Obopay has announced the launch of its instant money transfer service in India through an alliance between wholly-owned subsidiary Obopay India and YES BANK, an Indian private sector bank.   » Continue Reading

Airtel has announced the launch of range of Mobile Commerce solutions including Mobile Money Transfer (MMT), Postpaid Bill Payment and Prepaid Recharge on the mobile phone. Airtel is partnering with ICICI bank, HDFC bank, SBI, Corporation bank and VISA to enable these payments using a solution that has been developed by mChek.   » Continue Reading

Euronet Worldwide has announced that it delivered a letter to the Board of Directors of MoneyGram International on December 4, 2007, in which Euronet offered to acquire MoneyGram in a tax-free, all-stock transaction.

Visa has announced that it is extending its Visa Money Transfer service in India with a new mobile capability developed by mChek. Visa Money Transfer, launched by Visa in India in 2004, is a domestic card-to-card money transfer service that enables a Visa cardholder to transfer money conveniently and securely to another Visa account number. mChek is providing the software for mobile handsets and processing capabilities to link up to VisaNet, Visa’s global transaction processing network, for the new mobile service.   » Continue Reading

The GSM Association (GSMA), a global trade association representing over 700 GSM mobile phone operators, and Western Union have announced an agreement "to facilitate the development of cross-border mobile money transfer services."   » Continue Reading

The Department of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System have announced the release of a joint proposed rule to implement the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The Act prohibits gambling businesses from accepting payments in connection with unlawful Internet gambling, including payments made through credit cards, electronic funds transfers, and checks.   » Continue Reading

Yodlee has announced that "its inter-bank funds transfer solution – Yodlee FundsTransfer – launched in the market just nine months ago, has already moved more than $1 Billion and has initiated over 500,000 transfers."   » Continue Reading

Chase has introduced Rapid Cash - calling it "an easy new way to send money to Mexico for free."   » Continue Reading

The US Department of Justice has announced that a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. has indicted two companies operating a digital currency business and their owners on charges of money laundering, conspiracy, and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.   » Continue Reading

Visa Money Transfer, Visa’s card-to-card payment service, has been launched by Visa International and Maybank in Singapore. Visa's Money Transfer service allows customers to send funds from their Visa cards to other Visa cardholders around the world.   » Continue Reading

Payoneer has announced that it has secured $4 million in a Series A venture funding led by Greylock Partners. Payoneer says it "will use the additional funds to expand its services for Web 2.0 companies and other businesses that need faster, easier and more cost-effective ways of paying people around the world."   » Continue Reading

Reuters reports that "web telephone calling service Skype will shortly begin allowing users to send money to other Skype users via the PayPal online payments system, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom said on Tuesday."

Citi has announced an agreement with Obopay to pilot an "innovative, real-time Person-to-Person mobile payments service later this year. The service will be offered to new and existing Citi credit and debit card customers. Further details, including cities for the consumer pilot, are to be confirmed and announced at a later time."   » Continue Reading

The GSM Association has announced it is working with MasterCard to launch a pilot programme aimed at "tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile communications to enable the world's 200 million international migrant workers to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of whom don't have bank accounts. By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable." A part of the announcement, MasterCard has made available a Unbanked and Underbanked Backgrounder, saying that "Under the agreement with GSMA, MasterCard intends to provide various payment card products as well as the international transaction switching, clearing and settlement for the MasterCard® Money Send™ transfer service via its single, globally integrated network."   » Continue Reading

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."

eFunds International Limited has announced that it will be working with LINK Interchange Network Ltd., the payments processor whose infrastructure powers the UK's real-time online ATM network, to provide the core functionality for the new Faster Payments Service (FPS) to deliver real-time funds transfer from one bank account to another.   » Continue Reading

Wells Fargo has announced that it is the first major U.S. bank to offer consumer remittance services to China and Vietnam along with expanding its consumer remittance services to the Philippines.   » Continue Reading

