India’s take on large scale payments innovation: ‘Leapfrogging’ to lead the pack

A new wave of payments innovation is taking place globally and emerging, high growth markets are the ones to watch. Encouraged by increasing customer demand, favourable regulation and unburdened by legacy infrastructure, countries in high growth markets are beginning to lead the pack when it comes to large scale payments innovation.

A great example of this leapfrogging trend can be found in India. As the country’s leading payments services provider, we are seeing first-hand that India is fast becoming a hub of payments innovation and disruption at scale. India is home to several of the ingredients necessary to encourage new technology to flourish and old systems to make way for new. Key among these ingredients are the increasing customer demand for digital payments, a supportive regulatory environment and a highly skilled tech market.

Fighting the friction: Bridging the gap in innovation between B2C and B2B payment solutions

The elimination, or at least reduction of all forms of ‘friction’, perceived or obvious has been an enduring human obsession, and great excitement surrounds new discoveries. One can only imagine the furore that followed the first ancient Mesopotamian saying to his or her peers, “Hey guys, instead of dragging this heavy wooden box across the ground…why don’t we attach some round things that spin to the underside?”

Fast-forward 5,000 or so years, and though the types of friction we are seeking to reduce have become a little more nuanced, the excitement of a new discovery is just the same. It’s what makes FinTech such an exhilarating industry to be a part of, as such discoveries and innovations are increasingly prolific. ‘Friction’ in our industry usually refers to the time taken to make payments, and ‘frictionless payments’ are those transactions that can be completed in an instant.

Why it’s time to embrace the big opportunity of Open Banking

Earlier this month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published the final report on its retail banking market investigation. By requiring banks to implement Open Banking by early 2018, the report claims it is paving the way for a revolution. While debates rage on about the specifics of the report and how far (or not far enough) it goes, it accelerates and supports the UK’s move to a transformed banking landscape based upon a foundation of Open Banking.

Before I go on, let’s be clear – the CMA’s Open Banking programme is not a new concept. It is based on the HM Treasury initiative, powered by the Open Banking Working Group (OBWG), who are determining the open API standards for Open Banking. The timeline has already been set in the Open Banking Standard. Add to this the API mandate of the European Commission’s upcoming revised Payments Services Directive (PSD2), and it’s clear that a tour de force of regulation aimed at bursting open the banking industry is already on its way.

Three decades of automated payments – but what next?

In 1986 Barclaycard was the first payment provider to introduce Process Data Quickly (PDQ) technology, which allowed in-store transactions to be processed faster and more securely than ever before. I joined Barclaycard in 1972 and was working in the Business Research team when we embarked on a huge project to transform how retailers take and consumer make payments.

Before PDQ technology was introduced retailers relied on “zip tap” technology, which involved taking an imprint or carbon copy of a customer’s card to create a voucher, which was sent to the appropriate bank to process. This system was not only admin heavy but also susceptible to human error and with ever increasing volumes desperately in need of modernising.

Keeping the customer front of mind

Banks have focused their efforts on trying to create and launch products that will generate revenue for them but have forgotten the essential element to making a product successful; the customer. FIs must invest in innovation, but only if the intended product seeks to serve the customer. 

In keeping the product customer-focused it creates a need amongst customers and ensures that the offering becomes a necessity when they’re conducting everyday transactions. When a bank brings a product to market that actually solves real problems, it will ultimately become a new revenue channel.

Is Google right to single out the payday lending industry with its adword ban?

Google famously included ‘do no evil’ in its original mission statement published in 2004, a bold claim that has caused continuous debate. In 2015, it decided to drop the motto from its code of conduct in favour of ‘do the right thing.’ While this new wording is a little more open to interpretation, it shows that there’s still a place for sound business ethics in the increasingly powerful, more profitable Google.

Recently, Google has turned its attention to payday loan providers, announcing that, from 13 July 2016, there will be a complete ban on all Google ads promoting loans that have to be repaid within 60 days. In the US, the ban extends to loans with an APR of 36% or higher.

A Tale of Two Wallets

Wallets, or purses, have been around since bartering was replaced by the exchange of goods for currency of whatever variety. Therefore they were handy means of carrying that currency in case you needed to ‘buy’ something on your travels. 

Centuries, if not millennia, have passed and we are now in the electronic, or digital, age. The wallet and/or purse are still with us albeit with that all important prefix the ‘E.’ 

Payments is so hot right now

There was (as is often the case with such industry gatherings) a huge amount of hot air generated at Money 20/20 Europe, which took place in Copenhagen this week. Twitter was awash with people raving about how various new fangled offerings are going to rewrite the payments rulebook. Virtual reality headsets are the next big thing. Biometrics is a must have. Social has changed everything, blockchain technologies rock, etc etc.

