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September 26, 2023
On the web
FedNow’s Legal Terms Contain a Game Changer for Digital Wallets and Payment Apps
TechCrunch
"A few lines buried in the legal terms for the FedNow service, which is now live, create an important opportunity for digital wallet and payment app providers... These provisions allow nonbank providers access to FedNow under a remarkably open approach, with only a few requirements imposed on their relationships with customers and a back-end bank."
Xbox to Launch the Xbox Mastercard, Its First-Ever Credit Card in the U.S., Issued by Barclays
Mastercard
"Xbox, Barclays and Mastercard announced the Xbox Mastercard, Xbox’s first-ever co-branded credit card in the United States. The no annual fee card provides players points to redeem on Xbox games and add-ons, select streaming and dining delivery services, and more."
mBridge CBDC Project Nearing Commercialization
Blockworks
"Eddie Yue, the CEO of Hong Kong’s central bank, expects that the mBridge CBDC project will gradually transition to commercialization. In a keynote speech at the 2023 Bund Summit, he detailed plans for the platform, which China, Thailand, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates are jointly developing in partnership with the Bank of International Settlements."
Square Unveils Over a Dozen New Features to Help Businesses Win this Holiday Season
Block
"Square announced a new suite of solutions designed to give sellers a competitive edge this holiday selling period ...Square is introducing House Accounts, a deferred payment account that business regulars and corporate clients can easily charge purchases to. When a seller is ready to settle up, they can quickly create an invoice for the outstanding balance and receive payment online via credit card, ACH payment, or Card on File. ."
Bank ABC Introduces JPM Coin Payments in Bahrain
Zawya
"Bank ABC has become the first Middle East bank to introduce faster cross-border payments to specific corridors for corporates and financial institutions using JP Morgan’s Coin Systems. Coin Systems is a blockchain-based permissioned system that serves as a payment rail and deposit account ledger and sits within Onyx by JP Morgan."
WhatsApp Adds Rival In-App Payment Options in India Commerce Push
Reuters
"WhatsApp said that it will offer credit card payments and services from rival digital payment providers within its app in India, the latest bet by the Meta-owned service to boost commerce offerings in its biggest market...Meta is also expanding its Meta Verified subscription program to businesses globally, giving companies a mechanism to validate authenticity and elevate their content in users' feeds, a separate blog post said."
Fujitsu Launches New Technologies to Protect Conversational AI from Hallucinations and Adversarial Attacks
Fujitsu Global
"Fujitsu announced the launch of two new AI trust technologies to improve the reliability of the responses from conversational AI models. The newly developed technologies include a technique to detect hallucinations in conversational AI models – a phenomenon in which generative AI creates incorrect or unrelated output – and a technique jointly developed to detect phishing site URLs implanted in the responses of the AI through poisoning attacks that inject false information."
On the wires
JPMorgan to Block Crypto Payments From Chase UK Bank Accounts
Bloomberg
"JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s UK digital lender is blocking customers from making crypto payments, citing an increase in frauds and scams. Chase UK clients will no longer be able to make crypto transactions via debit card or by outgoing bank transfer from Oct. 16, according to an email sent to customers."
FedNow® Service Industry Work Group Issues Market Practices for Request for Payment
Businesswire
"The Federal Reserve today released market practices to advance standardized implementation of the request for payment (RFP) feature of instant payments."
MoneyGram Announces Plans to Launch Non-Custodial Digital Wallet
PR Newswire
"Debuting in Q1 2024, the wallet will enable consumers to leverage stablecoin technology to seamlessly move from fiat to digital currency, to fiat again."
September 25, 2023
On the web
European Payments Initiative Selects “wero” as Commercial Name for its Innovative Digital Wallet
European Payments Initiative
"The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is proud to announce the selection of “wero” as the commercial name for its ground-breaking digital wallet solution. This strategic initiative aims to deliver a European digital payment solution built to meet evolving payment needs and to provide a seamless and user-friendly payment experience to consumers and merchants across Europe."
Y Combinator-backed Akudo to Shut Down Operations
Entrackr
"Teenagers-focused neo-banking platform Akudo is shutting down its core UPI and card business, according to three sources aware of the details. The move is a result of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) direction which forbade Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in a co-branding arrangement."
A New Bill Could Reduce the Fees Shop Owners are Charged When Customers Swipe a Card
NPR
"Retailers have long complained about so-called "swipe fees" on credit cards. And now there's a showdown in Congress that pits retailers against the credit card industry. What's at stake for shoppers?"
Sibos TV: Swift & Visa's Collaboration to Streamline International B2B Payments [Video]
YouTube
"Swift and Visa have announced a partnership to streamline international business-to-business payments, providing financial institutions and their customers with more choice when sending money across borders, while improving the end-to-end speed and transparency of their transactions. Chris Newkirk, Global Head of New Flows, Commercial and Money Movement Solutions at Visa and Thierry Chilosi, Chief Strategy Officer at Swift join Sibos TV shed a light on the collaboration and how it will benefit the industry."
Sibos TV: How ISO 20022 Will Revolutionise the Payments Industry [Video]
YouTube
"Payments are entering an exciting new era with the introduction of ISO 20022 as the common language for payments worldwide. Pat Antonacci, Chief Customer Experience Officer at Swift discusses how ISO 20022 will help financial institutions better understand their customers, make quicker and better decisions and improve services to customers."
Sibos TV: Future-Proofing Financial Services and Platforms [Video]
YouTube
"Customers want simple, efficient and reliable solutions for their financial needs. Jim Fanning, Director of Global Financial Services at AWS and Gurreet Sidhu, CIO, North American Treasury & Payment Solutions at BMO, discuss the modernisation journey to update services, architecture and platforms to continuously meet customer expectations in a rapidly changing world."