"Person to person" online money transfer company, iKobo, Inc. has announced that it completed a $4 million Series C financing round. The funding round was led by Greenhill SAVP, with additional financing support from existing investors, including Total Technology Ventures LLC and Council Ventures.   » Continue Reading

Market Platform Dynamics recently interviewed YeePay CEO Bin Tang about the Payments Ecosystem Challenges and Opportunities in China and has posted it on their Paying with Plastic website. YeePay recently announced the completion of a round of financing led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DFJ Dragon and joined by Intel Capital China, WR Hambrecht and several other institutional investors   » Continue Reading

Western Union has announced that it is beginning to make presentations to the equity investment community in preparation for its planned September 29, 2006 spin-off from First Data Corp. The meetings are being led by Christina Gold, President and Chief Executive Officer of Western Union, David Barnes, Executive Vice President of Finance and Strategic Development, and Scott Scheirman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The company's road show presentation is available at www.westernunion.com (PPT).

Virgin Mobile USA has announced the launch of the Virgin Mobile "Stash" Prepaid Visa Debit Card issued by Inter National Bank. The new prepaid debit card is linked to a Virgin Mobile phone, allowing users to earn free airtime. The extended offering of features includes peer-to-peer money transfers and wireless text alerts to manage spending and prevent fraud, as well as online account management and a savings program. Be sure to see the fee structure on this card - both "by-the-month" and "by-the-stripe" options are provided.   » Continue Reading

CheckFree has announced three new services powered by CashEdge. CheckFree Online Open and CheckFree Online Fund that are designed to help consumers establish and fund new accounts, in a matter of minutes. An automated decision-making engine processes the applications based on the financial institution's unique business rules for managing risk, while flagging any exceptions for manual review. CheckFree Online Transfer enables financial institutions to simplify the transfer of funds between accounts and create new revenue streams by extending their online offerings to include fee-based, intra- and inter- institution fund transfer services between accounts held at more than 23,000 banks, credit unions and brokerages.   » Continue Reading

TSYS Prepaid has announced an agreement with MoneyGram Payment Systems, Inc., to provide real-time loading for TSYS-processed prepaid Visa and MasterCard cards at MoneyGram's 26,000 money transfer locations in the U.S.   » Continue Reading

In response to articles in today's New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall St. Journal about terrorism investigations and the role of SWIFT, the organization has published a statement on its web site that concludes "The SWIFT Board and Executive have done their utmost to get the right balance in fulfilling their obligations to the authorities in a manner protective of the interests of the company and its members."

Robert Schroeder reports for MarketWatch on a hearing held yesterday by the House Committee on Financial Services - Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit titled "Bank Secrecy Act’s Impact on Money Services Businesses" where concerns were expressed about some banks ending their relationships with money-service businesses because of regulatory concerns. The prepared remarks from several speakers at yesterday's hearing are available from the Subcommittee's web site. The comments of Philip Milne (PDF), president and CEO of MoneyGram International, are particularly interesting to read - ..."Two months ago Bank of America informed MoneyGram that it would be terminating its long-term relationship with MoneyGram. This was not just a simple deposit account, but rather a global banking relationship that generated millions of dollars in fees annually for Bank of America."...

BB&T has announced it will begin offering free international money transfers throughout its banking network for clients who have a checking account, savings account or payroll card with BB&T.   » Continue Reading

Xoom has announced a new turn-key solution, Xoom WebAgent that enables banks, credit unions, retailers and money transfer operators to build or expand their money transfer business without worrying about the complex logistical, technical and legal hurdles associated with operating a remittance business. Xoom announced that one of the first companies to begin using WebAgent is the Midwestern bank MetaBank.   » Continue Reading

At Glenbrook, we've recently heard about ConveniaLoad from a couple of our industry colleagues involved in various prepaid card programs. Based upon a quick look at the company's web site, here's a brief overview of what's interesting to us about ConveniaLoad.   » Continue Reading

ChipIn, a Hawaii-based "Web 2.0" startup, has just come out of stealth mode and launched its new "social eCommerce" service designed to help individuals connect with people in their social network for collection of money for a personal cause, to purchase a gift, or for community fundraising. Read more about them in this article from Hawaii Business magazine and on the Chipin blog.

