In late 2013 announcements were made that Banelco, the large Argentinian Payments Processor, and Visa Argentina had agreed after several months to create an alliance to create new business in the financial marketplace. The changes are about to become reality with the two organisations working very closely in the future. In the Payments Industry generally…
Product managers determine marketing opportunity, relate product development to this opportunity, and then develop marketing approaches that present the product to the consumer or customer effectively and efficiently. They are concerned with revenues, profits, product development strategy, pricing, promotion, and other matters on which senior management expects product managers to provide guidance and leadership to…
Traditional Banks are often seen as slow, cumbersome organisations who can’t manoeuvre quickly because they are saddled with huge legacy systems held together with sticky tape and plaster. They have a largely process oriented workforce, are inefficient and bureaucratic, and operate with a very expensive cost base. Conversely, the new Commercial payments organisations however, especially…
I took a look at some of the reported findings from MasterCard over on Finextra today. Their article titled: MasterCard Research shows that Europeans fear they’ll pick up the tab for lower Interchange Fees makes for a very interesting read, with a hint to why the research was carried out here: The firm[MasterCard] has long…
The other day I came across this interesting article about cloning EMV cards it makes a number of pretty bold claims including the following: I differentiated pages instead using the EMV Unpredictable Number field – a 32 bit field that’s supposed to be unique to each transaction. I soon got muddled up… it turned out…
New products, new channels, massive technological change and all bundled up into two major releases each year by the card schemes, well, as it says in each closing episode of Frasier – ‘What is a boy to do’ Put simply, the ambition to keep interchange fee structures as simple as possible is under constant challenge…
The business case for implementing EMV technology has changed for the better (in terms of their significance for the bottom line of the business case) over the last couple of years: Direct cost of fraud in the U.S. is definitely on the rise. Additionally, the industry needs to fully acknowledge that cost of fraud is…
Square payments – a device that plugs into an iPhone or iPad and turns it into a credit card terminal. Today this brainchild of Jack Dorsey’s is worth $3.25 billion having raised another $200 million in its fourth round of funding. To put that in to perspective Square is worth more than Hiscox ($3.1bn) the…
Visa Inc. and MasterCard recently announced plans to accelerate chip migration in the United States by 2015; long overdue some may say. This includes the initial approach of migrating the payment infrastructure over to accept EMV® and NFC technology (contactless). Additionally, most other payment infrastructures around the globe already have or are in the process…
The UK is seeing something of a boom in mobile payments of late. Recently Barclays launched its Pingit smartphone app that lets UK users transfer up to £750 a day to family, friends and small businesses. With nearly half a million downloads its success surprised many and perhaps points the way for others with is…