Payments Monitor

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 29th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES The new bitcoin incubator Digital Currency Group (DCG) has managed to attract many big name investors and this growing list now includes Mastercard. Mastercard, who had previously stated that digital currencies are more a threat than an advantage, seems be adopting a change in its strategy with this latest investment. In Germany, a new law is being proposed which will allow refugees, homeless people and asylum seekers to open bank accounts at any bank within the country. At the moment, Germany’s laws do not allow anyone without a proof of residency or identification to open a bank account and this new law could go a long way towards ensuring the financial inclusion of marginalized communities and decreasing the number of unbanked. PayPal’s 3rd quarter financial result is out, the now separated payments giant reports a strong third quarter, with revenue of US$ 2.26 B

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 28th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES With the number of increasing innovative payment methods like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, it should come as no surprise that Juniper Research’s new study predicts a huge increase in biometrically authenticated transactions. Biometric payments are cited to go up to nearly 5bn by 2019, up from less than 130 million this year. Speaking of Apple Pay, there’s good news for people in Canada and Australia. Apple Pay will be available in these countries later this year thanks to a recent tie-in with Amex. While Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain will be able to use Apple Pay in 2016. In the world of Cryptocurrencies, Nasdaq’s new blockchain-enabled platform has signed up its first batch of clients. The operator plans to use distributed ledger technology for a host of other tasks and it will be interesting to follow its development. Meanwhile, Russia's Ministry of Finance has

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 27th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES JPMorgan Chase announced that its Chase Pay product (a challenger to Apple Pay) has signed up with the retailer consortium MCX. The Chase Pay wallet is all set to go into battle with the likes of Apple Pay, Google, Samsung and PayPal. MasterCard is wanting to make everything a payment device. MasterCard believes that the IoT (Internet of Things) will enable consumers to make payments that have never been thought possible before. No surprise when Accenture’s report cites that almost half of the world’s largest banks do not have directors with technology experience on their board. The world’s largest money-transfer company Western Union is jumping onboard the social media bandwagon. The remittance giant launched WU Connect, a technology platform that integrates with consumer messaging and social media platform, enabling users to quickly send money throughout the wor

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 26th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES Trouble is brewing for Deutsche Bank as the US Justice Department and the New York Department of Financial Services are expanding their probe of money laundering at the German Bank’s Moscow unit to what now may seem like potential breach of Western sanctions against Russia after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. The US Dollar trades being investigated amount to US$ 6 Billion. Some good news for China in the coming days, the International Monetary Fund have given strong signals that the Chinese Yuan could soon join the fund’s basket of reserve currencies, better known as Special Drawing Rights. SDRs were created in 1969 to boost global liquidity as the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates unravelled. Champagne bottled are undoubtedly being uncorked at VocaLink, the British firm behind UK’s Faster Payments, as it signed a letter of intent with US bank based ACH

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 22nd of October 2015, some trending stories for today are: TOP STORIES The Dutch bank ABN-Amro is setting up a 10 Million Euro fintech fund. Not wanting to be left behind in the recent wave of banks like BBVA, Santander and Barclays who are pouring money in fintech, ABN-Amro’s Digital Impact Fund (as it is called) will invest in companies that have already launched a product or a service and are in their growth phase. European Union’s top court rules in favor of Bitcoin. The top court for the EU cites that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies transactions are exempt from VAT. eBay’s first post-split quarter results were better than expected. Revenue was slightly down 2.4%, but still at a healthy $2.1 billion. American Express reported its earnings that declined 16% from a year ago. Stronger US Dollar and higher expenses were some of the elements contributing towards the decline. Amex’s breakdown with Costco is also to be blam

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 21st of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Sweden is well on its way to become the first country that would be completely cashless. With greater acceptance of electronic payments, especially P2P payments, cash usage is fast diminishing. Sweden is one of the few countries where consumers use bank cards for even the smallest of transactions. Fintech gurus have been saying for years that bank branches are on a decline. This is especially true for UK, where more than 650 bank branches are set to disappear by the end of 2015. In the past 10 years, over 25% of bank branches in the UK have closed down. With the advent of new challenger banks that are opening up their digital branches, the practical value of visiting a branch has been all but eliminated. Credit Suisse will raise $6.3 Billion in a strategy shift, especially after its recent job cut and poor performance. One investor recently cited that “Credit