Coinstar has announced signing a definitive agreement to purchase Travelex Money Transfer Ltd. for approximately $27 million in cash. TMT is the third largest money transfer network in terms of agent locations and countries in which they do business. Currently TMT operates an agent network in over 17,000 locations in 138 countries.   » Continue Reading

A great friend of Glenbrook's is Broox Peterson, formerly Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for Visa for over 20 years. Broox retired from Visa a couple of years ago and since then has been doing free lance legal work with information technology and payments companies.

Broox has written a great article about some of the implications that entrepreneurs may want to consider regarding the regulatory implications of building a new payments company - something that, in our experience, entrepreneurs may not fully understand or appreciate.

Click here to continue reading Broox's insights into this important topic.   » Continue Reading

David Kaplan profiles PreCash CEO John Chaney for the Houston Chronicle. PreCash is a Houston-based company that offers a variety of payment options serving immigrants and other consumers who do not have bank accounts.   » Continue Reading

Kyodo News reports that Intel has invested 5 billion yen (about $42 Million) into Japan's BitWallet, provider of the Felica-based Edy electronic money service.   » Continue Reading

Yahoo! has been issued US Patent No. 7,031,939 for "systems and methods for implementing person-to-person money exchange" based upon a filing dated August 15, 2000.   » Continue Reading

PreCash has announced it has signed a joint venture agreement to form China eCash to provide prepaid replenishment to markets including the Chinese mobile communications market.   » Continue Reading

HSBC's Global Transaction Banking Services has announced it will provide clients a centralized-secure payment service across Canada, the United States and Mexico. The payment service is geared toward clients that need to make payments to trading partners within North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries.   » Continue Reading

CyberSource has announced that it has acquired BidPay.com, Inc. from First Data Corporation. In exchange for $1.8 million in cash, CyberSource acquired proprietary technology, databases, and certain intellectual property rights, including exclusive rights to the BidPay.com brand.   » Continue Reading

Michelle Innis reports for the Sydney Morning Herald about the new Bopo prepaid Visa card from Australian prepaid specialist Bill Express.   » Continue Reading

Moneygram International is holding its first ever Analyst Day today. A copy of the investor day presentation (PDF) is available online at the company's web site.

Cornelia Wels-Maug of Ovum (UK) reports on the launch of Giropay, a new online ecommerce payment service created by the German savings banks, credit unions and Postbank that will be used initially by PayPal. The service will be supported by the three IT services providers behind Giropay - Starfinanz Software, Fiducia AG and GAD.   » Continue Reading

Rachel Metz reports for Wired News on mobile payments company TextPayMe.   » Continue Reading

Sara Silver reports for the Wall St. Journal on plans by Motorola to add an "M-Wallet" to its cellular phones to enable payment using the phone at POS checkouts and the transfer money to others similarly equipped. According to the story, Motorola plans to distribute the service through wireless carriers who will price and market it to their customers.   » Continue Reading

In mid-January, the US Department of the Treasury released a new government-wide examination of money laundering vulnerabilities in a report titled "US Money Laundering Threat Assessment" (PDF).   » Continue Reading

Vesta and Axalto have announced they are teaming up to offer prepaid wireless customers new payment capabilities from their mobile phones. Vesta and Axalto say their solution will serve the rapidly growing U.S. population of prepaid wireless consumers with real-time top-up, leveraging the security and ubiquity of the GSM SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card in their phones.   » Continue Reading

TextPayMe CEO Phil Yuen emailed me today with some updates on his recently launched mobile payments startup.   » Continue Reading

First Data Corp. has announced that it plans to separate its Western Union consumer payments business into an independent publicly traded company through a tax-free spin-off of 100% of Western Union to First Data shareholders.   » Continue Reading

Michael Arrington has profiled the new "social money" startup BillMonk over on his TechCrunch blog. See also our earlier post about BillMonk.

