1 11 August 2007

News:

The framework which secures personal identification number (PIN) based transactions for international payment cards is to be taken over by the PCI Security Standards Council from credit card companies JCB, MasterCard International and Visa International.

Contactless card issuers have played down concerns that contactless debit cards could provide more fraud opportunities than ordinary debit cards. "If a thief were to steal a contactless card, they would only be able to make a small number of sub £10 transactions before a PIN is requested", said a Barclaycard spokesperson. "A normal debit card can be used on the internet to make much larger payments without a PIN".

Google filed a patent for 'GPay', a system enabling mobile payments, according to a patent application released by the US Patent and Trademark Office on 30 August. 'This invention relates to computer-enabled payment systems and methods, and more particularly to payment systems that make use of text messaging', said Google in its description of its invention.

Features:

Many in the payments industry have been closely watching the development of mobile financial services, with estimates that there are more than two billion mobile subscribers globally. Recent industry reports also predict that by 2011, nearly 99 percent of handsets will be capable of accepting transactions, and revenues from mobile offerings may reach $88 billion. There are also reported to be more than 40 mobile contactless payment trials going on in the world, and the number is expected to increase to 100. It has also been reported that there are 13 million contactless credit cards and other forms of payment devices (for example key fobs or near field communications phones), and 46,000 merchant terminals accepting these in the world. Near field communications (NFC) is the new technology that enables applications stored on a secure element in the mobile phone to communicate with other NFC chips.

Running a retail payment system is pretty easy until things go wrong: dealing with that situation shows how robust an operation is. Take a look at what's been going on in Hong Kong, where there are currently seven million active Octopus mass transitcum-payment-cum door key cards in circulation. The company handles 10 million transactions (totalling more than HK$78 million, about US$10 million) every day.

After a gap of six years, the European Central Bank has published the latest edition of its 'Blue Book', which highlights recent progress made in the integration of European payments. Yuban Moodley and Dan Cootes, of CMS Cameron McKenna LLP, examine the ECB's view of progress made with aspects of this integration, including the SEPA, the PSD and the STEPS programme.

Britain, and London in particular, is in a position to become a world-leader in Islamic finance, due to its reputation as a well-regulated financial centre, which recently prompted British Islamic Insurance Holdings' application to be regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Akbar Merchant and Ric Martin, of Kennedys, explain the Shariah law principles that govern Islamic finance, focusing on their implications for e-finance and e-payments.

The nascent US mobile payments market and its providers face federal and state level regulatory challenges, as well as the difficulties in building a business model which can potentially take significant market share. In this article, James T. Shreve, an attorney in the Washington DC office of Goodwin Procter LLP, sets out the case for involving regulated financial institutions in such models, particularly in addressing regulatory issues.

Aite Group recently surveyed compliance directors at 17 major US retail banks to assess compliance strategies, technology allocated to compliance, and future challenges. The survey confirmed compliance as a key business area, with the majority of professionals predicting an increase in the demands created by compliance issues over the next few years. In this article, Eva Weber, an analyst at Aite Group, LLC, sets out the survey's findings.

In under fifteen years, use of the mobile phone has become ubiquitous, however although payments can be conveniently and quickly made using mobile phones, the technology has yet to be adopted on a worldwide scale. Ginger Schmeltzer and Samee Zafar, of Edgar, Dunn & Company, explain the triggers to worldwide adoption of mobile payments, as well as predicting when and how this will happen.