“TransferGo, the London-based international money transfer startup, has raised just over $17.6 million in Series B funding, including an earlier tranche of funding closed in May. The round is led by Vostok Emerging Finance, and Silicon Valley’s Hard Yaka, with participation from Revo Capital, U-Start Club, and Practica Capital. The figure also includes around $830,000 in equity crowdfunding via Seedrs.”

“The survey results show the power of a multi-channel approach to mobile marketing and how best to use the various channels available. It also provides powerful insights into how to effectively expand marketing list sign-ups and even demonstrates consumer willingness to share more personal data based on an attractive initial sign-up offer.”

“The number of physical stores or outlets accepting payment cards worldwide reached 69.2 million last year, up 13% from 2016, according to “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2023,” a study released Wednesday by Retail Banking Research Ltd., a London-based firm. The report forecasts that number will grow to 111.7 million by the end of 2023, for an 8.3% average annual growth rate.”

“Defining fraud as an attempt to manipulate government-issued IDs in order to create new online accounts, Jumio found an expected bump in fraud attempts during the busy holiday shopping period, with fraud jumping 22 percent compared to the year’s overall average. But the larger trend is much more worrisome, with Jumio reporting that online identity fraud increased 109 percent between 2014 and 2018. That’s a sobering assessment after Jumio’s holiday fraud report last year found a dip in fraud attempts of 17 percent.”

“To adopt RTP, a client’s IT department or enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendor may need to upgrade systems to allow for sending and receiving payments. Once established, RTP works with existing bank accounts. Users will not be required to share account information or sign up for a separate, third-party service or disclose their account or debit card information. TCH has already reached out to many ERP vendors to help facilitate the use of RTP and payment-related messages.”

“Instacart said Thursday that it would cease deliveries from 76 Whole Foods locations on Feb 10. The San Francisco-based company said around 240 employees would be laid off as a result. Most of the 1,415 Instacart employees that pick up orders from Whole Foods stores will be transferred to other divisions, founder and chief executive, Apoorva Mehta, said. Multi-retailer delivery services will continue to include Whole Foods for now but will scale back in coming months.”

“TerraPay’s low value payments network connects financial instruments internationally. The company’s interoperability engine enables customers to send and receive transactions across diverse payment instruments and platforms – enabling mobile wallets in international, regional and domestic markets.”

“Asia was one of the biggest recipients of the roughly $613 billion in remittances sent globally last year, with a large swathe coming from expatriate workers in the Middle East, where UAE Exchange, part of payments and foreign exchange company Finablr, is one of the main players. Most funds are currently sent through foreign exchange branches but a growing chunk is being transferred via websites and apps, with the use of blockchain technology expected to ramp up in the next few years — a transition that UAE Exchange and San Francisco-based Ripple are aiming to capture.”

“Revolut, the London-based financial technology startup, has obtained a European banking license as Brexit looms, with plans to launch checking and savings accounts as well as retail and business lending. The Bank of Lithuania, the eastern European country’s central bank, granted Revolut the regulatory approval that gives it permission to operate throughout the European Union.”

“Under the act, data collectors would be required to “reasonably secure” identifying information, to not use that information in a harmful way, and to give notice to consumers about breaches of sensitive information. The requirement extends to third parties, if the data collectors share or sell that data with another entity, and the plan would also give the FTC new authority to fine companies that act deceptively with users’ data.”

“Aaron Cole, 30, spoke out in an interview with KGW-TV on Wednesday, detailing the sophisticated plot that defrauded his family after the sale of their home in Oregon City, outside of Portland. Known as ‘spoofing’, the increasingly popular scam uses emails that appear to be from a trusted sender to convey phony bank routing information and dupe individuals or companies out of thousands or even millions of dollars. Cole was swindled last week, shortly after closing on the sale of his family’s home of six years, a three-bedroom ranch.”

“Robinhood is undercutting the big banks by forgoing brick-and-mortar branches with its new zero-fee checking and savings account features. With no overdraft or monthly fees, a juicy 3 percent interest rate, and a claim of more US ATMs than the five biggest banks combined, Robinhood is using the scalability of software to pass impressive perks on to customers. The free stock trading app already used that approach to attack brokers like E*Trade and Charles Schwab that charge a per trade fee. Now it’s breaking into the larger financial services market with a model that could put the squeeze on Wells Fargo, Chase, and Bank Of America.”

“Today, Square announced that it will integrate Appointments with Instagram and Google, meaning that merchants can chase new customers through two of the biggest properties on the internet.”

