intu to drive footfall with in-store cashback app
2%+ on purchases, with app in beta now available
Footfall is the golden goose for bricks and mortar retailers. If you can persuade shoppers into your premises, then sales will follow, goes the argument.
intu the largest shopping centre landlord in the UKhas responded to this requirement with a powerful shopper cash-back loyalty initiative that rewards spending in physical stores. Read more ...

Rumours and more rumours as Tesco Clubcard price cuts
Everyone watching as latest ‘big plans’ emerge
Tesco is planning an umbrella scheme is thought to be linked with the Tesco Pay+ app, which currently allows shoppers to use a smartphone app to pay for their shopping with a simple scan of a barcode in store. Read more ...

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Taking position for the new payments tomorrow
Reasons behind Apple’s “vintage” credit card

The new payments landscape is upon us and rather than being a volcanic eruption of change, it is the relentless erosion of how things were yesterday, to be replaced by a new normal. Read more ...

Daily cash from Apple
Getting ready for the ultimate badge of coolness
Who would have thought that Apple would start offering cash rewards, but that is exactly what it is doing with its new retro credit card. Read more ...

Make the returning easy
* Customers won’t come back after bad experience
* Rapid normalisation of returns

Retailers who don’t offer an easy returns process are losing sales and customer loyalty, with 84% of shoppers saying they won’t come back to a brand if they have a poor returns experience. Read more ...

Chipotle launches rewards with Venmo wallet
Integrated digital approach cuts order time by two thirds
Chipotle, the US fast casual dining chain is rolling out a new loyalty programme working with mobile wallet Venmo to publicise its proposition. Highlighting its ability to cater for those on special diets – everyone joining the programme gets free fries and guacamole with their first order after signing up. Read more ...

Vast stash of card data offered for sale
Street value of US$3.5m

A notorious carder site is featuring a fresh batch of stolen card data from Pakistani with an estimated street value of $3.5 million. Read more ...

Latest card-linked loyalty start-up gains funding
Second seed round over-subscribed

The concept of allowing consumers to consolidate multiple loyalty and points programmes into one mechanism is moving from a conceptually good idea to a fast moving express train. Read more ...

Payment brands rush to be heard
Mastercard goes sonic
Anna miaows

If you are one of those who feel it is a massive intrusion into your personal privacy and space when someone’s mobile phone makes a noise, then you may have to rethink your shopping plans.

Closed loop multi-currency giftcard on a blockchain
Solving the issue of multi-currencies for loyalty and gift cards

Tranxactor, working with technology company Kornchain, have released a ground-breaking multicurrency closed-loop gift card product which will use blockchain to create efficiencies, speed of transaction and cross-border usability. Read more ...

Avios partners to bring points to banking app
More transparency for points balanceThis is the first of what Loyalty Magazine understands will be a growing list of current accounts linked with Avios. Read more ...

Contactless limited by the limit
Huge variation in global cash caps Read more ...

Visa in the lead with new Eathport offer

Visa and Mastercard are in a head to head battle for UK payments processor Eathport, with Visa stating it has raised its to 37p per share, valuing the business at £247 million.
So whatever both payments giants say about their competitor being cash, this bidding war illustrates just were their nemesis sits. Read more ...

Target expanding loyalty to fill credit card gap
Programme to provide analytics on non-Redcard customers
Mobile acceptance coming soon

US retailer Target plans to expand its Target Circle loyalty programme that it began in Dallas last April. Read more ...

Barclays leads £10m funding round for Bink
*Proposition to provide a marketplace for loyalty programmes back on the agenda

*Lee Clarke and Greg Gormley no longer part of the management team

Barclays has become a minority stakeholder in Bink, having taken part in its recent oversubscribed £10m funding round. A statement said “Barclays and Bink will work in collaboration to deliver a ground-breaking experience for Barclays customers”.  Read more ...

Lack of cash causing problems
UK Access to Cash report;
China fines for cash refusal
Since the first plastic credit card, the payments industry has been on a mission to replace cash.But increasingly, there is a body of opinion that the death of cash could lead to major problems, especially for the poor, the unbanked and those in debt.
Read more ...

Feeling strong? Here are the predictions for 2019

Making predictions for the coming year is always fraught with danger, but this year it is even more complicated – for myriad reasons ranging from political and economic through to technology and changing behaviours. However, there is no shortage of people prepared to take a gamble. Here is a selection of those that caught our eye: Read more ...

