Payments Spectrum

Daily, News

December 17, 2017

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Payments Spectrum™
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Sunday, 17 December 2017 | 7 Pages

Featuring : Visa Checkout – That’s the future we’re working on.

FROM THE WEB

What’s Up, WhatsApp? Google’s Beating Plastic
Google CEO Sundar Pichai can count the early success of Tez, the online payment system he custom-built for India, as a promising start to a grueling fight.The first click in online shopping is shifting away from search engines like Alphabet Inc.’s Google to e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com Inc. But Google isn’t bowing out. Even with more product searches beginning within the Amazon app, Pichai can always help provide the last mile in commerce payment.
Asia is the perfect testing ground.Whether it’s splitting the cost of a meal, making a quick dash to the grocery store or ordering from a niche online boutique, the challenge in the region is often payment.

Andy Mukherjee
BloombergGadfly

Dec 17, 2017 5:00 PM EST

Thales and Gemalto create a world leader in digital security.
Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) and Gemalto (Euronext Amsterdam and Paris: GTO) announce today that they have reached an agreement (the “Merger Agreement”) on a recommended all-cash offer for all issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Gemalto, for a price of €51 per share cum dividend.
Patrice Caine, Thales’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented: “The acquisition of Gemalto marks a key milestone in the implementation of Thales’s strategy. Together with Gemalto’s management, we have big ambitions based on a shared vision of the digital transformation of our industries and customers. Our project will be beneficial to innovation and employment, whilst respecting sovereign strategic technologies. We have a tremendous respect for Gemalto’s technological achievements, and our two Groups share the same culture and DNA. I would like to personally thank Gemalto’s management and Board of Directors for their unanimous support and I welcome warmly Gemalto’s 15,000 employees to our Group. By combining our talents, Thales and Gemalto are creating a global leader in digital security. ”

Press Release
Gemalto, Media Relations
Gemalto

17 December 2017 – 8h00

No MDR charges on debit card payments up to Rs 2,000 for 2 years starting Jan 1. In an effort to boost digital payments, the Union Cabinet has decided to waive the merchant discount rate (MDR) applicable on all debit cards, BHIM and UPI transactions up to Rs 2,000.

From January 1 next year, you will not be charged fees on debit card transactions up to Rs 2,000 for at least two years.

In an effort to boost digital payments, the Union Cabinet has decided to waive the merchant discount rate (MDR) applicable on all debit cards, BHIM and UPI transactions up to Rs 2,000. The government will reimburse the same to the banks for a period of two years, starting January 1, 2018.

Beena Parmar
moneycontrol

Dec 15, 2017 06:00 PM IST

Strong Start to Holiday Shopping Season: Mastercard SpendingPulse Points to 3.6 Percent Growth.
It’s a Happy Holiday So Far, with e-Commerce a Big Contributor.
PURCHASE, N.Y. – December 15, 2017 – Mastercard SpendingPulse today released its U.S. Retail Holiday Shopping Mid-Season Update, reporting strong growth of 3.6 percent compared to last year. In fact, 2017 is projected to show the strongest holiday season growth rates since 2010, with the overall potential to surpass 5 percent year-over-year growth.

The SpendingPulse holiday shopping update looks at retail spending November 1 through December 9.

Key findings of the Mastercard SpendingPulse report include:

e-Commerce sales are up 16.3 percent since November, as Cyber Week continues to find new fans. While Black Friday still accounts for significant dollar volumes, Cyber Week (Nov. 27-Dec. 3) saw higher growth this year – sales were up 5 percent compared to last year.
Retailers’ heavy early-season promotions paid off, with the first three weeks of November seeing significant jumps. Those early bird shoppers were particularly spending on electronics, home improvement and jewelry, though all categories saw growth, including apparel.
Home is clearly where the heart is this holiday season, with home-related purchases way up. Not only did home improvement grow 11.6 percent, but home furniture and furnishings was up 3.5 percent.

Press Release
Beth Kitchener
Mastercard Communications

December 15, 2017

Uber rival Go-Jek drives payments push with acquisition of three fintech start-ups.
Go-Jek said Friday it had bought offline payments service Kartuku, payment gateway Midtrans and saving and lending firm Mapan for undisclosed amounts.
Go-Jek said the acquisition move would bolster its activity in both online and offline payments, as well as increase engagement in the financial services in Indonesia.
Ride-hailing start-up Go-Jek has acquired three financial technology (fintech) start-ups as it looks to dominate Indonesia’s digital payments space.