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 20th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Smartcard and security technology company Oberthur announced it will be filing for an IPO on Euronet Paris exchange. The IPO value has not been announced, but it will be close to the previous value of Euro 2 Billion (which was taken from the value assigned to Oberthur when it was a target of a failed private equity acquisition). Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled that Apple Music has 15 Million Users out of which 6.5 Million users are paying subscribers. Spotify by comparison has 75 Million active users and 20 Million paid subscribers. YouTube is seriously mulling about providing a payment wall for exclusive content on its video streaming platform. YouTube feels a paywall would not be out of scope, provided content that can suddenly reach 100s of million of users is available exclusively on YouTube. All this represents a reflection of the exclusive movies Netflix ha

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 19th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES The world of ATM might be seeing a merger. US ATM manufacturer Diebold is in takeover talk with Wincor Nixdorf in a deal that would put the German OEM at a value of US$ 2 Billion. It would be interesting to see if NCR will be pushed to make a counter offer. If the deal goes through, Diebold will get access to the lucrative European ATM market. Financial Times is reporting that more than 2/3rds of economists expect the Fed to raise US interest rates before the year ends. All this despite the weakening economic data that came out and advisory from several banks that puts the Fed’s inflation target in doubt. In a set of leaked documents that TechCrunch posted, Pinterest may be making its push into the payments arena. The documents which were used for soliciting investments show a forecast in revenue at $169 Million for 2015 and a whopping US$ 2.8 Billion in 2018.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 15th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Wearable payment technology has another player, watchmaker Swatch has decided to enter the market. Swatch has partnered with China Union Pay and Bank of Communications to allow consumers to pay with a simple flick of the wrist using NFC technology. The watch is called Bellamy, in reference to Edward Bellamy, the author of an 1888 novel that envisioned a utopian world paying with payment cards. Square files for IPO on the New York Stock exchange under the symbol SQ. The S-1 is filed for US$ 275 Million in stock, however, this is just a preliminary figure, the final figure will be calculated by how much they want to raise and will be announced at a later date. UK Government pony’s up GBP 10 Million into distributed ledger technology research. Economic Secretary to the Treasury Harriett Baldwin emphasised the need to invest in skills, research and development of

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 14th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Hyperledger, a Blockchain startup who’s co-founders are based out of China and the US, just got their first big break. At Innotribe in Singapore, Hyperledger won the $50,000 Innotribe startup prize. Hyperledger is a distributed ledger that allows banks and other financial institutions to clear and settle financial transactions in real-time. The hits just keep on coming, the US charity shop chain America’s Thrift Stores just reported a data-breach, as per a press-release, the hacks originated from somewhere in Eastern Europe. With a recent trademark filing by LG (Lucky Goldstar) for a product called GPay, there is now speculation if the Korean company would be entering the payments market and be offering payments on its mobile devices. A quick search of the NMLS database shows no money transmitter licenses awarded to LG. Goldman Sachs role in 1 Malaysia Develop

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 13th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Author, Speaker, Futurist and CEO of Moven, Brett King announced at Sibos today that Moven raised US$ 12 Million in a Series B financing round led by Route 66 Ventures, bringing the total capital raised to US$ 25 Million. What started out as a mobile based PFM / wallet, is now more of a cooperative mobile app, that has licensed deals with banks in the regional countries Moven is operational. Good going Sir. Navi Ravikant, of AngelList has ventured East and won. The cofounder of AngelList has managed to secure US$ 400 Million from China! CSC Ventures, the US arm of China Science and Merchants Investment Management Group is pushing the private equity money to US and wants a piece of the action on all the potentials that AngelList can throw at them. Needless to say, this is going to shake a few trees on Sand Hill Road. Worldpay made its debut in UK on the London

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 12th of October 2015, happy thanksgiving to all those listening in from Canada, to the rest, its Monday! Anyhow, here is what is trending today: TOP STORIES Dell agrees to buy EMC for US$ 67 Billion – the largest tech deal ever. Dell announced a few hours ago its intention to buy the corporate giant for software, storage and security as part of Dell’s transformation from the consumer PC business to an IT solutions provider for companies. SnapSwan, a cryptocurrency gateway that used to trade Ripple’s XRPs (without license I might add) was granted a license to provide services as a regulation Payment Institution (by Luxembourg). SnapSwan will now offer payments, remittances and currency exchange services in Europe.. UK’s VocaLink, the company behind UK’s Faster Payments has reason to celebrate. Thailand signed a deal with VovaLink for instant mobile payments. This is a big win for VocaLink which is also the front-end contender i

