Here’s my round up of the top Payments news for November 2016. The big shock payments news stories this month were the withdrawal of the 500 and 1000 Rupee notes as legal tender in India, R3exit (see what i did there!) and the continuing focus on fintech and cybersecurity. Check out the following top payments news stories for November 2016:
1. Payments News – Cyber Security
- 20,000 Tesco Bank customers have money withdrawn fraudulently from their online accounts
- Kaspersky reveal how Sberbank and Alfabank Bank are hit by a DDoS attack
- Visa explore a biometric world without passwords
- Visa warn that European rule on e-commerce will disrupt and inconvenience online shoppers
- Ransomware attack hits San Francisco’s Public Transportation system
2. Payments News – Mobile Payments
- RBR revealed that in 2015 the number of European contactless card payments trebled
- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi bans the 500 and 1000 rupee notes, and in turn initiates a cash crisis
3. Payments News: Digital / Crypto-currencies
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore links up with R3 to work on a blockchain based inter-bank payments proof of concept project
- R3 and 10 global banks trial a distributed ledger based KYC registry
- Banks start to leave the R3 blockchain consortium, starting with Goldman Sachs
- Royal Mint and CME Group launch blockchain based digital gold product – Royal Mint Gold (RMG)
4. Payments News: Banks
- Citibank launch global API developer hub
- Citi unveil their own global digital wallet, Citi Pay
- Bank of England COO Charlotte Hogg spoke at the Web Summit in Lisbon about Bridging the Gap between institution and innovation
- Barclays to launch contactless ATM cash machines, allowing customers to withdraw up to £100
5. Payments News: Fintech
- Paypal enable voice commands, through Siri, to send and receive payments
- European Commission establishes an internal Task Force on Financial Technology
- The Financial Innovation Now (FIN) group calls on President-elect Trump to embrace technology in order to advance financial services in the US
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduces the AWS Financial Services Competency
- European Payments Council (EPC) announce the the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme November 2017 go live date
6. Payments News: SWIFT
- Bangladesh Bank retrieve around $15.25 million of the $81 million that was stolen from their New York Federal Reserve account in February this year
- Finextra nicely reported on the SWIFT Operations Forum Europe 2016 in Berlin covering hackers, blockchain, innovation and cybersecurity
7. Payments News: Reports
- Deutsche Bank report: Powering the flow of global capital
- McKinsey report: Bracing for seven critical changes as fintech matures
- Innovate Finance discuss Fintech, Brexit and the future – With challenges come opportunity: VC FinTech Investment Post-Brexit
- Andrew Bailey, Chief Executive at the FCA, spoke at a financial crime conference – Fighting financial crime – looking forward and back
- Good read – Finextra cover The Clearing House Annual Conference in New York
- Payments Strategy Forum publishes its final strategy, which the PSR calls the payments industry biggest shake up in a generation
- Valdis Dombrovskis from the European Payment Service Providers for Merchants writes a letter to European Banking Authority highlighting the industry’s concerns around the upcoming authentication and additional security checks
That’s it folks! Let me know below if I missed anything important…