard-certified wearables to their bank account and use them to make both standard, low value contactless payments and also, by entering a PIN at the point of sale, higher value transactions beyond the contactless limit as well. ABN Amro is the first bank in the world to offer wearables that let customers make high value payments at the point-of-sale by using a PIN, the bank says.”

“HSBC, one of the world’s largest bank institutions, has revealed that throughout 2018 it settle more than $250 billion in transactions using distributed ledger technology (DLT).  In a press release, the bank stated that it had been using it’s “FX Everywhere” platform in order to complete over 3 million foreign exchange (FX) transactions and made an additional 150,000 payments utilising the same technology. HSBC went on to reveal that it had been using the platform in order to “orchestrate payments across HSBC’s internal balance streets creating significant efficiencies and opportunities.””

“PenFed Credit Union announced Tuesday it will begin issuing contactless Visa-branded credit and debit cards this month. The move comes after a decision by Chase, a unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co., to issue dual-interface cards that will be in force this year. The cards are called dual interface because they can be dipped into or tapped against a point-of-sale terminal. In November, Chase began issuing contactless cards for its Chase Freedom Unlimited and Chase Slate cards, with plans to expand to other Chase Visa credit cards and eventually its debit cards later this year.”

“Canadians deserve a financial sector that is globally competitive and promotes consumer choice, while also delivering financial stability and economic growth. They must also have confidence that it operates with the highest regard for privacy and security. To this end, the Department of Finance Canada today released a consultation paper on the merits of open banking. The release of the paper and the launch of public consultations marks the next step in the Government’s review of open banking, following the appointment of the Advisory Committee on Open Banking in September 2018.”

“New benchmark data from ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ:ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, revealed a 13 percent increase in fraud attempts in the ‘buy online pickup in-store’ (BOPIS) channel during the 2018 peak holiday season. Based on hundreds of millions of merchant transactions, including some of the world’s leading global retail brands, BOPIS also saw consumer transactions peak at 20 percent right before Christmas as shoppers bought last-minute gifts before the holidays.”

“Now independent of EBay, PayPal has a market capitalization of $100 billion, 100 times what it was worth when it went public in 2002, and the number of users has grown from 15 million to almost 250 million. While it’s struggled in China, where WeChat dominates payments, in the rest of the world it processes as much as 30 percent of all e-commerce transactions, according to some estimates.”

“PayPal Holdings Inc. has named Allison Johnson executive vice president and chief marketing officer, reviving a post that disappeared from the company in 2013. Ms. Johnson was vice president of world-wide marketing communications at Apple Inc. from 2005 through 2011 and was previously a senior marketing executive at HP Inc. She was most recently a founder and managing partner at West, which she described as a hybrid of a marketing and venture-capital firm. She said she left last March.”

“Up to 36% of shoppers say retailers need to do more to offer more personalized experiences, with this percentage reaching 43%for households that earn more than $100,000 annually, according to data from Forrester Research. Yet despite the evident desire for personalization, shoppers are still hesitant to share the personal information that can steer retailers in the right direction, and are overall distrustful of the concept.”

“Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar has partnered with stablecoin project Terra with the objective of launching instant money transfer and lending services, e27 reported. Founded by Daniel Shin, Terra is a new project that aims to create a price-stable digital currency. In August 2018, it raised $32 million in a seed fundinground that received support from Binance Labs, OKEx, Huobi Capital and Arrington XRP Capital, among others.”

“Fit Pay Inc. announced on Friday it will begin shipping its Bitcoin-based contactless device, Flip, on Feb. 13. The coin-shaped token sells to consumers for $29 and allows them to convert their Bitcoin holdings to U.S. dollars and then spend the money at stores equipped with contactless point-of-sale terminals. The device comes equipped with a near-field communication antenna.”

“With the rise of Chinese tourism, North American merchants have proved eager to accept Chinese mobile wallets like Alipay and WeChat Pay, and now they can add UnionPay cards to that mix. Citcon USA LLC said Monday it will enable merchants in the United States and Canada to accept quick-response (QR) codes at the point of sale for UnionPay International payments. Founded in 2002 and based in Shanghai, UnionPay claims a card base of some 7 billion globally, which it says is the largest in the world.”

“Equinox Payments (“Equinox”), a leading provider of payment terminals, software and services, and ACCEO Tender Retail today announced that the Equinox Luxe 8500i and Luxe 6200m payment terminals have achieved EMV end-to-end certification on First Data’s processing platform and are expected to be submitted to the PCI Security Standards Council in February for validation. The solution leverages the First Data payments platform and supports First Data TransArmor encryption and tokenization. Value-add features include First Data’s Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC).”

“Paper receipts have become obsolete in the digital age, wasting valuable natural resources and putting the health of consumers and retail workers at potential risk when exposed to their chemical contents. Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) today introduced AB 161, Skip the Slip legislation that makes electronic receipts the default practice when making a purchase. Businesses in the state would have to provide customers e-receipts by 2022, unless a hard copy is specifically requested.”

“The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced the successful completion of the first “IATA Pay” ticket purchase transaction in a live test environment. The transaction was conducted in partnership with ipagoo, a UK-based fintech company.”

“First Data , a global leader in commerce-enabling technology, today announced a new PCI P2PE validation to its portfolio, TransArmor P2PE using Ingenico Group’s On-Guard solution. The addition of TransArmor P2PE makes First Data the first processor to offer enterprise clients a single, multi-layered solution with both point-to-point and end-to-end encryption.”

“ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced that Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet), the national payments network and central infrastructure provider, has implemented Malaysia’s Real-Time Retail Payments Platform (RPP) using ACI’s UP Real-Time Payments solution. The first service offered to the public under the platform is DuitNow, an instant credit transfer with a national addressing database that links mobile numbers and national ID numbers to account numbers.”

“Ingenico Group, the global leader in seamless payment, launched its innovative payment-enabled chatbot, which uses natural language processing (NLP) from IBM Watson to create a smooth customer experience. Watson capabilities allow Ingenico’s chatbot to better understand users’ requests once they have been inputted, whatever they may be. It can better interpret nuances in language and phrasing, handling natural variations in the way individuals communicate. As a result, the bot can respond quickly and effectively, enabling it to meet each user’s specific needs in a wide range of different languages. “