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Dec. 11th, 2015
Edition #484

 

 

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This Day
in History: 1936
Eward VIII Abdicates
After ruling for less than one year, Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. He chose to abdicate after the British government, public, and the Church of England condemned his decision to marry the American divorc�e Wallis Warfield Simpson. On the evening of December 11, he gave a radio address in which he explained, "I have found it impossible to carry on the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge the duties of king, as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love." On December 12, his younger brother, the duke of York, was proclaimed King George VI.

Edward, born in 1894, was the eldest son of King George V, who became the British sovereign in 1910. Still unmarried as he approached his 40th birthday, he socialized with the fashionable London society of the day. By 1934, he had fallen deeply in love with American socialite Wallis Warfield Simpson, who was married to Ernest Simpson, an English-American businessman who lived with Mrs. Simpson near London. Wallis, who was born in Pennsylvania, had previously married and divorced a U.S. Navy pilot. The royal family disapproved of Edward's married mistress, but by 1936 the prince was intent on marrying Mrs. Simpson. Before he could discuss this intention with his father, George V died, in January 1936, and Edward was proclaimed king. Click here to read more.
Trending this week...

Global Payments is said to be in talks to purchase Heartland Payment Systems, according to people with knowledge on the matter. Following the news, shares for both companies rose. While no final decision has been made, a deal could be announced as soon as this month.
 
In mobile news, Walmart announced their own payment service this week called Walmart Pay. The new system utilizes a QR code at the register to complete purchases, which is very similar to the technology behind MCX's, Current C. Walmart has stated they are still on board with MCX and are optimistic about its prospects.
 
Other highlights include:

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12/10/15 Bloomberg
U.S. transactions-processor Global Payments Inc. is in talks to buy smaller rival Heartland Payment Systems Inc., according to people with knowledge of the matter. Shares in both companies rose. A deal could be announced as soon as this month, the people said, asking not to be identified because the details aren't public. No final decision has been made, and talks may still fall apart, they said. Heartland rose as much as 22 percent in New York. It has a market value of more than $3 billion. Global Payments climbed as much as 7.2 percent.

12/10/15 USA Today
Walmart is removing the need to get your wallet out at the register with a new digital payment method called Walmart Pay. Launching in select stores in Bentonville, Ark., where Walmart is headquartered, the feature allows customers to pay for purchases in stores by scanning a QR code displayed at the register with their smartphone, instead of swiping or inserting a card at the payment terminal. Customers can store any payment method - credit card, debit card, prepaid card or gift card - in the Walmart Pay function within the Walmart app. At checkout, users open the Walmart app, select Walmart Pay and use their camera to scan a QR code on the card reader. 

