Payments news in August was dominated by 4 themes – cyber security, mobiles payments, fintech and IT glitches. Financial services are increasingly being driven by technology and various IT glitches highlight the fact that legacy systems just aren’t up to the job. Biometric authentication is also heating up, as are the number of fintech hubs that seem to be springing up. My personal highlight n August was spending a couple of weeks holiday at Disney World in Florida, but that’s not exactly payments news, eh?
Check out the following top payments news stories for August 2015…
1. Payments News – Cyber Security
- In a revenge attack, former security network firm IT director hacks into Aviva insurance phones
- MasterCard to trial “selfie” and fingerprint payments in Europe and the US
- Nymi launch biometric payments authenticated using your heartbeat!
- A Carphone Warehouse hack exposes 2.4 million customer details
- Tech firm Ubiquiti falls victim to a $46m “CEO fraud” scam
- JP Morgan to double its cyber security spending over the next 5 years
2. Payments News – Mobile Payments
- People get excited as rumours about the US launch of Android Pay, Googles new mobile payments service, gain momentum….
- Uber and Airtel to partner enabling payments using Airtel’s mobile wallet, Airtel Money
- Visa and QIWI partner to deliver mobile payments in Russia
- The ATMIA (ATM Industry Association) release a research paper U.S. Mobile Payments: Do They Disrupt Cash?
- Samsung announce Samsung Pay roll out plans
- Blackberry and PayPal enable mobile payments through BBM
3. Payments News: Digital / Crypto-currencies
- Barclays to test bitcoin, by enabling charity donations by the end of this year in the digital currency
4. Payments News: Banks
- Goldman Sachs to recruit hundreds at its Warsaw technology and operations group
- Virgin Money opens up an airliner cabin styled branch in London
5. Payments News: Fintech
- Payments UK releases a report outlining required changes enabling “world class” payments in the UK
- Sydney attempts to establish itself as a global Fintech hub with the launch of Stone & Chalk
- The Clearing House releases a white paper Ensuring Consistent Consumer Protection for Data Security comparing major banks and Alternative Payment Providers (APP)
- According to the Wall Street Journal, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will create a data company called ‘SPReD‘ (Securities Product Reference Data)
- Consult Hyperion release The Future of Payments Report on the evolution of payments in the UK
- Paypal and U.S. Department of Commerce will work together analysing data to help small and medium sized businesses increase exports
- Swiss based SIX Group launches FinTech centre – F10
- FIS Global buys SunGard
- The ISO Real Time Payments Group (RTPG) publishes a first draft of ISO 20022 messages to be used by the payments industry
6. Payments News: Financial Inclusion
- FIS launches a financial inclusion lab in Bengaluru, India
- Reserve Bank of India (RBI) agrees in-principle 11 – mainly technology and telecommunications company – applications to set up payment banks
7. Payments News: IT Glitches
- A HSBC IT glitch resulted in delayed UK BACS payments leading up to a bank holiday weekend
- SunGard says sorry to BNY Mellon and its customers for its accounting system IT glitch impacting the pricing of US funds
- Finextra report on the need for Co-Op Bank to re-engineer their “unsuitable and inherently fragile” IT infrastructure
- A Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) glitch results in some customers being double charged
That’s it folks! Let me know below if I missed anything important….