On the web:

• Fed Studying Risks at Online Payment Providers - Wall St. Journal - "This is very much on our radar screen and we are carefully trying to identify where the risks are…"
• New partners, new cards and TV commercials at Dynamics - Pittsburgh Business Times - "Next generation payment card company Dynamics is unveiling a second tier of its ePlate card."
• The Time For A Stateless Global Reserve Currency Is Fast Approaching - The Genesis Block - "The problem is not that the reserve currency is issued by the United States, the problem is that it’s tied to any state at all."
• NFC payment services 'struggling to gain traction': Gartner - Computerworld - "Gartner predicted that NFC would account for only 2 per cent of total worldwide mobile payments this year and only increase to 5 per cent in 2017."
• PayPal challenging BPAY - ITworld (Australia) - "PayPal has announced a deal in Australia with utility company Australian Power & Gas and Telstra to allow bill payments via PayPal online and on mobile."
• Facebook banking in Turkey - Financial Services Club Blog - "Turkey is in fact a hotbed of innovation in banking, not just because of its growth market status, but also due to government deregulation to encourage more competition in banking."
• M-Pesa upgrade to ease payment of electricity bills - Business Daily Africa - "The mobile firm has already awarded Chinese telecoms giant Huawei the tender to migrate M-Pesa to the new platform…"

On the wires:

• ZTE Joygor Partners With Fortumo For App Billing and In-App Purchasing - "ZTE Joygor will use Fortumo's billing connections in 80 countries for monetizing users on ZTE Joygor's app platform, which comes preloaded on millions of ZTE devices worldwide.
• Merchant Warehouse Partners with Retail Pro International to Enhance Customer Experience - "Genius allows retailers to accept any type of payment in a low-risk manner, and turn basic transactions into deeper interactions with their customers."
• Financial Services Industry Leaders and Entrepreneurs Gather to Examine Market Trends and Consumer Needs

On the web:

• China's UnionPay Payment Network Launches Its First Card Issued in the U.S. - WSJ - "The UnionPay prepaid card will be sold online and in bank branches in major U.S. cities..."
• Mobile Commerce Isn’t Just About Payments - ZDnet UK - "When consumers get added value from their purchase transactions, their mobile phones become not only their conduit into the digital world, but also a kind of concierge, simplifying their lives."
• CBA's clever Kaching ambitions - Business Spectator - "By enabling so many types of payment through a mobile phone, Commonwealth Bank is teaching its customers that if they want to make a payment – in any situation – they should use the Kaching app."
• Starbucks generates 10pc of US revenue from mobile - Mobile Commerce Daily - "Every week, Starbucks is seeing close to four million mobile payment transactions…"
• Chip cards are fundamentally flawed - The Bankwatch Blog - "Sometimes when I read the debates on chip, PIN and EMV I feel I am listening to the Flat Earth Society."
• Future of payments does not need Mastercard or Visa - banking chief - HumanIPO - "The “gorillas” of Mastercard and Visa will in the future no longer be needed because of the direction of banking and payment solutions in the cloud…

On the wires:

• Barclaycard Germany Signed Multi-Year Contract for Debit and Credit Cards with Gemalto

First Data has announced the signing of an exclusive teaming agreement with Accenture and VocaLink to introduce a technical solution for Immediate Payments in Australia. Immediate Payments would enable Australian consumers and businesses to transfer funds between bank accounts in real or near real-time, instead of waiting between one-to-three days.

“We are pleased to enter into this agreement with Accenture and VocaLink and look forward to engaging with the industry on potential governance models for our proposed technical solution,” said John Tait, managing director of First Data in Australia and New Zealand. “Our ultimate goal is to provide innovation to Australian consumers, and we recognise that this can only be achieved through a cooperative approach and defined by a broad group of stakeholders, driven at the industry level.”

