MasterCard has announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China CITIC Bank for "strategic cooperation in the virtual payments space within and outside China. The two parties aim to jointly develop and promote innovative products and services including Quick Response” (QR) code services, and collaborate to provide a safe and efficient payment experience for domestic and overseas cardholders and merchants."

This collaboration with MasterCard, a technology company in the global payments industry, will build a solid foundation for China CITIC Bank to become China’s global bank card, expanding its footprint worldwide, driving cross-border settlements and improving the cardholder shopping experience outside of China.

First Data and CardinalCommerce have announced that online merchants using the First Data Compass platform to seamlessly accept and process emerging payments transactions through services like PayPal Express Checkout. In addition to streamlined processing, merchants are also able to easily combine order management, customer service and reporting of each emerging payment type within their core business.

Were you unable to attend today's Future of Money Conference in San Francisco? You can follow attendee tweets about the conference using hashtag #futureofmoney on Twitter.

Fiserv has announced new research about "the nine characteristics that are the hallmarks of a successful new payments product."

According to Fiserv, "George Warfel, consulting director, Global Payment Solutions, Fiserv, formulated these nine principles based on time-tested learning and observations across a range of payments products. Adding to the development were focus group-based insights gleaned from banks and bank customers concerning the latest innovations in payment systems (including mobile and web-site based payments)." READ MORE »

Hope you were able to snag a copy of Carol Coye Benson's Musings on Mobile Payments 2009! In her research on mobile payments over the last six months, Carol purposely looked only at the U.S. and Canada - but we're frequently asked about what's happening re: mobile banking and payments in other markets beyond those borders.

In a post titled "CGAP’s top ten mobile banking and microfinance technology posts for 2009", CGAP's Jim Rosenberg highlights some of the best articles they've covered during 2009 - be sure to check these articles out!

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and interested in mobile payments, the Wharton Club of Northern California is sponsoring an event this Thursday, January 7th titled "Will Mobile Money Ever Replace Cash In The Last Mile? Where, When, and How?" beginning at 6 PM at Google's campus in Mountain View. This event will address whether mobile money will be able to replace cash in the “last mile” in emerging markets with cash-based economies.

CGAP has published a white paper titled "Going Cashless at the Point of Sale: Hits and Misses in Developed Countries" by Ignacio Mas and Sarah Rotman. The paper explores a number of payment systems that have been tried and failed vs. those that have achieved some level of success. Includes discussion of Mondex, Octopus, Mobipay (Spain), Moneta (Korea), Simpay (Europe), and Osaifu-Keitai (Japan).

Join us this November 12th in Mountain View, California for a one day, Advanced Workshop on Emerging Payments taught by Jay DeWitt, Russ Jones, and Allen Weinberg from Glenbrook Partners.

At this workshop, we'll be talking about the potential impacts of the current financial market crisis on the payments industry, as well as diving deep into topics such as PayPal's acquisition of Bill Me Later, and the learnings from several recent NFC trials for mobile payments.

Registration is now available online. Questions? Contact Carol Coye Benson via email at bootcamp@glenbrook.com.

The UK member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, with input from its banking partners around the world, has published "Banking in 2050: How Big Will the Emerging Markets Get?" The paper examines "the possible changes in the scale of the banking sector between now and 2050; our proxy was the relative growth of domestic credit markets. The results are thought provoking; they highlight the pace of change and provide some scale to the size of the opportunity and challenge."

On the Digital Money Forum blog, Dave Birch posts about Harry Leinonen's paper titled "Payment Habits and Trends in the Changing E-Landscape 2010+" . From the foreward: "This book is the summary of a project undertaken in the Bank of Finland with the objective of discovering business and technological innovations, with which possibly new payment approaches could be introduced to the market and changes in future payment habits could be brought about. Payments habits have changed slowly in the past and therefore the time period selected for the study is 2010+, ranging to about 5–10 years beyond then. According to the findings we appear to be heading towards a new era in payment technology." READ MORE »

Marianne Crowe, Vice President, Emerging Payments Research Group, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, gave a presentation last week titled "Emerging Payments - The Changing Landscape" to the Maine Association of Community Banks and to the New Hampshire Community Bankers Association. Crowe's presentation discusses the growth in debit card payments, the emergence (and potential threats to banks) of decoupled debit cards, prepaid cards for the unbanked, and the use of the Internet for bill payment, ecommerce purchases, and person-to-person or account-to-account money transfers. She also discusses contactless payments and mobile banking.

In an article titled 'Mobile Payments--A Growing Threat', the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the US Department of State discusses mobile payments and worries about them saying that 'there are already indications that money launderers and those that finance terrorism will avail themselves of the new m-payment systems.' The article concludes by saying that 'much work and creative thinking will be required to maintain the advantages NPMs ('new payment methods'), including m-payments offer, while at the same time preventing exploitation and misuse by money launderers and terrorist financiers and simultaneously protecting user privacy and the integrity of the global financial systems.'

Are you interested in the future of mobile payments? Curious as to the
implications of Amazon's new payment platform - the Amazon Flexible Payment Service? If so, make plans now to join the first of Glenbrook's Roundtable on Emerging Payments being held on Friday, Februrary 22, in Santa Clara, CA. The roundtable is a half-day session (with brown bag lunch provided). Online registration and more information is available at Glenbrook's Payments Education website.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson spent a few days over the New Year's holiday in New York City - and files this report on using her debit card along the way.

Anthony Ramirez writes for the New York Times about New York City's cab drivers and their disdain for accepting credit cards. The head of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance says "The whole technology is economically disastrous for the drivers."

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has published a new research paper titled "Understanding Risk Management in Emerging Retail Payments" by Michele Braun, James McAndrews, William Roberds, and Richard Sullivan.