On the wires
Affirm Is Exploring Subscription Service to Guarantee 0% APR on Purchases
Businesswire
"Affirm Holdings Inc. is exploring the introduction of a subscription service in a bid to create more recurring revenue beyond interest collected from its buy now, pay later plans."
Mercedes-Benz Teams up With Mastercard to Introduce Native In-Car Payments at the Pump: Pay by Fingerprint Directly in the Car With Mercedes Pay+
Businesswire
"Mercedes-Benz is joining forces with Mastercard to introduce embedded in-car payments at the point of sale. Customers will be able to use a fingerprint sensor in their car to make convenient and secure digital payments at more than 3,600 service stations in Germany. Mercedes-Benz is the world's first automaker to integrate Mastercard Secure Card on File for Commerce Platforms technology for online payments into its vehicles."
BigCommerce Revolutionizes the B2B Purchasing Experience with Launch of B2B Edition Invoice Portal
Businesswire
"BigCommerce announced the launch of its new B2B Edition Invoice Portal for large B2B suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers to modernize the invoice payment process...The B2B Edition Invoice Portal provides an out-of-the-box invoice payment experience that allows B2B merchants to incorporate invoice payments into a centralized online purchasing workflow."
September 22, 2023
On the web
Sibos TV: Enabling Interoperability Between Private and Public Blockchains
YouTube
"Tokenised assets have the potential to become a new source of value within the financial industry, but to make this possible, private and public blockchain interoperability must be enhanced. Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink and Jonathan Ehrenfeld, Head of Securities Strategy at Swift talk about recent experiments with more than a dozen of the world's largest financial institutions to make this a reality."
Sibos TV: Eliminating Friction in the Payments Processing [Video]
YouTube
"There are many complexities for banks processing incoming payments, from document checks to ensuring the purpose of the transaction is correct. Nicholas Soo, Regional Head of Payment Products, Global Payment Solutions Asia at HSBC shares an in-depth look into how using payment pre-validations can reduce friction in payments processing and result in fewer delays."
Sift Unveils New PayPal and Adyen Integrations, Automation Capabilities for Dispute Management and Payment Protection Customers
GlobeNewswire News Room
"Sift, announced new integrations and capabilities for its Dispute Management product, providing merchants with a more accurate, efficient, and effective way of managing chargebacks. The latest Integrations with PayPal and Adyen, allow Dispute Management customers to ingest chargeback data, dynamically deliver disputes according to network requirements, confirm dispute response delivery, and view win/loss outcome updates."
Ingenico and Diggecard Announce a Comprehensive Gift Card Solution for Acquirers Using PPaaS, Ingenico's Payments Platform as a Service
prnasia
"Ingenico, a global leader in payments acceptance solutions and Diggecard, a global provider of gift card expertise and technology, have announced that Diggecard's services are now available on PPaaS, Ingenico's innovative cloud Payments Platform as a Service...Digital gift cards can be distributed by SMS, E-mail or as a QR code and Diggecard also provides a full range of reporting capabilities that deliver analytical insights for merchants to better understand their customers."
On the wires
U.S. Bank Unveils Connected Partnership Network
Businesswire
"U.S. Bank today unveiled an online marketplace of third-party payment and treasury solutions that are fully integrated with U.S. Bank systems...Erario added, “Our vision at U.S. Bank is to deliver integrated, real-time payment solutions, which allow clients to experience embedded payment and reporting capabilities quickly and seamlessly.”"
September 21, 2023
Top Post
Payments Views: Buy Now, Pay Later: Where Have the Months Gone?
Glenbrook Partners, LLC
"At the beginning of the year, Debbie Bartoo hypothesized that four issues needed to be addressed for sustained Buy Now, Pay Later success. What happened this year? To what extent did we mature our BNPL market? Let’s take a look at 2023 progress."
On the web
CFPB Outlines Requirements for Lenders Using Artificial Intelligence to Deny Credit
Financial Regulation News
"...The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released guidelines for lenders to adhere to when using artificial intelligence and other models to deny consumers credit...The guidance outlines legal requirements creditors must meet in providing specific and accurate reasons why adverse actions were taken against consumers."
U.S. Congressional Committee Passes Anti CBDC Bill
Ledger Insights
"Yesterday the House Financial Services Committee voted in favor of the ‘CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act“. The Bill prevents the Federal Reserve (Fed) from opening digital dollar accounts for individuals. It also bars the Treasury from directing the Fed to issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC) without Congressional approval."
Sibos TV: Better Preparing for T+1 Settlements [Video]
YouTube
"The move to T+1 in the US and Canada will have a significant impact upon settlement and post-trade processes, especially on cross-border payments. With reduced timelines for processing, Jonathan Ehrenfeld, Head of Securities Strategy at Swift and Samuel Riley, CEO of Clearstream Securities Services speak explain how better automation and new technology such as unique transaction identifiers can ease this transition."
Transaction Trends: How Real-Time Payments are Driving Innovation in the B2B Space [Video]
Raconteur
"Sean Pitman, head of product and commercialization at Visa Direct Europe, explains how the B2B payments landscape is shifting as payments technology improves and the financial services sector works to keep up with modern expectations."
On the wires
Nine of 10 Companies Face Problems with Payment Operations, 39% Still Manual, New Modern Treasury Research Reveals
Businesswire
"Modern Treasury, the operating system for the new era of payments, today released survey results from their annual The State of Payment Operations 2023 report showing that legacy payment operations continue to result in high rates of failed payments, slow payments, errors and lost time in finance departments to clean up issues."
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