“Emergent Technology Holdings LP (“EmTech”), a global financial technology company, is pleased to announce it has acquired Interpay Limited (“Interpay Africa”), a payments processor based in Ghana. The acquisition extends the operations of EmTech’s digital payments business, Emergent Payments®, a local payments provider in 70 emerging markets.”

“Galileo, a leading and trusted technology partner for fintech and payments, today announced that its technology and know-how is helping to power Robinhood Checking & Savings, unveiled this morning in a blog post from Robinhood. Galileo’s highly customizable payments infrastructure has been integrated into Robinhood Checking & Savings, which earns three percent annual interest, has no fees, and offers access to over 75,000 free ATMs.”

“Many accountants are throwing away paper checks in favor of digital business payments when it comes time to pay the bills, according to the Rise of Modern Business Payments report prepared by Bill.com, the digital business payments leader. Through a 2018 survey used to prepare the report, more than 460 accounting professionals weighed in on how they pay bills for their firms and clients.”

“Entersekt, an innovator in mobile-first fintech solutions, today announced that it has gained EMVCo certification for its 3-D Secure 2 access control server. EMVCo is a payments industry consortium managing global specifications for secure card-based e-commerce transactions.”

“Card Controls allows consumers to set spending limits, create transaction alerts, specify merchant categories such as food, gas or entertainment, and define regions where the card can be used. Consumers can also disable certain locations or merchant categories from spending. Additionally, the on-and-off switch provides a fast method to secure an account if the associated debit card is ever lost or stolen. “

“Instant money company Ingo Money today launched Ingo Money QuickConnect, a new turnkey solution that allows any company issuing disbursements to customers to quickly and easily begin offering push-to-card payments through Visa Direct. Designed to help merchants, corporations, banks and others accelerate the deployment of Visa Direct-powered real-time corporate disbursements, the new solution includes: bank sponsorship, user authentication and account verification tools, intelligent payment routing, and more.”

“Vocalink has signed a contract with Peru’s automated clearing house Cámara de Compensación Electrónica (CCE) to modernise the nation’s electronic payments infrastructure. According to the firms, this deal will see the creation of a new integrated service that will deliver processing of electronic payments (cheques, bulk and real-time) 24/7 x 365 days of the year.”

“Account takeovers are one of the most common forms of fraud associated with bot attacks. Half the companies surveyed reported the impact of bot-related account takeovers as “serious/damaging” or “very serious/damaging,” more than any other of nine possible impacts. In second place were application digital denial of service impacts, reported as serious/damaging or very serious/damaging by 45% of respondents.”

“It seems like every week, a new company has to notify its customers that their data may have been compromised, and personal information may have been affected. Data breaches can happen for a variety of reasons. Some companies are hacked. Data can be mishandled or sold to third parties. Holes in a website’s security system can leave information unprotected. One of the latest victims was Marriott hotels, which recently revealed that hackers had accessed the information of an estimated 500 million customers.”

“Adoption and usage rates for the mobile wallets from Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. (Google), and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have been far from stellar, but now evidence is emerging that Apple’s decision a year ago to ditch fingerprint identification on its newest smart phones in favor of facial-recognition technology could be making it even harder for Apple Pay to win mass consumer acceptance. The problem appears to be most acute in physical-store settings, where critics say the process required on the new iPhones to get to the wallet and unlock payment is now more cumbersome with Face ID, Apple’s new authentication technology. Indeed, some say the technology falls short all too often.”

“The rise of digital payments, new non-bank competition, fraud challenges, a need for improved resilience and the changed regulatory environment are spurring two major updates to the U.K.’s faster payments system. The Bank of England is upgrading the U.K.’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system. Separately, the U.K. payments authority, Pay.UK, is developing a New Payments Architecture that will upgrade Britain’s Faster Payments real-time retail system.”

“Barclays bank account holders in the UK can now use a new feature in their mobile banking app to stop their card from being used to make purchases in one or more of five categories of retailer — grocery stores and supermarkets; restaurants, takeaways, pubs and bars; petrol stations; gambling sites and betting shops; premium rate websites and phone lines.”

