Mobile Money – M-Pesa In Kenya, 7 Things Worth Knowing 7

Whenever there is talk of mobile money payments initiatives, the M-Pesa Kenya implementation is probably one of the most referenced success stories. And rightly so! The statistics are incredible, with 21.8 million registered M-Pesa users in Kenya making payments person to person (KSh 106 billion) , person to business (KSh 23.5 billion) and business to ...

What the Heck is the Fourth Industrial Revolution? 8

On Friday i visited the Black Country Living Museum in the heart of the Midlands in England. The BCLM is a great day out, and highlights how the Black Country contributed to the Industrial Revolution which started in the United Kingdom and quite literally transformed the social, economic and cultural conditions around the world. Fast ...

6 Regional Insights From The BCG Global Payments Report

During my recap of the Top Payments News Stories in October 2015, I mention the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report – Global Payments 2015: Listening to the Customer’s Voice. For me the regional insights were the most interesting part of the report and in this post I will share some of my notes. Please keep in ...

The Top Payments News Stories in October, 2015 1

This is a bumper edition of Payments News in October 2015. What an incredible month..! From a European perspective PSD2 was rubber-stamped, there were Payments Reports galore, countless fintech related stories, IPO’s broke records and there was Sibos. As i tracked through the month, i was amazed at the number of cyber-attacks too – worryingly ...

A Quick Intro to Implementing the CGI PAIN.001 Format 6

Anybody that is implementing the PAIN.001 format needs to read this! Sometimes when you are looking to update or implement a new payments format it is difficult to know where to start. Add to this the different variety of payment formats, differing bank proprietary formats and requirements, country specific requirements, technical jargon, the squeeze on ...

7 Things I Learnt about the Internet of Things this Weekend 1

Over the weekend I read the Deloitte report The Derivative Effect: How Financial Services can make IoT Technology Pay Off – The Internet of Things in the Financial Services Industry. As i was reading the report I realised that i didn’t know enough of the basics. So i started reading around and as I did so, ...

4 Disruptive Themes from the McKinsey Global Payments Report 4

There are plenty of reports out there about global payments, but there are a couple that are particularly noteworthy. One of them is the McKinsey offering – this year the McKinsey report is titled Global Payments 2015: A Healthy Industry Confronts Disruption. The Global Payments report hits upon all of the key happenings in the industry ...

The Top 20 Tweets from Sibos 2015 2

I wasn’t one of the 8200 Sibos attendees in Singapore this year, so I looked to various other channels to get my daily dose of SWIFT and Sibos news. By the sounds of things there were some really interesting panel discussions (particularly around blockchain) and insights into various disruptive technologies and consumer demands. Finextra and ...

5 Things You Need To Know About PSD2 – Payment Services Directive 75

Speculation over the much anticipated PSD2 – revised Payment Services Directive – has been gathering for quite a while now. Last week the European Parliament adopted the revised Directive on Payment Services (or PSD2), and with it the PSD2 reality got a little bit closer. PSD2 has been attracting quite a lot of attention, and ...

10 Insights by Nick Leeson on Risk, Failure and Success 1

Today I attended a AccessPay event at the Barbican Centre in the heart of the City of London. There were some interesting presentations from SWIFT, Barclays and Faster Payments. The highlight was the keynote speaker Nick Leeson, the infamous rouge trader who brought down Britain’s oldest merchant bank in 1995. Admittedly, I don’t know too ...