Fintech

With the first half of 2017 drawing to a close, bank executives gathered this week at the Morgan Stanley Financial Services conference to discuss their companies’ performance thus far and, more important, outline their priorities for the rest of the year and beyond. Here are some of the highlights.

Circle free offering leaves a lot of money on the table, but it also stems from a fundamentally different approach to cross-border payments.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication plans to add instant payments messaging for the European market by late 2018, marking another step in its ongoing faster payments projects.

There are signs the economic cycle is at its peak, which could hurt card portfolios going forward. Improved security could help, writes Madeline Aufseeser, CEO of Tender Armor.

A deeper dive into the workings of the Amazon Prime Reload program should give the card payments industry serious cause for concern.

In a move that will certainly cause friction across the card payments industry, Amazon announced a new service called Amazon Prime Reload, which incentivizes newcomers to the program to load funds using a debit card or bank account with a 2% cash back on purchases.

WorldRemit is integrating with Android Pay, taking a big step toward streamlining the process for sending mobile cross-border remittances.

Jonathan Oliver succeeds Stephen Stapp, who left SF FCU in 2016 to take the helm at Unitus Community CU in Portland, Ore.

In its continuing expansion of the Visa Ready faster certification program, the card brand is targeting technology companies that develop software for Visa's business-to-business payments services.

This morning it was announced that Fiserv is to acquire UK mobile payments veteran Monitise for 70 million pounds ($88.72 million). This is quite a bargain considering that at its peak, Monitise was valued at around 2 billion pounds. But beyond the firesale price tag, what exactly does Fiserv get out of this?