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3.13.17: Your morning briefing
Welcome to the PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Should banks use emoji? As chatbots get more popular, financial services companies are starting to take notice. Capital One is testing a chatbot called Eno that answers questions on payment transactions, card bill due dates, and balances. The bot uses artificial language to respond, and also puts emoji into the dialogue. Consumers can also use emoji in their dialogue with Eno, which also understands abbreviations. The service does not support making payments or executing transfers at this point, though Eno's FAQ page says it is developing new services and payments are in the pipeline.
A pedestrian walks past a Capital One Financial Corp. bank branch in New York, U.S., on Friday, Oct. 14, 2016. Capital One Financial Corp. is scheduled to release earnings figures on October 25. Photographer: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg
Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg
China's big blockchain: One of blockchain's big use cases beyond digital currency has been to take friction and costs out of cross-border payments, which also has ramifications for corporate supply chains. TechNode reports Dianrong and FnConn have launched China's first blockchain platform with supply chain management and transactions in mind. By removing inefficiencies and expense from transactions, the companies hope to expand the market of suppliers, noting most traditional supply chain finance companies access only about 15% of the suppliers. Jack Lee, executive director and CEO of FnConn, told the website that all payments and transactions in supply chains can be made more transparent and more easily authenticated. As a result, Lee said, deliveries will also be made faster.
Doing more with denim: Wearable payment technology has rarely seen form factors other than bracelets and rings. Still, innovators such as Barclaycard have tested items like a payment-enabled jacket that embeds a contactless card in the sleeve. A similar concept may soon come to market with a high-tech denim commuter jacket from Google and Levi's, to be released this fall for $350, according to Engadget. Right now, the Project Jaquard jacket can control smartphone functions such as playing music or telling time, and the companies are open to adding features in the future, Engadget reports. Perhaps they, too, will be hiding payments up their sleeve in the near future?
A 'crawler' for ISO risk management: ISOs have long been challenged to scale a steep technology curve as merchants automate. And the growth of multichannel commerce, artificial intelligence-driven customer service, and a rapidly changing regulatory environment are proving popular with technology companies seeking to win share of the compliance and risk market. One of these companies, PerformLine, has developed a system that automates multichannel monitoring of merchants, seeking to appease ISOs that are concerned about how chatbots and other quickly emerging technology. The system includes data gathering to validate merchants, a crawler to aid web searches for information to inform risk management for acquirers, a rules engine that can categorize merchants and a scoring feature."Merchant acquirers, processors, ISOs, payment facilitators or anyone that holds merchant risk can now monitor across their web, voice and chat channels for complete coverage from one platform," said Alex Baydin, PerformLine's CEO, in a press release.
Clearant adds merchant services scale: Clearant has completed its acquisition of Payment Alliance International's merchant services division, a move that will boost Clearant to more than 300 employees, 45,000 merchants and $14 billion in yearly processing volume, a 40% boost for the St. Louis-based Clearant. Other terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Payment Alliance Internatinal also offers ATM processing and maintenance services. Clearant offers point of sale terminals, mobile payment technology, tablets, e-commerce plug-ins and hosted payments.
Ireland’s biggest banks keep mum about Apple Pay launch Silicon Republic - Digital Life • John Kennedy The big question about Apple Pay is not if, but when, the larger Irish banks will get on board. The post Ireland’s biggest banks keep mum about Apple Pay launch appeared first on Silicon Republic.
Chip & Win: Which Mobile Payment System is Best? Gizmodo UK • Tom Pritchard With all these mobile payment systems knocking about, how do you know which one is actually best? We put them to the test.
More from PaymentsSource
Putting GSMA's mobile money standards to work TerraPay hopes its mobile money strategy will benefit from the expansion of new standards that are designed to make it easier to deploy similar services in different markets.
The future of faster payments is collaboration The industry has made great strides in faster payments over the past year. Even more cooperation among stakeholders will be needed in the year ahead.
President Donald Trump has signed two Congressional Review Act resolutions nullifying the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule capping many overdraft fees and subjecting large data brokers to regulation.
Federal Reserve Gov. Adriana Kugler said in a speech in Dublin that trade barriers could soon affect prices and slow down growth while increasing uncertainty in 2025.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a policy directive rescinding scores of standing guidance documents, interpretive rules and advisory opinions in a bid to reduce compliance costs.
Bank advocates and lawmakers have endorsed removing management considerations from the key supervisory ranking, arguing that it is too prone to subjectivity. But some policy experts say doing so could leave certain risks unchecked.