On the web:

• Get ready for BitInstant's Bitcoin Debit Card - CNN Money
• Square Confirms Website and "Some Payments" Affected by Outage - The Next Web
• Stripe’s Capture The Flag 2.0 — A Hands On Contest For App Developers To Test Their Security Know-How - TechCrunch
• Food Carts Switching To Mobile Payments - Oregon Business

On the wires:

• Cubic's Go Card Passes 3 Million In Australia
• Nigeria Cash-Less Lagos Initiative Spurs Orders for VeriFone Solutions

On the web:

• PayPal Acquires card.io - PayPal Blog
• Visa May Be Helped by WTO Ruling on Chin - Businessweek
• How Cell Phones Are Bringing Rural Africans Into the Modern Economy - The Atlantic
• Merchants Consider Credit Card Surcharges or Cash Discounts - NYTimes.com

On the wires:

• Monitise Releases Unaudited Trading Update
• ROXO Adds Virtual Piggy as Payment Solution
• Ogone Acquires Tunz.com and Becomes Licensed e-Money Institution in EU
• Adyen Announces Availability of A/B Testing of Payment Pages
• Discover Card Now Accepted at Neiman Marcus Stores
• New Aite Group Report on How Remittance Details Arrive
• Commonwealth Bank (Australia) to Revolutionize the POS experience with Pi
• LevelUp Mobile Payments Launch in Colorado at Fast-Casual Chain Larkburger
• Western Union Enables Acceptance of Indian Rupee Tuition Payments
• Pacific Pride Launches New Universal Card Program for its Fuel Marketers
• Angry Birds Creator Selects Braintree’s Payments Platform

On the web:

• Paydiant Raises $12M For White Label Mobile Payment Platform - GigaOM
• Sexy Payments Startup Stripe Swipes $20M In Funding - TechCrunch
• Dual Diners Club + World Mastercard Charge Card Launched in Australia - Datamonitor
• Can Clouds And Contactless Chips Coexist? - Portals and Rails
• Facebook wants to be your online bank - Fortune Tech

On the wires:

• Chase Launches Reloadable Card – Chase Liquid
• British Airways Checks in for Enhanced Fraud Prevention from Accertify

On the web:

• Square gets another competitor with COIN - VentureBeat
• Merrill Lynch Offers iPad App for Online Payments - American Banker
• An Australian E-Retailer Says Get A New Browser Or Pay 6.8% Surcharge - Internet Retailer
• The Karl Marx MasterCard Is Here. It Needs A Tagline. - NPR Planet Money

On the wires:

• Citi ThankYou Rewards Members Can Now Use Points to Buy Tickets to Live Nation Concerts
• 30 Countries Added to MoneyGram’s Direct-to-Account Service to Philippines

The Reserve Bank of Australia has released the conclusions of its Strategic Review of Innovation in the Payments System. The Review was announced in May 2010, with the aim of identifying areas in which innovation in the Australian payments system may be improved through more effective cooperation between stakeholders and regulators.

A key objective is the establishment of a system that would provide real-time retail payments, with real-time funds availability, by the end of 2016. This type of system has been a focus of innovation in a number of other countries.

MasterCard has announced that Australia will be the first country to pilot QkR™, a new queue-busting mobile payment application developed by MasterCard that lets movie goers at selected La Premiere Hoyts cinemas order food and drinks directly from their seats by using their smart phone.

The new QkR by MasterCard in-cinema smart ordering service will be piloted by the Commonwealth Bank at a number of Hoyts cinemas for several weeks from January. Guests of Hoyts’ luxurious La Premiere cinemas in Sydney who have an iPhone or Android handset will be able to buy food and drink from the comfort of their cinema seats through an application downloaded to their phone. Purchases are then delivered directly to their seat.

The Reserve Bank of Australia is considering tightening its current rules that permit merchant surcharging on Visa and MasterCard products.

The proposed variation will allow scheme rules to limit surcharges to a reasonable cost of acceptance, while still ensuring that merchants cannot be prevented from fully recovering their costs. The need for this change arises because in recent years some surcharging practices that potentially compromise price signals, such as surcharging in excess of card acceptance costs, have become more widespread. The Board believes that the proposed variation will improve the efficiency of the payments system by providing better price signals to cardholders.

Comments are due back by Feb 10, 2012.

The CommonwealthBank of Australia has launched an app for the iPhone called 'Kaching' that combines NFC, peer-to-peer payments, and social payments via Facebook. Good summary articles by NFC World, Hindustan Times, and The Australian.

On the web:

• Pygg Launches Twitter-based, Social Media Payments App in Australia - StartUpSmart
• Swiff Hopes to Become the 'Square" of Singapore and Malaysia - SGEntrepreneurs
• Square to Distribute Payment Swipe Device Through Wal-Mart - Businessweek
• Real World Feedback: How to Spend $100 With Google Wallet - Advertising Age
• In China, App Enables Discounted Mobile Payments at Vending Machines - Springwise
• Keeping Pace as Money Transmitters Proliferate - Portals and Rails
• New Zealand Carriers Create Cooperative Direct Carrier Billing Framework - MobilePaymentsToday.com

On the wires:

• Bank of America, Intuit to Offer Full Service Payroll to Small Businesses
• TSYS Purchases Portfolio from Vanguard Payment Systems

The Payment Systems Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia has published its Annual Report 2011. The report contains lots of interested data and graphs on payments behavior, interchange fees, merchant service fees, etc. in Australia.