Technorati Tags: BillMonk, TechCrunch

PayPal's parent eBay announced fourth quarter financial results this afternoon. For the first time, eBay's payments revenues (including PayPal) reported full year revenues just a bit over $1 billion ($1,028.4 million).   » Continue Reading

John Cook of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer blogs about BillMonk, his "startup of the week".

BillMonk's initial service, a hybrid of social networking and personal finance, offers the ability to track (via the website or using mobile phone SMS) what the founders call "social money" - informal debts between friends and family.

Technorati Tags: BillMonk   » Continue Reading

Western Union Financial Services has signed a new, six-year agreement for money transfer services with Grupo Elektra, a leading retailer in Mexico.   » Continue Reading

Western Union Financial Services has announced an exclusive global agreement with Travelex, the world's largest non-bank foreign exchange payments company, whose locations will now only offer the Western Union Money Transfer service.   » Continue Reading

Douglas Jackson, chairman of e-gold, Ltd., has posted a letter on the e-gold website responding to last week's Business Week article about investigations underway concerning the company.   » Continue Reading

Brian Monroe reports for Florida Today about the law enforcement investigation underway of Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc., the parent company of e-gold Ltd as reported earlier in this week's Business Week.   » Continue Reading

January 9th edition of Business Week contains a lengthy investigative report by Brian Grow on online money transfer systems like e-gold Ltd. The article focuses on the potential use of the e-gold payment service by those wanting to move money while skirting the reporting obligations associated with US money laundering regulations.

Technorati Tags: E-gold, Money Transfer

Last week, First Data Corp., as part of a series of restructurings and reorganizations now underway following replacement of its CEO, announced that its BidPay Online Auction Payment Service is being shut down later this week. This article explores what lessons might we learn from BidPay's ultimate failure in the market.   » Continue Reading

Ina Steiner reports for AuctionBytes.com that First Data's BidPay unit is closing down operations on December 31, 2005.   » Continue Reading

Laura Wides-Munoz reports for the Associated Press on increasing focus by US banks on the international remittance market.   » Continue Reading

Digital Transactions takes a deeper look at mobile payments startup TextPayMe.   » Continue Reading

Julie Brick reports for the New York Times on how small businesses are using PayPal to invoice and receive payments from clients.   » Continue Reading

The Nation reports from Bangkok that the "Bank of Thailand (BOT) has approved the setting up by the Thai Bankers’ Association of a national Interbank Transaction-Management Exchange (ITMX) to provide electronic payment services on the Internet."   » Continue Reading

Earlier today, we posted an item on the beta launch of a new text-based mobile payment service called TextPayMe.

Glenbrook's Russ Jones has taken a quick look at this new service and provides some initial comments on what he sees.   » Continue Reading

Earlier this month, TextPayMe announced a new text messaging-based service for sending money using mobile phones. The company says it supports deposits from electronic bank transfers or credit cards and supports withdrawals via wire transfer or mailed checks.   » Continue Reading

Following up on our Ask Glenbrook post yesterday about US Postal Money Order volumes, Dave Birch from Consult Hyperion emailed the following about the experience with money orders in the UK:

Postal order sales rose 6% last year (to £338 million) with increasing use in the 15-24 age range. This is attributed to the Internet and, specifically, on-line auctions (Stokes, P. "Internet shoppers security fears trigger a postal order comeback" in "The Daily Telegraph": p.13, 29th Dec. 2004).

Here's a quick "Ask Glenbrook" question we received:

"What were the volumes of US Postal Money Orders sent last year?"

The European Commission has put forward proposals that will bring down existing legal barriers to enable the creation of a "Single Payments Area" in the EU that could save the EU economy €50-100 billion per year.   » Continue Reading

Joel Millman and Robin Sidel report for the Wall St. Journal's Heard on the Street column in Tuesday's edition on the surprise retirement today of First Data Chairman and CEO Charles Fote and the appointment of Henry C. "Ric" Duques as his successor.  The article focuses on FDC's Western Union business unit and its prospects in the face of increased competition and pricing erosion.

