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Alipay's strategy to beat Apple and PayPal: Alipay's international ambitions seem to mostly involve enabling tourists from China to have an easy way to pay in Europe and the U.S., but there's something much bigger happening, Forbes reports. As it cuts these tourist deals, Alipay's accumulating retailers at a staggering rate—in September alone it added more than 80,000 retailers in 70 countries, including a presence at major airports in Munich, Tokyo, Auckland and San Francisco. And Alipay's making these deals as the U.S. mobile payments app market is still sorting itself out among competitors such as Apple Pay, PayPal and other third party systems, argues Forbes' Helen Wang, an expert on the growth of China's middle class. There's a big instant market—in 2015 more than 120 million Chinese tourists spent about $200 billion outside of China, but it's easy to see this market expanding beyond tourism once Alipay's widely accepted in the U.S. and Europe, Wang writes.
The Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Alipay.com Co. website, displayed on a Samsung Electronics Co. tablet, is seen in an arranged photograph in Hong Kong, China, on Friday, Oct. 11, 2013. Alibaba, Chinas largest e-commerce company, will go public in 2014 after talks with Hong Kongs exchange on a proposed corporate governance structure fell apart, said people with knowledge of the matter. Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
Hanging up on fraud: Hitachi has developed a system to keep people from being duped into transferring money to crooks at ATMs, a common problem in Japan, Bloomberg reports. The system detects if a user is speaking on a mobile phone while at an ATM, and prevents the completion of the transaction. The scam is called "it's me," and involves crooks calling generally older people claiming to be relatives in need of emergency funds for a legal or medical bill. The crooks then guide the victim through the ATM transaction over the phone, a crime that has cost about $252 million in losses so far in 2016, stemming from nearly 9,000 incidents. Joyo Bank Ltd., a regional lender in the Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo, plans to deploy the new security technology in February, according to Bloomberg.
Way out of network: M-Pesa is one of the big financial inclusion success stories, using mobile networks to power money transfers in regions with little traditional banking infrastructure. But what if there's no network access? A project called DigiTally is using a SIM sticker to make and receive payments where there's no network connection, reports Engadget. Developed at the University of Cambridge and financially supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the transactions do not require immediate authorization over a mobile network. Users exchange eight-digit verification codes between devices and the transactions are reflected on the users' balances. Upon reaching a location with a network connection, the transaction history is uploaded to a server and the account balances are synched. DigiTally has been deployed in Nairobi and there are plans to make it open source in 2017.
Sounds like mobile payments: India's expected to be a hotbed of mobile commerce activity in the coming years, and some emerging mobile payments technology is getting an early tryout. YES Bank has adopted ToneTag's software development tools to power soundwave payments via its YES mobile wallet, according to Dataquest. ToneTag uses the microphone or speaker in a mobile device to transmit payment data through soundwaves. Its technology kit also includes noise filters, encryption, tokenization, cryptography and multifactor authentication. YES Bank has also partnered with Ultracash Technologies to transfer payment data using ultra high frequency sound waves. Soundwaves are considered an alternative to Near Field Communication to execute contactless payments, and while payment companies have occasionally dabbled in the technology, it is not been widely used thus far for payments.
Paym hits £300m mark Finextra Despite boasting that it has now processed over £300 million in transactions, UK bank-backed person-to-person mobile payments service Paym has seen a slowdown in the number of people signing up for its service.
60% of Traffic But Only 16% of Sales: Solve the Mobile Web Challenge for Good Business 2 Community • Yaniv Navot The mobile industry is booming and more people than ever are visiting online retailers via their mobile devices. During Q2 of 2016 alone, smartphones accounted for nearly half of all traffic to eCommerce sites, a 10% increase from Q2 of 2015. Overall,...
FIDO Alliance links with EMVCo to develop new security standards for mobile payments Mobilepaymentstoday.com FIDO Alliance, the industry consortium developing open, interoperable authentication standards, announced this past week that it will work with EMVCo to add convenience and security to in-store and in-app EMV-compliant mobile payments, according to a press release. The FIDO Alliance will develop...
Banking has long been overseen by independent agencies, though that independence has been waning for years. With the Supreme Court poised to weigh in, experts are questioning where — and whether — to redraw the line between politics and policy.
The regulator and conservator of two influential loan buyers with government ties is considering digital currency's increased use in qualifying borrowers.
The Texas attorney general has accused WEX Bank of "debanking" a firearm supplier, but the Maine-based bank said it does not discriminate against any industry.
Der Spiegel and other European publications say the company continued to serve porn sites and money launderers even after regulators cracked down on it.
