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Welcome to the new PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Samsung Pay looks to cash-strapped India: Samsung has started testing its mobile payment app in India, a country where the government's recent decision to replace about 85% of its paper money has caused a currency crisis and an opportunity for digital payments technology. According to the Samsung tracking website Sammobile, Samsung Pay has just started testing in India, and is slated to launch in the first half of 2017. Samsung's Pay's magstripe emulation technology, which helps the service reach a wide range of payment terminals, will be important in India, where most of the terminals do not have NFC technology, the site reports.
An employee demonstrates Samsung Electronics Co.'s Samsung Pay application on a Galaxy Note 7 smartphone with stylus during a media event in Seoul, South Korea, on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016. Samsung's large-screen Galaxy Note 7 smartphone can be unlocked with an iris-scanning camera. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
Payments on tap: How far along are contactless payments in the U.K.? Far enough along to be embedded in a self-service beer pump. Finextra reports the Barclaycard-developed Pay@Pump allows patrons to order drinks on a touchscreen, pay with a tap of a contactless card or an NFC device, and pour--after the payment. The technology, which will be tested at Henry's Cafe Bar in London, is designed to cut time; Barclaycard estimates it takes 12 minutes during peak time to receive a drink at the test bar, with Pay@Pump reducing that time to about 60 seconds. Barclaycard plans to expand the technology to other bars after the new year.
Open transit Down Under: Sydney is joining London and Chicago in opening its transit system's payments. Cubic received a $7.6 million contract from Transport for New South Wales to develop the system, which will begin tests in 2017, according to a release from Cubic. Commuters will pay by tapping a contactless bank card directly on Opal readers. The Opal system was initially deployed in 2014, and was configured to enable open loop payments in the future, which should reduce the work necessary to upgrade the system, Cubic said in a press release, adding technology from the London and Chicago projects will be incorporated into the Sydney initiative.
Rakuten invests in Uber rival: Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has led a $350 million investment in Careem, an emerging rival to Uber that operates mostly in Middle Eastern markets, TechCrunch reports. The ride sharing company will use the funds to expand geographically and add new technology. It's a huge step up in financing for Careem, which has raised about $72 million in investment and is active in 11 countries in the region. Rakuten, which also invests in WePay, has backed other Uber rivals, most notably Lyft and Cabify, a South African service.
Forget The X Factor – Sunday night is prime time for online shopping The Guardian • Patrick Collinson Figures from Lloyds Bank show we love to shop on the sofa – but peak in terms of value of items bought is Mondays at 11am Sunday night at 8pm is now the peak time for online shopping, according to new data.
Smart Collaboration in Mobile Payments The Wall Street Journal • Deloitteeditor Consumers are increasingly interested in using their smartphones to make payments at the point of sale, and the payments ecosystem is transforming accordingly. However, this new ecosystem can create challenges for companies across a range of industries more accustomed to competing than.
Swift looks ahead to address security and business challenges Facing security challenges at its member banks and competition from other tech providers, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication [Swift] plans to put its best foot forward in 2017.
7 failed payment ideas from successful companies The path to success is almost never smooth, and many well-known companies have made expensive mistakes along the way. Here are some of the ideas that are no longer around but may never be forgotten.
Host Card Emulation marches on despite Apple and Google's apps Royal Bank of Canada grabbed attention for being the first major bank in North America to launch a mobile wallet powered by Host Card Emulation last year starting a rush for banks to use the technology to power their own, branded payment apps.
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to banking regulators urging them to preserve the enhanced Supplemental Leverage Ratio, warning that a rollback would only enrich bank shareholders.
Cincinnati-based First Financial scooped up Westfield Bank near Cleveland after Westfield's parent company decided to exit the bank space and focus on its core insurance business.
Since the end of COVID, each bank has set its own rules for how often employees need to show up at the office. Here's how a dozen lenders are handling the shift.
A number of fintechs emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic as a flurry of Paycheck Protection Program loan applications inundated banks. Now, the government is alleging many of them facilitated or committed fraud.
The card network's moves include supporting coins from Fiserv, PayPal and others; and offering services to what's expected to be a fast-growing industry.