“Financial technology startup YayPay today announced the raising of $8.4 million dollars in funding to further its drive to bring automation to the back-office finance operations of mid-sized enterprises. YayPay will capitalize on its momentum in the multibillion-dollar credit-to-cash software and commercial payments market, and use the funding to pursue product development in data science, advanced-level product features, and sales team expansion. The funding is led by Information Venture Partners with follow on investment from existing shareholders including Birchmere, QED, Fifth Third Capital, the direct equity investment subsidiary of Fifth Third Bancorp, Gaingels, and 500 Fintech Fund. A new supporting institutional investor, Runway Venture Partners, also joined the round. The company’s total funding to date is $14 million dollars.”

“Veem, a global payments company built for small businesses, announced it has extended its payments platform to Canada. Effective immediately, Veem will offer fast, cost-effective, and secure transfers between international business partners in more than 95 countries. The integration allows Canadian users to execute transactions through the platform in a seamless, transparent manner. The Veem platform supports multi-currency payments. The user is able to see exchange rates as well as currency and transaction identification information for easy reporting and coordination.”

“Global leader in commerce-enabling technology First Data (NYSE: FDC) and Hong Kong-based pioneer in mobile banking China CITIC Bank International Limited (CNCBI), announce a partnership with the launch of a comprehensive range of merchant acquiring solutions including point of sale terminals, eCommerce solutions and other value-added services in Hong Kong.”

“Plaid builds infrastructure that allows a consumer to interact with their bank account on the web through a number of third-party applications, like Venmo,  Robinhood, Coinbase, Acorns and LendingClub. The San Francisco-based startup has integrated with 10,000 banks in the U.S. and Canada and says 25 percent of people living in those countries with bank accounts have linked with Plaid through at least one of the hundreds of apps that leverage Plaid’s application program interfaces (APIs) — an increase from 13 percent last year.”

“French startup Lydia announced a partnership with Banque Casino today for small credit lines. Starting tomorrow, Lydia users in France will be able to borrow as much as €1,000 in just a few seconds. While Lydia started as a peer-to-peer money transferring app, fintech startups always end up offering credit at some point. It’s hard to make money without offering some form of credit.”

“Millions of entrepreneurs like Murugan, do business on mega platforms run by Alibaba and WeChat. China’s fintech growth, on the back of these platforms, has been unprecedented. With a record $12.8 trillion in mobile payment transactions in the 10 months to October last year, China even surpassed the United States, at only $49.3 billion during that period.”

“Ingo Money and the Aité Group have released a study of business to consumer disbursements, which make up more than 3.5 billion payments with a dollar value of $10.7 trillion across 29 disbursement types. It’s a business stuck in the old ways, the study concludes:”

“Good things come in twos as Wirecard’s boon customers now have Apple Pay in Germany and Google Pay in France. For its German boon customers, users can top up their account using any Mastercard or Visa credit card and via bank transfer. As a result, Wirecard says it is not necessary to already own a credit card from a bank supported by Apple Pay. Meanwhile, over the border in France, its mobile payment solution boon is available to download in the French Google Play store to tie in with the launch of Google Pay in France.”

“Google Pay is now live in France, with support for Boon, Boursarama Banque debit and credit cards, Edenred Ticket Restaurant cards, Lydia prepaid Mastercards, N26 Mastercard debit cards and Revolut Mastercards.”

“The report was prepared by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for the Education Department and completed in February, but not released until Friday. The release came only after former CFPB officials tipped off journalists and consumer groups of its existence, resulting in demands under the Freedom of Information Act for its release, according to U.S. PIRG, the Washington, D.C.-based federation of state public-interest research groups.”

“On their new CBD and supplement focused site, Organic Payment Gateways explores the fundamental points a CBD site owner should consider when they need a payment gateway in order to sell online. Even in late 2018, few domestic payment gateways and merchant service providers are willing to give CBD website owners an account; however, as the new Organic Payment Gateways site states, “payment gateway options for CBD do exist, you simply need to know the right players in the industry.””

“Just in time for last-minute holiday shopping, Google has added almost thirty new banks and credit unions in the US to its Google Pay mobile payment service in December 2018. To use your credit or debit card with Google Pay anywhere in the world, your bank or credit union needs to first be supported by the service. In the US, the list of banks and financial institutions supported by Google Pay seems to grow almost weekly.”

“Viva Republica, the firm behind South Korea’s wildly successful payments app Toss, has raised an $80 million round, valuing the firm at $1.1 billion. The latest tranche of investment was led by Kleiner Perkins and Ribbit Capital, with participation from existing investors including Altos Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, KTB Network, Novel, PayPal and Qualcomm Ventures.”

“Viva Republica, operator of the South Korean digital wallet Toss, has raised $80 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins to propel its expansion into new areas such as online stock trading.”