Related:
12/10/15 The Washington Post
12/09/15 American Banker
Small and midsize banks lack the innovation budgets of their big bank counterparts, but they might be able to make it up on volume. Umpqua Holdings Corp. in Portland, Ore., is looking to lead the charge in bringing community banks together to innovate by launching a lab in Silicon Valley. While it announced the lab, known as Pivotus Ventures, on its own, Ray Davis, the company's president and chief executive, hopes other banks will soon join.
12/11/15 The Street
American Express is struggling after a year of challenges from damaging litigation to the loss of its Costco branded cards and draining currency-exchange rates, but CEO Ken Chenault is confident a turnaround is on the horizon. The digital horizon, actually. "Our challenges, real as they are, haven't distracted us from our core objectives of generating growth," Chenault said in a conference, citing a host of digital innovations and tech partnerships including card payment deals with Apple, ride-hailing service Uber, Facebook, and even online rental marketplace AirbNb.
12/08/15 Digital Transactions
I started in the acquiring industry approximately 20 years ago, and during those 20 years have seen and heard just about everything one can imagine about the way our products and services are marketed. That's especially true when it comes to deceptive and fraudulent practices. During those 20 years, despite the never-ending discussion of how to stop this madness, nothing has changed. 
12/11/15 International Business Times
The use of cards by British shoppers more than doubled between 2005 and 2014, according to the UK Cards Association. In 2014, they spent �566bn, more than the GDP of the entire Dutch economy. According to the association which represents Britain's major bank card providers, card spending in pubs was about �5bn in 2014 as compared with �1bn in 2005. At bakers, this figure was about �28m in 2014, more than a nine-time increase from 2005.
MobilePaymentsMobile Payments & Bitcoin
12/11/15 Bloomberg
While the hype may have faded a bit, 2015 was still a busy year for bitcoin. Venture capital investments topped $1 billion for the first time. People are finding it easier to invest in the digital currency, thanks to the debut of firms such as Bitcoin Investment Trust. Big financial companies-Nasdaq, American Express and Visa- invested in bitcoin startups, "a game changer in terms of attitude towards the technology," said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.
12/11/15 PC Mag
Paying people back will soon be as easy as sending a text message, thanks toGoogle WalletThe mobile payment system, which lets you send money to anyone in the U.S. with just an email address (even if they don't have a Wallet account), is about to get even easier. Google on Monday announced that you can now send money to people on your contact list using just a phone number - no email necessary.
12/09/15 Reuters
Apple Inc is struggling to persuade Australia's big banks to sign up for its Apple Pay mobile payment system, people familiar with the matter say, as the technology giant works from an unfamiliar negotiating position: weakness, not strength. Apple rolled out the service in Australia last month with support for payment cards issued directly by American Express Co. The move is part of the iPhone supplier's global drive to extend its mobile consumer electronics prowess into financial services, with a China launch expected soon. 
12/10/15 Engadget
Samsung Pay was already handy for using the company's line of Galaxy phones to take care of mobile payments via credit and debit cards. Making good on its promise ahead of the holidays, Samsung added the ability for you to use those gift cards you're sure to receive in the weeks to come. Similar to the bank and credit card methods that Samsung Pay already employs, the app will allow you to load those gift cards to keep your pockets free of extra clutter on your next shopping trip.
12/08/15 BTN
Banks' growing curiosity about so-called blockchain technology has spawned a new category of technology: blockchain as a service. Every major bank either has a blockchain application in process or hopes to have one soon. Generally speaking, they don't want to use the original bitcoin blockchain (the public ledger of all bitcoin transactions), just technology based on the concept - in other words, a shared ledger that can be used to track things like asset sales, payments, loans, and contracts. 
12/09/15 The Wall Street Journal
The rise of bitcoin has central bankers around the world studying the possibility of issuing virtual money backed by the government itself.
A shift in that direction could cut costs across the payment system and give authorities more control over their money supply. It also could raise security and privacy concerns. To date, no central banks have embraced issuing digital versions of their fiat currencies. But the prospect is gaining steam as officials around the world begin to view a mostly digital payment system as inevitable.
12/09/15 Hospitality Technology
Dunkin' Donuts has made Apple Pay available as an additional way to reload their card via the Dunkin' Mobile� App. With Apple Pay, Dunkin' Donuts guests can use their iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus to purchase, gift or reload virtual Dunkin' Donuts Cards through the Dunkin' Mobile App for quick, easy and secure payment for Dunkin' Donuts food, beverages and merchandise.
12/09/15 Samsung
Samsung Electronics announced the launch of the Samsung Pay Transportation Card Service, which provides Samsung Pay users with a more convenient way to use transportation in Korea. The service is available beginning Dec. 8. The Samsung Pay Transportation Card Service essentially brings both the T-Money and Cashbee transportation payment methods into one easy-to-use mobile payment service for all your transportation payment needs.
RegulationSecurityRegulation & Security
12/09/15 Bank Info Security
The House Financial Services Committee, by a 46-9 vote, approved on Dec. 9 the Data Security Act of 2015, which would establish minimum security protections at businesses as well as create a national requirement for data breach notificationHR 2205 would supplant 47 state laws with a single, national breach notification statute. Businesses generally support a single law because they contend it's burdensome to comply with various state laws.
