Payments news in September was dominated by three themes – cyber-security, mobile payments and fintech (of course!). Reports of cyber security breaches and the increasing adoption of fingerprint verification were recurring cyber security related stories. Mobile payments meanwhile continued to go from strength to strength, with initiatives from among others Samsung, Google and MasterCard. And fintech saw various social media, distributed ledger technologies and other innovation based payments news stories.
Check out the following top payments news stories for September 2015…
1. Payments News – Cyber Security
- 5.6 million fingerprints are stolen following a data breach at the US Office of Personnel Management
- Former Morgan Stanley employee, Galen Marsh, pleads guilty to a data breach
- Bank of America adds fingerprint authentication to it mobile banking app
- Visa partner with South Africa’s Absa Bank to trial fingerprint validation at chip ATMs
- A cyber attack on US health insurer Excellus Blue Cross and Blue Shield has compromised up to 10 million customer records
- Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) reported the theft of a storage device containing details of some Lloyds Bank home insurance customers
- MyBank calls for a pan-European identity verification service
- The US EMV card deadline nears…
2. Payments News – Mobile Payments
- Samsung Pay goes live in the US
- Samsung Pay transactions hit $30 million in first month following launch in South Korea
- Visa Europe collaborate with Central Saints Martin College (London) to propose and design wearable payments devices
- Google release a new Google Wallet for iOS
- Google launches Android Pay
- Barclays prepares to enable mobile payments via NFC enabled phones
- A Vocalink study – Next Generation of Payments: Attitudes to Payments Research – highlights the importance of banks in the success of mobile payments
- In Australia customers may have to opt in to activate contactless payments
- MasterCard to enable higher value contactless payments across Europe by 2017
3. Payments News: Digital / Crypto-currencies
- Bank of America files a patent enabling wire transfers using cryptocurrency technology
- The adoption of distributed ledger technologies within global financial technologies is becoming increasingly likely as more global banks sign up to R3’s distributed ledger initiative
4. Payments News: Banks
- Fidor, the innovative German bank, opens in the UK
- Bank of England highlight the continued demand for cash
- Reuters reports that Deutsche Bank aims to cut approximately 23,000 jobs
- Barclays links up with AccessPay offering corporates a payments contingency channel
5. Payments News: Fintech
- Anthemis and Claro release a report Always in Beta – Financial Services for the Digital Natives
- FinTech and Payments Association of Ireland (FPAI) is launched
- Twitter and Bloomberg link up providing social media data to the financial platform
- With over 180 million contactless journeys in the year since its launch, Londoners clearly love contactless on London’s transport network
- Twitter partners with Square to enable political donations in the US
- In New Zealand, ASB Bank digitalise the tradition piggy bank
- MasterCard signs up up Google and Samsung to their Digital Enablement Express Programme
- Samsung showcase their Smart Suit
- McKinsey report highlights the threat fintech / start up companies pose to traditional banks
6. Payments News: IT Glitches
- Commonwealth Bank suffers an 18 hour outage
That’s it folks! Let me know below if I missed anything important….