The latest Chicago Fed Letter is titled "Using Payment Innovations to Improve Transportation Networks: A conference summary" (PDF). It contains a conference summary from a session held on June 12, 2007.

NEC Corporation and Valista International have announced forming a "strategic partnership to target payments solutions business opportunities in Japan with secure and flexible payments offerings." The two companies also said that "the partnership also has sights beyond the Japanese domestic market aiming to expand into the global telecommunications market combining NEC's proven strength in system integration and Valista's global experience in payments, settlement, and merchandizing solutions."

The Emerging Payments Research Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has published "Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice: 2006 Conference Summary" (PDF) by Margaret Carten, Dan Littman, Scott Schuh, and Joanna Stavins.

The PELORUS Group has published a new report titled "Alternative Payments: Changing The Rules" that concludes that "three emerging payment alternatives to the traditional magnetic stripe credit/debit card payments regime, when combined, hold the potential to significantly alter the payment landscape. Contactless credit and debit card payments (sometimes called proximity payments), mobile payments (m-Payments) and biometrically authenticated payments will each levy its own unique impact over the next five years. Together, they could garner over $400 billion in revenue by 2011." [Editor's note: I suspect that's payment volume on those instruments, not revenue.]

Dave Birch picks up the discussion about the question we asked a few weeks ago in our Creating Wealth from Payments Innovation post: why isn't there a Wal-Mart for payments? Dave blames regulation - and that's certainly a factor. Reminds me of the days when airline fares in this country were heavily regulated, preventing a Southwest from emerging. On the other hand, the most successful new entrant in payments in recent history - PayPal - navigated the regulatory waters (state money transmitter laws primarily) relatively easily. One could argue regulation wasn't much of a barrier for their entry. Google Checkout - acting not like PayPal as a money transmitter but, rather, as a master merchant - seems to have avoided any financial regulatory issues. On the other hand, mobile payment provider Obopay's job description for a VP Treasury Operations includes being responsible for "compliance with Federal banking regulations such as Anti Money Laundering, Patriot Act, Regulation D and E, and the FFIEC guidelines" and for "state money transmitter regulations".

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has announced its seventh annual payments conference, "Competitive Forces Shaping the Payments Environment: What's Next?", to be held in Chicago on May 10–11, 2007.

Financial Insights is holding a webinar tomorrow at 11 AM Eastern time titled "Inside the Mind of the Consumer: Understanding the Process of Financial Decision Making". Aaron McPherson, research director, Payments, will be presenting the results of a recent consumer survey on emerging payment methods that "provides a valuable source of objective data on how consumers are using products such as payroll cards, benefits cards, and online bill payment. And learn about our expanded study scope for 2007 on why consumers choose to pay with one method over another and how they weigh the importance of cost, convenience, fraud risk, and other factors in their decision-making."

One of our research initiatives at Glenbrook this fall has been exploring innovation in electronic payments - how payments innovations happen, the characteristics of the most important drivers of them (including the impacts of key people, industry structure, and any important technologies) that enable innovations, and how to best measure and define their success.

The Financial Action Task Force of the OECD has issued a 40-page report studying "new payment methods" (PDF) - defined as including "prepaid cards, Internet payment systems, mobile payments, and digital precious metals." The FATF is an inter-governmental body whose purpose is the development and promotion of national and international policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The study summary says that it "found there is a legitimate market demand served by each of the payment methods analysed, yet potential money laundering and terrorist financing vulnerabilities do exist. Specifically, offshore providers of new payment methods may pose additional money laundering and terrorist financing risks compared with service providers operating within a jurisdiction."

Jan Chipchase is a researcher for Nokia - and a great blogger too. He recently gave a presentation titled "Connecting the Unconnected" (in PowerPoint format annotated with notes) that's a real delight.

Finpago has announced the availability of the FSAok Debit Substantiation service including Finpago’s FSAok Real-Time Eligibility Engine. According to the company, these services provide "the industry’s most comprehensive set of tools for generating and documenting consumer driven health care claims automatically and ensuring IRS compliance for the widest possible number of merchant categories. Through WageWorks' Health Care Choice card program, the services provide flexibility and convenience to flexible spending account account holders by automatically selecting prescription and over-the-counter medication purchases and submitting them for reimbursement."

The Payments System Research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has published a new working paper titled "Payment Industry Dynamics: A Two-Sided Market Approach" by Zhu Wang and James McAndrews. The paper explores the "micro-foundations of two-sided payment markets, and emphasizes the roles that consumers' income distribution and merchants' size heterogeneity play in adopting new payment devices. The findings suggest that both the increasing concentration of payment card networks and the growth of consumer income relative to card service costs may help explain the puzzles surrounding payment card interchange fees."

Darry Madden writes for the Brattleboro, VT Reformer about the city's just finalized plans to deploy a smart card-based parking payment system. Madden says "rarely does anything related to parking get characterized as "so cool." According to the story, initially the card will be a simple parking card available at convenient spots downtown. But eventually some would like to see it accepted at area businesses, like any debit card. "That way, in this cashless economy, anyone with a parking card could buy a cup of coffee, for example."

Jane Kim reports for the Wall St. Journal on an expected announcement by American Express today that it is working with New York real-estate firm Moinian Group to allow condominium buyers to pay for their down payments using their American Express cards. Talk about a big ticket purchase!

Duncan Solutions and Peppercoin have announced a strategic partnership to "offer innovative, integrated solutions that grow parking revenues by increasing the profitability of credit and debit card transactions and deliver greater conveniences to motorists." The companies, who already work together in a number of cities, including Las Vegas and Oklahoma City, are enhancing their relationship with additional technology integration and coordinated sales efforts.