12/07/15 Krebs on Security
Law enforcement officials and bank anti-fraud specialists sometimes purchase stolen cards from crime forums and "carding" markets online in hopes of identifying a pattern among all the cards from a given batch that might make it easy to learn who got breached: If all of the cards from a given batch were later found to be used at the same e-commerce or brick-and-mortar merchant over the same time period, investigators can often determine the source of the card breach, alert the breached company and stem the flow of stolen cards.
12/08/15 Nation's Restaurant News
CM Ebar LLC, parent to the Elephant Bar restaurants, warned customers who used credit cards at the 29-unit chain between August and December that their data may have been breached, the company said Tuesday. The casual-dining operator said it was alerted to the potential security breach on Nov. 3, and it has investigated and removed the suspected computer malware that lead to the possible incident.
12/09/15 Recode
The FTC has settled a lawsuit with the hotel company Wyndham over a series of data breaches that turned into a major test of the agency's regulatory power. Under the agreement, Wyndham will not have to pay a fine or admit that it broke the law, but will have to institute "a comprehensive information security program" to stop future data breaches.
EconomyEconomy
12/11/15 Bloomberg
Retail sales climbed in November by the most in four months as American consumers put to work some of the money saved from the cheapest gasoline since early 2009. The 0.2 percent increase in November, less than forecast, followed a 0.1 percent gain in the previous month, Commerce Department figures showed Friday. Excluding purchases of autos and gasoline, retail purchases climbed 0.5 percent, also the biggest advance since July.
12/10/15 Yahoo! Finance
Despite the financial burdens and other obstacles millennials face, they are eager to use life experiences to pursue financial independence. The impact of the Great Recession, combined with insights from their parents, play a significant role in how millennials manage their own financial lives, according to the Bank of America Year-End Millennial Snapshot.     
12/08/15 CU Insight
Analysis of Black Friday through Cyber Monday card transaction data by payments processor TMG (The Members Group) shows credit and debit cardholders are increasingly relying on digital means to check off their holiday shopping lists. Cardholders shopped both in-store and online throughout the holiday weekend; however, card-not-present (CNP) sales accounted for nearly a quarter of the total holiday weekend credit and debit card transactions processed by TMG. Notably, the CNP number jumped significantly as compared to previous years. In 2014, for example, CNP sales accounted for 20 percent of all card transactions. In 2013, they accounted for 15 percent.
12/09/15 CNBC
Flash back to the summer of 2014. Sunny skies, warm days, and consumers were paying, on average, $3.70 for a gallon of gas. But an autumn chill brought a rapid decline in the price of a barrel of oil that carried through the winter months. By the winter of 2015, the price of a gallon of gas had fallen considerably and was hovering slightly above $2.00. Consumers suddenly found themselves with extra cash, and it didn't take long for the question to emerge: What were they doing with all the "extra" cash?? 
PaymentsPressPayments Press
12/07/15 Tech Crunch
Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski took the stage at Disrupt London today to discuss his payment startup and the wider financial tech ecosystem in Europe and in the U.S. Klarna isn't a household name outside of Europe yet. The company only launched there in September, thanks to a partnership with Overstock.com. Still, Siemiatkowski, who met his co-founder when they flipped burgers at Burger King, believes that Klarna is already the fastest-growing fintech company in the U.S. with a run rate that's approaching a billion dollars.
12/09/15 ISO & Agent
Visa Inc. has started marketing what's poised to be one of the biggest bond offerings of the year to finance its 21.2 billion euro ($23.3 billion) takeover of Visa Europe Ltd. Visa said last month that it plans to issue as much as $16 billion in debt to finance the takeover. That would make the offering the fourth-largest company debt sale this year after Actavis Plc's $21 billion deal to buy Allergan Inc., AT&T Inc.'s $17.5 billion bond sale funding the purchase of DirectTV and AbbVie Inc.'s $16.6 billion financing to buy Pharmacyclics Inc.
12/09/15 Bloomberg 
Eileen Serra is stepping down as chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s credit-card business and will be replaced by Kevin Watters, who is currently head of mortgage banking. Serra, 61, is leaving the position in January and will remain at JPMorgan as an adviser, the New York-based bank said Wednesday in an internal memo, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg. Serra, who joined the lender in 2006 from Merrill Lynch & Co., was named CEO of Chase Card Services three years ago.
12/07/15 MasterCard
This year MasterCard took home an unprecedented number of Midas Awards for the World's Best Financial Advertising.  Earning 12 Golds, 13 Silvers, and 21 Certificates, MasterCard was recognized for its Priceless marketing efforts around the world. Read the full press release. "Priceless was founded in the timeless insight that experiences matter more than things. We've been able to not only keep that truth alive, but also give it new meaning through new technologies," said Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing officer, MasterCard.
12/10/15 SWIFT
SWIFT announces a global payments innovation initiative to dramatically improve the customer experience in correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments. 