SPECIAL REPORT: Chinese payment giants “light years ahead”
Customer loyalty chief tenet of model
Alipay acceptance at 7-Eleven
US$15.5 trillion in mobile payments in 2017

China has embraced mobile payments with such enthusiasm, the rest of the world appear to be technology deniers. Alipay and WeChat, the main protagonists, score in terms of technology, user friendliness, number of users and ubiquity. Their data analytics are central to everything they do. Read more ...

Analysing behaviour with deep learning is key to stopping fraud
Taking an early approach to risk-management
PSD2 (Revised Payment Services Directive) is driving many organisations to completely overhaul their authentication processes, with the requirement of a second authentication method. But verifying a user is only part of the story; crucial to a business’s longevity and bottom line is detecting, isolating and preventing fraud, from before the user profile is created. Article by Antony Bream, Global Head of Enterprise and New Business, AimBrain Read more ...

India two years on from demonitization: Special Card & Payments World Report
Digital payments building but cash use still growing
Tech giants in fight for market share
Alternative payments to watch
Amazon buys Tapzo
Cabinet approves spending hike for IPPB Read more ...

If you thought GDPR was bad, watch out for ePrivacy Regulation
New EU rules will have substantial impact on digital marketing, advertising and all things virtual Read more ...

Payments market country report: Greece
– Card payments rocket after capital controls
– Country gets up to speed with PSD2
– Exclusive interview on payment trends in the country with the Hellenic Bank Association
– Extensive market data
Read more ...

Potential conflicts between GDPR and PSD2
Unanswered questions on how the two pieces of EU legislation will work together in areas such as explicit consent and incident reporting. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) are both designed to give customers in the EU more control over their data, and to ensure that this personal data is used to support their interests. Read more ...

Open Banking – who do you trust?
Post-PSD2, the future strategies of banks are being driven by ‘double fear’ – fear of becoming a dumb pipe and fear of missing out (FOMO). How can they maintain customer trust and deal with the fintech challenge, and what are the opportunities for fintechs themselves?
Mark Palmer of Maverick Planet explains. Read more ...

Final agreement on Fifth AML Directive proposals
- Consensus on anti-money laundering amendments including prepaid cards and virtual currencies
- The major provisions affecting banks
- Patchy adoption of Fourth AML Directive across EU
- Timeline for adoption of AMLD5
Read more ...

Acquiring: Consolidation is coming to a place near you
- How M&A will shake up acquiring as regulation starts to bite
- Industry under threat from multiple marauders
- What benefits can PSD2 bring?
- Starling Bank bucking theft trend

MPE, the ever growing merchant acquirer and processor focused conference that takes place in Berlin every year, was an interesting place to be. Read more ...

Acquiring potential in an unstable world
To mark International Women’s Day on March 8 we are profiling one of the top payments professionals - Andrea Dunlop - who is justifiably described as one of the “Inspirational Women” in our industry. Andrea is a strong supporter of women in business and recently took part in the march4women in London. As well as being CEO of the acquiring and card solutions division of PaySafe Group, Andrea is also advisory board chair of the Emerging Payments Association. Read more ...

Banks face battle to retain control of acquiring
– The wolves at the acquiring door
– Carrefour Group harmonises payments into shopping
It has never been easy to break into payments acquiring and processing. Dominated by the infrastructure pipes of Visa and Mastercard, with American Express an important third, until relatively recently, payments were virtually ignored by governments and regulators, beyond ensuring they were safe. Read more ...

Money 2020 report: Getting ready for the reinvention of payments
Prime focus on blockchain, cryptocurrencies, AI and AR

Trying to sum up the main trends and discussion points from a conference as massive as Money 20/20 is not an easy task but as always, there are some subjects that gain the biggest audiences and yet again, blockchain was one of them. Read more ...

PayPal uses partnerships to build multichannel power
24 separate deals in 18 months expand customer offering both online and in-store Faced with growing digital payments competition from rivals such as Amazon and Square, PayPal is pursuing an aggressive strategy of partnerships to expand its payments offering to consumers both online and offline. Read more ...

Ten years on, what have we learned?
The financial crash was caused by “creative thinking” and therefore could happen again
Read more ...

The business of payments funding part 2: Why payments startups fail
A business model that does not scale and an insufficiently differentiated product  are the biggest barriers to success

Banks are increasingly looking to partner with fintechs and payments start-ups on digital initiatives. Linking with agile and innovative new players can offer tremendous capabilities to major banks in solving problems and driving effective modernisation of operations, technology, processes and services. Read more ...

