Nets, Scandinavia, the household name in payments processing has agreed on March 24th, 2014, its sale to a consortium of Private Equity players; Advent International, ATP and Bain Capital. Advent and Bain Capital already owning Worldpay, the Merchant Services business bought from RBS in 2010. ATP being a Danish Pension Fund. Nets over recent years…
The industry analogy is that fraud is like a balloon, you squeeze the fraudsters in one area and they pop out somewhere else. Sometimes it’s predictable like when chip & PIN was introduced, already high CNP fraud rose still further and x-border fraud levels rose (though not as sharply and as quickly as had been…
If the recent article published on the Pymnts web site is accepted then it seems that Visa may be considering an exit strategy from Hungary in the face of substantial, and continuing, market share loss to MasterCard. According to the article, and cross referenced pieces, Visa’s problems stem from a commitment made to the EC…
Both of the international card schemes Visa and MasterCard, include in their impressive array of member fee tariffs an assessment fee for Issuers that breach a percentage threshold of authorisation referral responses to authorisation requests received. The percentage is 0.5% but that is incidental. Both card schemes are, of course, fiercely protective of their brand…
We’ve talked about mobile commerce and how new ways to pay would have an effect on cards, but maybe the biggest shift we will see in the near term is mobile phones taking on the role of the payment terminal. Following the success of Square in the US (processing $5bn p.a.) and iZettle in Europe…
It is very easy to say that the Alternative Payments Methods; Mobile, Square, iZettle, e-Commerce, Cloud Wallets etc., are approaching mass and will “replace” cards in the future. Appropriate historical analogies could be: “Cards are the end of Cash” – a statement recurring for about 40 years, or even the “Chip is the end of…
All aspects of Payments are in transition; traditional business models questioned by governments/regulators, innovative players with new payment channels/technologies reaching mass and heading for the more traditional business segments, infrastructures underpinning many card processing businesses for decades needing mass change, and mergers and acquisitions gain speed absorbing complete segments and markets. PayX is working with…
While some activity certainly slowed due to normal vacations, it seems 2010 is yet another year where more is being achieved during summer than in the previous year. The apparent theme that seems to be emerging from the news during this period suggests: ―Are the new payments initiatives now reality or still too bleeding edge?…
And we are delighted to say many of PayX‘s previous market predictions have come true: Some Banks have confirmed that the Card Business has overtaken the Retail Bank Business, e.g. In a recent Barclays Global Retail Banking investor seminar that in 2009 Barclaycard‘s Profit Before Tax contributions was 40% versus Barclays UK Retail Banking at…
M&A‘s, consolidation and technology change in just the past 2 years has left many quandaries and few definitive answers. The realisation is now quickly spreading worldwide that there is high risk and big spends coming for many of what was regarded as stable card businesses – all resulting in mass change in parallel over the…