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 9th of October 2015, and some top stories of interest in my feed are: TOP STORIES Starbucks will soon be accepting Apple Pay. This announcement was made by Jennifer Baily at the Code/Recode Mobile conference in California. Starbucks has already started trials of accepting payments via Apple Pay in some of it stores and expect a complete rollout by 2016. British Bank Standard Chartered’s CEO Bill Winters announced plans to lay-off 1,000 top managers, as part of the overhaul in progress to turn the bank around. Oddly enough Mr. Winters was issued more than 6 Million British Pounds worth of shares in compensation for leaving City of London hedge fund that he founded. Will the US economy, the largest in the world, expect a recession in 2016? A delayed Fed rate hike and turmoil in global equity markets might suggest so. The probability that US will enter a recession jumped to 15%, the highest since October 2013. However, in a separa

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 8th of October 2015, and some top stories of interest in my feed are: TOP STORIES Lets start with the bad news. If you’re a Deutsche Bank shareholder, you have everything to be worried about. The German bank just announced 6 Billion Euro loss for its 3rd quarter, and a new record. The 7 Billion Dollar loss sent shockwaves throughout the financial world, no one was expecting this. Germany’s been experiencing an extended summer of discontent, considering the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Deutsche Bank will be initiating jobs cuts, pay cuts, and cleaning up banker’s bonuses. As far as dividend to shareholders is concerned, I’m afraid things aren’t looking rosy on that front either. The European parliament just formally adopted the revised Directive on Payment Services, better known as PSD2. The new directives essentially set new rules to boost competition and innovation whilst at the same time improving consumer protections. The

TOP STORIES China starts dumping US Treasury Debt. The International Monetary Fund (i.e. the IMF), has issued a warning of fresh shocks to the local financial stability. Ben Bernanke states “the Fed should have abandoned inflation targeting.” Starbuck’s hires a full-time CTO The US Marshals Service is preparing to auction the left over 44,341 Bitcoin from the Silk Road Former Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit has invested in TransferWise WorldBank has issued a warning that low oil prices would result in reduced remittances from the Middle East to South Asia SynapsePay a US based a fintech company in the payments spaced just announced all ACH transactions on their branded service are 100% free. PODCAST OPINION Yesterday, I and my co-host Mike Townsend from our weekly podcast of Around The Coin had the opportunity to interview Peter Ohser, EVP Business Development at MoneyGram. We probed Peter about MoneyGram, and how it sees the P2P, B2C, and B2B sector along with some hard questions on Bitcoin and remittances. You

TOP STORIES Digital currency network Ripple Labs just received a new round of funding for US$4 Million from Santander InnoVentures. Mastercard is doing biometric trials for payments Google Alphabet invests in Symphony. China’s renminbi is now the 4th most used currency in the world OPINION Payments walls, registrations, OAuth and ChangeTip. DEVELOPING STORY European Union’s 15-Year data sharing pact with the US has now been termed invalid. DID YOU KNOW Apple Pay turns one year old today. And coincidentally has only 1.0% of the retail payment marketshare.

TOP STORIES US Reaches Trade Deal with 11 Pacific Nations Cybersecurity Awareness Month falls flat as Scottrade joins ranks of victims South Korean app firm makes Internet bank bid with Tencent and eBay HyperWallet launches global payout API for the digital market Twitter CEO becomes permanent. OPINION Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 People: SOCIAL MEDIA Two best examples of social media: KLM and XpressMoney CONFERENCES SIBOS - SINGAPORE - 12-15 OCTOBER MONEY2020 - LAS VEGAS - 25TH TO 28TH OCTOBER

- Trump Hotels Data Breach - T-Mobile users data stolen by hackers - Alibab invests in Paytm (again!) - Transferwise app features as best app on the Apple App store - Payoneer's White Paper - Upworks' white paper "Freelancing in America 2015"

TOP STORIES 1. Adyen 2.3 Billion dollar valuation 2. US switches over to EMV 3. WorldPay trials facial recognition technology, also comments on Siri/M-Messenger, using biometrics in payments. 4. Twitter expands the buy button 5. Coinbase - Buy bitcoins instantly from 26 countries. 6. FirstData IPO OPINION Money.net - and how it is beating the Bloomberg Terminal. BLOG ARTICLE Building a Universal Ledger (to block chain or not to blockchain) - Ben Milne, CEO of Dwolla DID YOU KNOW The worldwide Remittance market is 600+ Billion whilst the worldwide B2B market is 23 Trillion dollars.