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Single's Day smashes records: Alibaba reports huge volume for Single's Day, or 11/11—the Chinese version of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. TechCrunch reports sales reached at least $14.7 billion by late afternoon local time, exceeding last year's record total of $14.3 billion for the entire day. By comparison, in the U.S. Black Friday sales in 2015 reached $4.5 billion and Cyber Monday was about $3 billion that year. Single's Day sales in 2016 are on pace to pass $20 billion by the end of the day. TechCrunch also reports mobile channels account for 84% of all sales, which is up from 69% over last year and far ahead of the current U.S. rate of 35% for major shopping days. The numbers are good news for Alibaba, which is in the midst of a major expansion of its e-commerce business.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. signage is displayed in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce company started in 1999 with $60,000 cobbled together by Jack Ma, cemented its status as a symbol of China's economic emergence by raising $21.8 billion in a U.S. initial public offering. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg
Scott Eells/Bloomberg
Pinterest product reviews: Pinterest is attempting to augment post-purchase product reviews through a "tried it" checkmark on Pins. TechCrunch reports users will track and share things they've purchased or done, and make recommendations. Not all users will buy things on the site, but "tried it" will complement post-purchase reviews, an important part of Pinterest's strategy as it's attempted to become a more actionable site. Part of that is Buyable Pins, which allow consumers to use a card or Apple Pay to buy items directly from the app. Pinterest hopes that by increasing activity around buyable Pins, the site will enhance its attractiveness to advertisers, TechCrunch reports
India's sudden ATM crisis: Massive crowds of people in India are trying to exchange bills in response to the Indian government's decision to discontinue certain denominations. ATMs are starting to run dry, according to Bloomberg, which reports the country's banks have been caught unprepared by the government's move, which removes about 86% of India's currency from circulation. India is hoping to reduce tax fraud by eliminating large cash bills. Security is being deployed outside banks to manage the crowds, though Bloomberg reports consumers have been mostly patient while waiting to exchange their currency.
Know your blockchain: Three banks from the R3 cross-bank blockchain consortium are working on a distributed ledger-based Know Your Customer anti-money laundering registry, according to Finextra. BBVA, ING and UBS are using R3's open research tools for the three month project, which is designed to demonstrate how distributed ledger can help banks comply with onboarding requirements, as well as accessing a single interface to manage global identity. Money Laundering prevention is considered a major potential use case for distributed ledger technology, largely because of the resources required for legacy practices. KYC costs some companies up to $500 million per year, Finextra reports, citing numbers from Thomson Reuters. That's mostly due to inconsistent standards and redundancies. The R3 consortium argues the shared KYC service would eliminate much of those problems.
Arvind Kejriwal claims ‘BJP and its friends’ informed about demonetisation a week earlier The Indian Express » Section » India • Pti Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said: There is evidence that their (BJP) friends and own people were informed a week before the decision was announced. (Source: Facebook/Arvind Kejriwal) BJP and its “friends” were informed about the demonetisation of high value currency “a week...
Airtel, Voda, Idea may see about 50% growth in m-wallet transactions The Economic Times of India • Kalyan Parbat The withdrawal of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes announced on Tuesday, they said, is unlikely to immediately translate into a sizeable jump in revenue from wallet services, although it is expected to help retain customers.
FTC sues NetSpend over prepaid ad claims The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against NetSpend on Thursday, alleging that the prepaid card issuer deceived consumers in its advertising.
The Oracle MICROS attack is a call to fix point of sale security Attacks on point-of-sale (POS) systems usually target immediate gain through fraud with payment card data, which is why any organization that uses point of sale devices or processes payment details needs to be on constant alert.
The ugly side of EMV chargebacks Merchants without chip card readers are reporting that a few malicious customers have figured out how to game the system.
5 ways Trump could disrupt the payments industry Trump's election raises a lot of issues for the financial services industry, particularly for companies that operate internationally or rely on emerging technology. Here are a few areas Trump's presidency is likely to disrupt.
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.
Regulators proposed a rule to replace the 2% enhanced supplementary leverage ratio with a capital charge equal to half of a bank's global systemically important bank surcharge. Low-risk assets will continue to count toward leverage requirements under the proposal.