On the wires:

• TSYS Expands Merchant Acquiring Presence With Acquisition of TermNet
• FIS Begins Processing New ELO Cards in Brazil
• Bill.com Rolls Out Official Integration with Sage Peachtree Software

On the web:

• FierceMobileContent: PayPal expects to process $2 billion in mobile payments in 2011
• TechCrunch: Jack Dorsey Shares Some Square Numbers
• Mashable: ING Direct Customers Can Now Pay Friends By Bumping Smartphones
• Wall Street Journal (SmartMoney):New Rules of the Credit Card Game
• Collections & Credit Risk: Discover To Pay Cardholders Referral Fee In Social-Media Push
• CRIENGLISH.com: Australian Payment Processor Will Start Accepting Unionpay Cards
• Times of India: Mobile payment system to gain steam in coming months
• Mobile Way to Pay: Will Retailers Use Tender Steering To Take Control Of Interchange?
• Portals and Rails: The Check's in the Mail, but it might be Fraudulent
• TechCrunch: Online Point Of Sale (POS) Systems Are The New Vogue

On the wires:

• Fees For Most Prepaid Cards Higher Than Basic Checking Accounts
• VeriFone and Hypercom Announce Agreement to Sell Hypercom’s US Payment Systems Business
• J.P. Morgan Treasury Services Ranks First in ACH Originations for 2010
• FIS Introduces New Terminated Originator Database for Risk Mitigation
• Viewpointe’s Services for Third-Party Senders Help Meet New NACHA Requirement
• Laru Corporation to Introduce ACH Vision RDFI at Payments 2011

On the web:

• Techworld: MasterCard Australia Outlines EMV-based Card Security Roadmap
• Portals and Rails: Atlanta and Boston Fed position paper promotes U.S. adoption of mobile payments
• The Asset Magazine: China Construction Bank and China UnionPay Offers Dual Currency Credit Card

The Mobile Money Exchange has a great visual tool that nicely illustrates the proliferation of mobile money deployments around the world.

This tool was originally developed by the GSMA Mobile Money for the Unbanked team (covering the countries under their remit) and has been extended to include all worldwide mobile money deployments.

On the wires:

• Reserve Bank of Australia on Payments System Issues Related to Multi-Function Cards
• TIO Network Surpasses 58,000 Physical Locations through MoneyGram Strategic Alliance
• Tyfone and Dexim Bring NFC Contactless Payments to the iPhone
• Arcos Dorados Selects VeriFone PAYware Merchant for Latin America McDonald’s Restaurants
• Digital Payment Technologies and Streetline Form Partnership

On the web:

• Rethink Wireless: Google May Get Tough On In-app Purchasing Too
• ReadWriteWeb: NFC in 2011: What's NFC, and Why Do I Care?
• Portals and Rails: Gains Made in Reducing Identity Theft, but Significant Fraud Losses Still Loom
• eMarketer: Consumers Continue Switch to Online Banking
• MIT Technology Review: Mobile Payments Try to Take Root in Afghanistan

A news story in today's Sydney Morning Herald caught my eye: "New software to beat credit card fraud". The story describes how National Australia Bank is rolling out new technology - called liquid encryption numbers (LEN) - developed at its Bank of New Zealand subsidiary to deal with card fraud.

Exploring a bit further, I found this BNZ page with more details about LEN. According to BNZ, "LEN updates the magnetic stripe security information on BNZ credit cards when a transaction is completed at a BNZ ATM. This technology allows us to automatically detect if your card has been copied or duplicated without your knowledge. " READ MORE »

In a speech titled "Competition and Regulation in the Card Payments Market" given Monday in Australia by Malcolm Edey, Assistant Governor (Financial System) of the Reserve Bank of Australia to the Cards and Payments Australasia 2010 Conference, Edey discusses the state of the Australian card payments market. He notes that because of how the card payment industry is structured, "competitive discipline on interchange fees has been weak" and then reviews the actions taken by the RBA - as a "reluctant regulator" - to deal with interchange fees.

The Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA), the payments industry self- regulatory body, has released the latest fraud statistics for cheques, debit cards and credit and charge cards for the 12 months ending 30 June 2009. During the period Australia’s total rate of fraud (cheque and payment cards) has risen by 2 cents for every $1,000 of payments from 7 cents to 9 cents in every $1,000. READ MORE »

In an article titled "Bar Owner Stood Firm and Won Lower Fees", Keith Bradsher writes for the New York Times from Sydney, Australia about how The Merivale Group, Sydney’s largest operator of upscale restaurants and bars, successfully negotiated a lower merchant fee for acceptance of American Express cards. The tactic they used? In a word: Surcharging. The regulatory environment in Australia allows merchants to surcharge card fees to consumers.

In an article titled "In Australia, Curbs on Credit Card Fees Backfired", Keith Bradsher writes for the New York Times about the adjustments to payment card interchange fees made several years ago in Australia by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Bradsher notes: "Now, as Congress debates how to rein in credit and debit card companies in the United States, Australia’s experience is being pointed to as an example of just how tricky that can be: for one thing, if regulators limit one fee or rate, banks are likely to find another way to keep revenue flowing."

The Payment Systems Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia has published its Annual Report 2009. The report contains lots of interested data and graphs on payments behavior, interchange fees, merchant service fees, etc. in Australia.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has announced that it is "is considering changes to the regulation of interchange fees in the EFTPOS system. The proposed change to EFTPOS interchange regulation is intended to ensure that competition between EFTPOS and scheme debit is conducted on a level playing field. The change does not imply that interchange fees in the different systems should be equal, only that they are subject to equivalent regulation."

In a media release today, the Reserve Bank of Australia's Payments System Board announced that at a recent meeting it had considered whether the conditions have been met for the removal of interchange regulation and "was not yet satisfied that such conditions have been met." The Board also said it had decided to defer consideration of any further reduction in interchange fees for the time being. READ MORE »

Neil posts on the Money.AU blog that the big four Australian banking groups are reviewing their overdraft fees "after their rival National Australia Bank (NAB) has decided to cease charging customers who end up overdrawing their bank accounts." The NAB said it will stop charging overdraft fees beginning October 1st.

PayPal Australia has announced "a new programme to help more organisations get online and take advantage of the Internet to open up new revenue streams. With e-commerce expected to continue to grow in the coming years, PayPal will launch a ‘Certified Developer and Partner Program’ to recruit developers and solution providers to help meet the growing demand for online payments outside of the retail sector. In addition, the company has made new tools and resources available to help organisations such as charities, foundations, schools and universities start accepting online payments and donations easily." READ MORE »

Philip Lowe, Assistant Governor (Financial System) at the Reserve Bank of Australia, spoke today at the Cards & Payments Australasia 2009 conference being held in Sydney, Australia. In his speech, he addressed "firstly, the recent reforms of the ATM system; secondly, the conclusions of last year’s review of the reforms to the card payment systems; and thirdly, the architecture and governance of Australia’s bilateral systems." In his discussion of the reforms, he comments, in particular, about online payments:

The Bank’s recent focus on online payments reflects a couple of considerations. One is that in many situations, consumers wishing to buy goods online have few payment choices other than to use a card issued by the international schemes. This lack of choice weakens competition, and is likely to become a bigger issue as online commerce continues to grow.

Another consideration is that fraud rates on online transactions appear to be steadily increasing. Almost half the fraud on credit cards occurs in situations where the merchant does not physically see the card, with the fraud rate increasing by around 50 per cent over the past year. If this trend were to continue, it could undermine consumer confidence in transacting online which would have obvious costs.

The Reserve Bank of Australia's Payments System Board has announced that it has "recently been considering PayPal’s and eBay’s rules that prohibit merchants from surcharging customers for the use of PayPal and from discouraging the use of PayPal." Following its review, the Board said it was not going to impose any new regulation now on PayPal's practices because of PayPal's relatively small size in the online market. READ MORE »

Telstra, National Australia Bank and Visa have reported on initial results from a three-month trial of mobile contactless payments at Melbourne’s Docklands. In the trial, consumers downloaded the NAB Visa credit card software application to their Telstra SIM remotely, and then used their mobile phone to purchase goods and services by waving their phone over a participating merchant’s Visa payWave enabled reader.

According to the companies, "the trial exceeded expectations, with a clear consumer demand emerging for contactless mobile payments and services during the trial, leading the three organisations to continue to explore opportunities in this area in the next few years." READ MORE »