The business of payments funding part 1: Sources for funding
There are a variety of funding sources for payments fintechs, but these potential backers are all looking for one thing above everything else – growth

Payments companies received one third of total global fintech investment since Q1 2015.

The US and UK are by far the biggest investors in payments fintechs accounting for around 50% of global deals, followed by India and Japan Read more ...

Norway Payments Market Report
Norway’s mobile payments market is accelerating fast, but still somewhat behind its Nordic neighbours in terms of development.

DNB’s Vipps and Danske Bank’s MobilePay are the two main competing m-payment offerings in Norway, but a “bridge” is needed to link the Nordic schemes and fight international competition, according to the head of MobilePay Norway. Read more ...

Creating a German payment champion
Concardis, which has a one-third share of the German payment acquiring market, was recently sold by its bank owners to private equity companies Bain Capital and Advent International.

CEO Marcus Mosen explains the reasons for the sale and the company’s ambitious plans for expansion, at home and abroad. Read more ...

50 days to fix India's demonetisation troubles
Editor Annich McIntosh travelled through India last month, experiencing demonetisation first hand. This is what she found. Travelling through India over the new year, the queues at ATMs, the constant quest for cash and the problem of finding appropriate rupee notes for small purchases and tipping people are some of my lasting memories. Read more ...

Blockchain & Payments Report
- Comprehensive listing and details of the major blockchain payments providers
- Mixed adoptance picture as central banks hold key to deployments
- Major FIs partner for interbank blockchain payments
- Visa stakes its claim with scheme for 2017
- SEB starts payments network Read more ...

Barclaycard: 50 years old and not afraid to fail
Exclusive interview with MD global payment acceptance Paulette Rowe From those early days in the sixties when it was one of the first credit card issuers, through the early mobile payments and contactless era and into wearables, Barclaycard has never been afraid to test, or to fail. Read more ...

P2P Lending Report
- Comprehensive listing and details of of the major global platforms
- P2PFA seeks tougher rules
- Global market tops US$375bn
- Huge commercial opportunities
- Crowdfunding and P2PFrom its beginnings with Zopa in 2005, the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market has rapidly expanded with global payments estimated to be worth US$375bn in 2015. Read more ...

Making the best of Brexit
There were two good reasons for attending the Brexit & Global Expansion Summit in London.
Firstly to find out if anyone can shed some light on plans for the UK exit from the EU, and secondly to explore the fierce pace of the “Digital Transformation” that is redefining the payments industry Read more ...

PSD2 will not be implemented in the UK
- VocaLink planning European base
- Special Q&A with David Yates, CEO of VocaLink PSD2 will not be implemented in the UK, which is in the process of planning its own, very similar Open API rules for payments. Read more ...

Raphaels works towards role as bankers' banker
Raphaels Bank has added Apple Pay functionality to its prepaid travel card, Cash Passport. This much we know. Where it gets interesting is how they have done it, why, and what happens next for this ambitious and longstanding bank that is turning itself into a fintech company.   Read more ...

SPECIAL REPORT
Rewards crowdfunding continues to make waves
Plutus Tap & Pay raises £1m in nine days for cryptocurrency product
With the news that Plutus, the London-based cryptocurrency payment platform has raised over £1m in less than ten days of launching a crowdfunding campaign the spotlight is once again on peer to peer lending to fund major projects especially rewards based crowdfunding initiatives. Read more ...

Blockchain: Interesting proposition or alchemy?
- The case for and against using the blockchain for payments
- Specific use case examples
- Potential for use as a cash replacement and for everyday retail payments Read more ...

ITALY: Country report
Restructuring and sell-offs change payments landscape
Increased confidence boosts card issuance
Charts:
Payment instrument use in Italy by value
Payment cards in use in Italy 2009-2015
Payment instrument use in Italy by volume
Read more ...

Why won't M-Pesa work anywhere else?

Mobile money transactions in Sub-Saharan Africa hit US$656m in 2014, and could more than double to US$1.3bn in the next four years, but M-Pesa, which is used by half the Kenyan population seems untransportable to other markets. With the help of Adeniyi Adeyemi of CR2, we ask why?From a standing start in 2007,it is now estimated that over half the population of Kenya use the M-Pesa mobile money service to transact. Yet it was an outright failure in South Africa, and a struggle in most other markets. Read more ...

Payments has trouble with descriptions
MERCHANT ACQUIRING REPORT
It used to be fairly straightforward to identify the various parties in payments when mostly it was about cards. There were issuers, merchant acquirers, merchants themselves and of course the end user consumers - but now everything has changed. Read more ...