PayPal has announced a new customized gift certificate program for merchants who accept PayPal. Details available on the PayPal web site.   » Continue Reading

Dell has announced that it now accepts PayPal payments from U.S. consumer and small business customers.   » Continue Reading

AuctionBytes reports on eBay's promotion of PayPal Buyer Credit.

eBay said when buyers use PayPal Buyer Credit for purchases of more than $50, they will "make no payments for 3 to 12 months and pay no interest if paid in 3 to 12 months"

The October issue of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Profitwise newsletter is now available online -- and it includes two articles on the remittance market and its implications for moving immigrants towards mainstream financial products:

• Linking International Remittance Flows to Financial Services: Tapping the Latino Immigrant Market (PDF)
• Banking on Remittances: Reaching the Immigrant Market (PDF)

Red Herring reports on the rumored Google Wallet online payments system.

Google may launch its widely anticipated online payments system Google Wallet before the holidays, an analyst said Friday, giving the search giant yet another way to profit from its widening Web empire.

PayPal's parent eBay announced third quarter financial results this afternoon.

The following highlights regarding PayPal's third quarter financial performance were included:

• Payments net revenues grew to $247.1 million, an increase of 44 percent year over the same quarter last year and up 1.3 percent vs. the prior quarter.
  
• PayPal's user accounts grew to 86.6 million accounts, up 53 percent year over year and up 9.8 percent vs. the prior quarter. Active accounts grew to 24.5 million, up 41 percent year over year and 7 percent vs. the prior quarter.
  
• Total gross payment volume handled by PayPal grew to $6.7 billion, up 44 percent year over year and 3 percent vs. the prior quarter. Total number of payments grew to 117.4 million, up 41 percent year over year and 4 percent vs. the prior quarter. 69 percent of PayPal's payment volume was eBay-related.
  
• PayPal earned revenues of 3.60% on payment volume totaling $247.1 million, had expenses of 1.11% of payment volume totaling $74 million and losses of 24 basis points totaling approximately $16 million.

PayPal's expenses include the funding costs associated with card payments used to make payments via PayPal. PayPal's transaction processing expense rate, likely reflecting both a combination of economies of scale in processing as well as its hybrid cost of payment funding (from cards, via ACH and PayPal accounts), has declined from 1.30 percent in the third quarter of 2004 to 1.11 percent in the third quarter this year -- nearly a 15 percent improvement.

AuctionBytes.com's Ina Steiner has written an editorial about eBay's recently announced "Safe Payment Policy".  Her editorial has links to several other posts by other authors commenting on the new policy.

AuctionBytes' Ina Steiner reports on a new eBay policy that limits seller payment choices - citing safety concerns about some payment methods.  The new eBay Safe Payments Policy also bans new online payment methods from being accepted - unless approved by eBay - and establishes certain criteria that any new online payment method must meet to be approved for use on eBay.

eBay and VeriSign have announced a strategic alliance to collaborate on payment services and security initiatives for e-commerce.  In addition, eBay's PayPal will be acquiring VeriSign's payment gateway business for $370 million in cash and/or eBay stock.  The payment gateway business is expected to result in an incremental $100 million of revenue for 2006 with a 20 percent pro forma operating margin.

Bank of America today announced a free nationwide remittance service for sending money to Mexico that eliminates transfer fees.   » Continue Reading

The Wall St. Journal reports this morning on Bank of America's national rollout of a free money transfer service to Mexico tied to the bank's checking accounts. More information on the bank's SafeSend program is available on the bank's web site.

Coinbridge, a new point of payment consulting, integration and research firm has just launched its new web site.

Coinbridge was founded by Ryan Donahue. A founding member of the PayPal design and user research group, Donahue was instrumental in the strategic design of PayPal's merchant services and played a key role in defining the customer experience for many of PayPal's most successful products from 2000-2005.