Designed in collaboration with the industry, the initiative will initially focus on a business-to-business payments service supported by participating banks in early 2016. The new service will help corporates grow their international business, improve supplier relationships, and achieve greater treasury efficiencies.
12/07/15 Finextra 
American Express Canada's new OptBlue program aims to expand the company's Small Merchant network by enabling third-party acquirers to sign up Small Merchants to accept American Express. The program provides Merchants with streamlined acceptance and servicing of American Express Cards and is part of a broader growth strategy for the company to capture more of its Cardmembers spending at local businesses.
12/08/15 ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of electronic payment and banking solutions, announced that TransferWise, the international money transfer platform, has selected ACI's UP Framework, a solution that can orchestrate all aspects of payment processing for any payment type, any channel, currency or network.
12/08/15 NMI
NMI, a payments enablement technology company, today announced the release of its new payment facilitation gateway platform. FACenablement (FACe) is a fully brandable gateway platform built specifically to meet the technical and operational needs of payment facilitators. FACe made its debut this past October in Las Vegas at Money 20/20, a global event for financial services innovation. After enjoying a successful soft launch, FACe is now ready for widespread commercial release.
12/08/15 PR Newswire
Revention, a leader in providing custom point of sale solutions to the hospitality industry, partners with Vantiv, Inc. to provide a secure EMV payment solution.  Vantiv, Inc. is a leading provider of payment processing services and related technology solutions for merchants. Vantiv's payment platform provides point to point encryption (P2PE) of credit card data, which greatly reduces the PCI compliancy requirements of merchants.  
12/10/15 StreetInsider
TransUnion is building on its success as a trusted source of fraud and identity management solutions with the acquisition of Trustev, a global provider of digital verification technology to multiple industries. 
TransUnion's fraud and identity management solutions analyze identity data in order to reduce risk exposure and potential losses. Trustev's technology evaluates online transactions in real time with machine learning, enabling customers to stop fraud and authorize legitimate purchases.
12/07/15 CAN Capital
CAN Capital, Inc., the market share leader in alternative small business finance, and iPayment, Inc., a premier provider of payment solutions and processing services, today announced a partnership to provide over 150,000 small businesses currently working with iPayment the ability to apply for access to flexible financial solutions to help them grow their businesses.
12/08/15 Finextra
FIS has won a three-year patent dispute suit lodged by rival vendor Fiserv following a ruling that the alleged infringements were 'unpatentable'. FIS and Metavante, which FIS acquired in 2009, were sued by Fiserv subsidiaries CheckFree and CashEdge in January 2012 for allegedly infringing four business method patents.
12/08/15 The Green Sheet
BlueSnap, a global payments technology company, announced the hiring of three top executives to support the company's commitment to delivering a frictionless checkout experience with maximized payment conversions for online merchants. With over 70 years of combined payments and technology experience, BlueSnap welcomes Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Botelle and Scott Conti. All will be based at the company's headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.
12/09/15 PR Web
Payscape, a financial technology company, and Vendevor, an ecommerce platform and mobile app for selling across multiple sales channels, including web, mobile, social media, brick-and-mortar locations and pop-up shops, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Payscape will acquire all the assets of Vendevor. 
12/08/15 Clearent
Clearent, one of the fastest-growing payment processing companies in the U.S., today announced the release of its WordPress plug-in for website developers. Clearent's development team has been working closely with web developers to build an easy to use plug-in that enables them to securely integrate payment buttons directly into their WordPress websites.
12/09/15 eWeek
"We built the system from scratch and have filed for patents on it," Tender Armor CEO Madeline Aufseeser said. When a customer uses a point-of-sale (PoS) terminal, the authorization process for a credit card occurs within seconds, Aufseeser said. The authorization process verifies that cardholders are who they say they are, the card is in good standing and there are funds to approve the transaction. What Tender Armor is doing, she said, is adding another element, such that a bank can check for the CvvPlus code that is coming in to determine the validity of a given credit card.
12/09/15 Mastercard
The National Urban League has partnered with MasterCard to promote financial literacy in underserved communities, National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial announced. "Economic empowerment requires a thorough understanding of financial transactions," Morial said. Noting that fewer than 50 percent of Black families own their own homes. More than half have no investments and only about a third have savings accounts. "There is a critical need within the African-American community for programs like MasterCard's that help consumers maximize their money and small business grow."
12/09/15 PR Newswire
Omidyar Network announced today a for-profit investment in eCurrency Mint (eCM), a Dublin-based company that has pioneered a new technology that enables central banks to issue digital fiat currency, called eCurrency. eCurrency is different from the various forms of private sector digital value available today because it is issued by a central bank and has the same legal and monetary status as notes and coins. 

Copyright �2015 The Strawhecker Group. All Rights Reserved. Unless noted, TSG does not take responsibility for content or opinions. Articles are sourced as appropriate throughout.

   

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