Cash continues to make a splash

Look away now, banks, card schemes and all the other proponents of a cashless society. It seems that notes and coins are not going away just yet. LINK cash withdrawals from UK ATMs in 2015 amounted to a record £128 billion. The total number of cash withdrawals only grew slightly in 2015 (by 0.8%) with the value of these increasing by 2%. The amount cash machine users took out also went up – with the average value rising from £61.25 in 2014 to £61.93 in 2015.

2015 in review: the year that fintech hit form

What a difference 12 months can make. Industry conversations at 2014’s Mobey Day (Mobey Forum’s annual open conference for all mobile money stakeholders) told of an industry undergoing major disruption. Just 12 months later toward the end of 2015, the industry vibe had changed almost beyond recognition, particularly in the mobile payments arena.  Consternation, hesitancy and all-out frustration had given way to optimism. Last year’s disruptions have become this year’s tools of liberation, enabling banks, finally, to make progress.

The death of bank products has been greatly under-exaggerated

Source: Moven

Since 2005 I’ve been predicting the decline of branch banking. For almost ten years I fought bankers who decried my assessment that branches would cease to be the most important channel in banking, to be replaced by far more efficient mechanisms for revenue generation and relationship. Today the discussion is increasingly resorting to a sort of desperate plea — 'but branches aren't going to die completely, are they?' No one is saying branches will grow.

The UK, the US, Spain, and a host of other countries are seeing the lowest number of bank branches in decades. For the UK you’d have to go back 60 years to find lower numbers of bank branches than we have today, and 2014 saw the use of bank branches fall 6% in a single year — the biggest reduction ever. 

Times of change

The pace of change in the financial services sector seems unprecedented. Traditional business models are being dismantled at a rate that, for inflexible incumbents, must be alarming. It is not solely that enabling technology is hurtling forwards, it is also to do with the bigger picture of low margins, heightened customer expectations and increased competition.

Payments: what is going on behind the scenes?

The payments space has been the most frustrating to report on over the years. There is a collective groan in IBS Towers when the big payments conferences come around again. It feels like the same old people talking about the same old things. There will be lots of focus on the high-level issues, including that ‘FedEx’ comparison once more (we can see our parcels at any point in their journeys, why can’t we do the same with payments, particularly as these are electronic so should be easier to track than physical goods?). But when was the last time you heard a detailed case study at one of the events from a bank that has actually addressed and solved the issues?

SIA Expo 2014: the inside track

Panel discussion at SIA Expo 2014

The main theme of this year's SIA Expo conference in Milan was that we are moving towards a more digital world, enforced with the strapline: 'Don't worry, be digital'. Although the majority of Italian citizens believe their country lags behind the rest of Europe in digital payments, speakers were keen to explore how attitudes could be changed in the country. The event focused on payments, mobile technology and innovation in the financial services space and was organised by Italy-based service provider, SIA.

Sibos: day two round-up

@Swift

Day two of Sibos continued the theme of collaboration, with more focus on standards, market infrastructures and new technologies under the spotlight.

Why are P2P payments slow on the uptake in the US?

© www.zafin.com

After speaking with Chris Burfield from FIS about the vendor’s recent person-to-person (P2P) payments project at US-based Everbank, a question arose: why are these types of services slow on the uptake in the US?

FIS's takeover of Clear2Pay: what’s the story?

Brussels, home of Clear2Pay

The pool of independent companies in the payments processing space has shrunk yet again, with Clear2Pay being taken over by US fintech giant, FIS. The official announcement, of course, praises the €375 million acquisition, with Clear2Pay stating that ‘the combination of these two companies will be uniquely qualified to deliver true payment systems convergence’. Which translates into plain English as FIS will have an even larger portfolio of payments systems and solutions, some complementary, some competing.

Can Apple make the mobile wallet work?

So far the mobile wallet has been the dog that failed to bark in the payments world. There is little progress despite the fact that the key technology, NFC, has been around for a while, and despite the success of Paypal, an online money transfer and payment platform, for many years now.

Are real-time payments in the US a realistic prospect?

There has been a lot of coverage of real-time payments projects around the globe in the IBS Journal over the last few months, and it was certainly one of the key themes of the EBA Day conference in Helsinki in June. Europe looks like it is getting its act together in this respect, especially with SEPA now in the rear-view mirror and ISO 20022 gaining prominence, whilst the likes of the UK and Sweden have been ahead of the curve.

Swift, a political lever?

One man's KYC regime is another man's foreign policy. Indeed, it seems to be the US's main weapon at present: the sanctions against Russian individuals and companies which were expanded by the EU and US in the last week of April have echoes of an earlier controversy about whether Iranian banks should have been expelled by Swift in 2012.