Ryan Browne
CNBC

Published 6:24 AM ET Fri, 15 Dec 2017

Stripe Snapshot : Online Fraud Trends and Behavior December 2017.
In 2016, an estimated 1.61 billion people worldwide purchased goods online, and global e-retail sales amounted to $1.9 trillion. And recent projections show a growth of up to $4.06 trillion spent online by 2020, with traffic increasingly coming from mobile devices. Unfortunately, online shopping isn’t the only thing on the rise: As chip-enabled cards have made brick-and-mortar shopping safer, fraudsters are increasingly targeting online stores—and these internet businesses are responsible for not only detecting fraud, but also paying the associated costs. On average, every $1 of fraudulent orders costs an online store an additional $2.62 and a
mobile store $3.34. What can online businesses do about it? Stripe looked across several years’ worth of fraud data to seek out patterns by country, time-of-day and other behaviors to help guide businesses’ approachesto combatting fraud. While fraud can certainly be managed by setting sophisticated payment rules or deploying anti-fraud software, our hope is that this data will also help businesses better understand the underpinnings of fraudulent behavior to create specific strategies best suited for their businesses.

Stripe

December, 2017

Edge Mobile Payments buys what’s left of Plastc in hopes that there’s still life left in smart cards
The death of Plastc back in April looked to many like the final nail in the smart card coffin. After all, the news came only a few months after the space’s other big player, Coin, called it quits. Of course, the loss of Coin wasn’t totally in vain — the company was ultimately purchased by Fitbit, which ultimately incorporated its mobile payment tech into the Ionic smartwatch.

Now Plastc is getting a second lease on life of sorts. The company, or rather, what’s left of it, has just been acquired by Edge, a Santa Cruz-based mobile payment startup. The company was founded back in February by Peter Garrett, a tech veteran who owns a bunch of flash drive patents.

Brian Heater
TechCrunch

Posted Dec 14, 2017

Kroger adds Chase Pay mobile payments. Retailer’s first mobile pay program to roll out in 2018.

Kroger Co. said Tuesday that it would begin accepting mobile payments through Chase Pay, the digital wallet offered by JPMorgan Chase & Co., in select retail markets and e-commerce programs next year.

The agreement with Chase marks the Cincinnati-based retailer’s first foray into mobile payments. Walmart unveiled its own in-app mobile payment offering in 2015, and recently said its use could soon surpass that of Apple Pay.

Mark Hamstra
Supermarket News

Dec 12, 2017

Kicking off Stripe’s private beta in India.
Today, we’re starting an invite-only beta for Stripe in India with a small group of companies. These businesses will help us test our platform in the Indian market and provide feedback on features that we’ll need to build to support all Indian businesses looking to accept online payments and run their companies on Stripe.

Supporting Indian entrepreneurs is critical to our mission of expanding the GDP of the internet. Now more than ever, India is uniquely positioned to move more commerce online: In just the past two years, the percentage of India’s population connected to the internet has more than doubled to 500 million users. And in 2016, India saw more than twice the number of new businesses start as the United States.

Anand Balaji
Stripe

December 12, 2017

CBA launches hardware-less payments app for SMBs
Commonwealth Bank will bring a new mobile payments technology to market in Australia that enables small businesses to accept credit card payments of up to $100 on their Samsung devices, without any other hardware.

CBA is teaming up with Mastercard and Samsung, as well as fintech start-ups IDEMIA and Mobeewave, to introduce the technology.Mobeewave will provide a white label product to Commonwealth Bank of its SoftPOS technology and leverage IDEMIA’s digital identity security solutions.

A pilot program is expected to kick off in early 2018, with the smartphone payments platform to be rolled out commercially by mid next year.

Yolanda Redrup
Financial Review

Dec 12 2017 at 12:01 AM

Consumers ready to switch from passwords to biometrics, study shows.
Fingerprint authentication offers perks that password and PIN don’t but how does the technology actually work? Visa’s security team takes us behind the screens.
The all-too-common frustration of forgetting a password may soon become a thing of the past, as people become more comfortable with new forms of biometric authentication. Fingerprint, facial and voice recognition are increasingly becoming ways to authenticate a person for access and payments. They’re faster, easier and more secure compared to the traditional use of passwords or PINs, which are difficult to remember and easy to steal. But does this mean the password could soon go the way of the dial-up modem? According to the results from a recent survey commissioned by Visa, consumers are ready to leave the password behind.

For more information about the survey findings, click here

visa
Research conducted by AYTM Market Research, September 12-19, 2017

Over 2,500 Hong Kong taxi drivers sign up to cashless WeChat Pay and Alipay.
Drivers seem to be embracing the cashless payment methods, but leading player Octopus is still nowhere to be seen.
With Hong Kong cashless payment operator Octopus still struggling to woo the city’s 40,000 taxi drivers, two mainland e-payment players, Alipay and WeChat Pay HK, are already leading the race with aggressive marketing to vie for a slice of the taxi pie.
The e-payment market for Hong Kong’s taxi industry, involving 18,163 cabs, is heating up as drivers have started to embrace alternative payment methods to offer more choices for customers, breaking the decades-old stronghold of cash-only services.