“Private equity firm KKR & Co Inc (KKR.N) has led a $100 million investment in Cross River Bank, a community bank that powers some of the most well known financial technology startups in the United States, the companies said on Thursday.”

“Singapore operator Singtel has expanded the payment capabilities of its all-in-one mobile payments app dubbed ‘Dash’, to include international mobile payments. Dash customers can now use their Visa Virtual Account on the Dash app at millions of online retailers worldwide and merchant points that accept Visa Contactless Payments. In addition, customers can also use Dash on Apple Pay.”

“China’s central bank on Monday warned that rejecting cash as a form of payment was illegal, saying that such practices could eventually cause the loss of confidence in physical money and was unfair to those not accustomed to electronic payments.”

“It’s kind of odd how often this has happened, but it seems that any time a government has pushed for a cashless society, it’s drawn back at the brink. The Indian government demonetized most—but not all—of its currency. Sweden’s push to go cashless prompted regrets of its own. And now China, where mobile payment were on track to become king, recently got personally involved, as the government ordered over 600 merchants that they must accept cash.”

“A clutch of Europe’s leading financial technology companies are expanding into Asia in an attempt to shake up the established retail banking market with new digital payment and wealth management services. Nutmeg, an online wealth manager, and Revolut, an app-based current account and money transfer service, plan to launch across Asia to capitalize on the nascent digital banking and investment sector, and to diversify their businesses away from the U.K.”

“At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. Several of those businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States — about half those in use last year. The database reviewed by The Times — a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company — reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.”

“The UK’s antitrust watchdog has referred PayPal’s takeover of Swedish startup iZettle for an in-depth probe over fears it will force up prices for customers and lead to a worse quality in service. The Competition & Markets Authority warned late last month that the PayPal deal could result in “insufficient competition in the UK” for payments services.”

“With massive data breaches hitting the headlines and account-takeover fraud booming, payments players are scrambling for solutions. One possibility is so-called behavioral biometrics, a science that tries to detect imposters’ fraudulent activity in real time by comparing their online behavior with the known patterns of a genuine user. The latest development is a collaboration announced Monday by ACI Worldwide Inc. and BioCatch Ltd. Naples, Fla.-based ACI will offer the solution, which relies on subtle challenges issued to a user during his online session, to client financial institutions around the world. The technology aims to screen out both human and robotic impostors, also known as bots.”

“Each attack can be divided into several identical stages. At the first stage, a cybercriminal entered the organization’s building under the guise of a courier, job seeker, etc., and connected a device to the local network, for example, in one of the meeting rooms. Where possible, the device was hidden or blended into the surroundings, so as not to arouse suspicion.”

“The challenge for ApplePay is that, while it boasts how effortless it is, there is a non-trivial amount of friction in its initial setup. Let’s not forget that all of today’s mobile payments are not really payment systems. They are instead conduits for some other payment system, often a Visa or MasterCard payment card. In short, they are simply a digital way to route payments to that other payment method.”

“Klarna has become one of the first payment service providers to join the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program. The integration will allow retailers in the U.S., the UK and Germany to implement the Klarna payment suite. The collection of payment methods will give shoppers more freedom and flexibility to choose when and how to pay for a purchase, and Klarna will assume responsibility for managing credit and fraud risks. Additionally, the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program provides access to APIs, enabling better customization and personalization.”

“The 2017 data show that Canadian consumers are opting for faster and more convenient methods of payment, such as tapping a card or phone at point-of-sale, sending funds electronically through INTERAC e-Transfers, making more purchases online and in-app and leaving traditional forms of payment, like cash and cheque, by the wayside. Businesses too are adopting digital payments, leveraging credit cards, INTERAC e-Transfers, and Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT) more frequently and reducing their use of cheques. Wider adoption of electronic payments by businesses is expected once faster and more data-rich payment options become available through Payments Canada’s Modernization program.”

“Credit card debt continues to be one of the most expensive types of debt, and carrying that average balance of $6,929could cost $1,141 per year in interest alone. The amount Americans pay in interest may increase if the Federal Reserve increases the federal funds rate, which is likely to take place this month.”

“MoneyGram (NASDAQ: MGI) announced today its new mobile app is now available for consumers in the U.S., the company’s largest send market, and 14 additional countries. The MoneyGram mobile app (IOS and Android) offers convenient features like biometric identification, location finder, transfer tracking, plus exchange rates and fee estimates. “