Greece has dominated the news in June, and as I write the stand off continues. Greece will clearly continue to top the European and world headlines in the coming months as the EU discussions, the upcoming referendum and subsequent impacts are felt. Other key payments news stories that stand out and to keep an eye on include the Apple Pay UK launch and the continued growth of mobile payments initiatives and of course fintech developments around the world. Check out the following top payments news stories for June 2015…
1. Payments News – Cyber Security
- Europol European Cybercrime Centre and Barclays partner to fight cybercrime targeting financial services
- A major European cyber crime gang was brought down by a Joint Investigation Team
- Wells Fargo launches pilot voice and face biometrics to authenticate CEO (Commercial Electronic Office) mobile users
- Financial Fraud Action UK reports that fraudsters are using text messages to steal personal or financial information from their targets
2. Payments News – Mobile Payments
- A Criteo Q2 State of Mobile Commerce report highlights the increasing importance of mobile
- Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) together with Canada’s major teleco’s jointly participate in Suretap
- A BBA and EY Report highlights how the internet becomes the most popular way to bank in the UK
- US based clearXchange announces availability of a real time payments solution
- Facebook looks to trial and extend the Buy Button usage to Shopify merchants
- Zapp will launch in the autumn (2015) their “Pay by Bank App“, enabling instant mobile payments from a bank app
- Apple Pay announce UK July 2015 launch
3. Payments News: Digital / Cryptocurrencies
- Amid the Greek debt crisis, CNN proposed that Greeks were flocking to Bitcoin
- Estonia’s LHV Bank partners with Cuber (Cryptographic Universal Blockchain Entered Receivables) to issue securities
4. Payments News: Banks
- Barclays expands its bPay offering by launching a range of wearable payment devices enabling contactless payments in the UK
- RBS to spend £150 million a year to improve computer system resiliency, following another IT glitch
- Thailand’s fourth largest bank, Kasikornbank, will shut down many bank services for 48 hours from 17th July to system & service improvements
- HSBC to cut 50,000 jobs globally over next 2 years as it looks to make $4.5 billion – $5 billion in annual cost savings
5. Payments News: Financial Inclusion
- Western Union suspends money transfer services in Greece
- MasterCard and Ecobank collaborate to enable electronic payments in 32 sub-Saharan African countries
6. Payments News: Fintech
- MasterCard and Parkeon launch “City Connector” providing users with coupons and offers by local businesses
- The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator, Hannah Nixon, highlights the limited innovation happening in the “underlying infrastructure” of payments
- 36 French FinTech companies collaborate to form France Fintech
- Payments UK replaces the UK Payments Council
- Alibaba’s Ant Financial launches a new online bank, MyBank
- Report by Accenture & Partnership Fund for New York City highlights almost a tripling of US Fintech investment
- Visa Europe Collab issue a 100 day – our story so far update
- Jack Dorsey is CEO of both Square and Twitter, or is he?
- Stockholm is Europe’s second major Fintech hub, behind London, attracting the second most investments over the last 5 years
- Oliver Wyman, Santander InnoVentures and Anthemis Group publish Fintech 2.0 Paper: rebooting financial services
- Overwhelming demand from Australia’s fintech sector has resulted in the country’s first fintech hub outgrowing its original home before its even started!
7. Payments News: SEPA
- 6 members of the European Automated clearing House Association (EACHA) have come together, to offer a centralised processing service for SEPA transactions, via the new European Clearing Cooperative (ECC)
8. Payments News: SWIFT
- London selected as host city for Sibos 2019
That’s it folks! Let me know below if I missed anything important….