6.20.17: Your morning briefing

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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:

Fleetcor adds role to standardize fuel cards: Fleetcor executive Steve Greene has doubled profits at the company's U.K. Epyx maintenance unit, a performance that has helped vault him to the president of global fuel cards, a new position at the company. Greene will be based in Fleetcor's headquarters in Norcross, Ga., and will be charged with standardizing the company's fuel card marketing, sales, operational processes and merchant relations globally. Greene, who has worked in venture capital at CHB Capital Partners, has been with Fleetcor since 2013. At Fleetcor he has overseen several acquisitions, including the 2013 deal for Epyx. Fleetcor, which faces competition from Wex, has also expanded its gift card business through a collaboration with First Data and cross-border payments via a partnership with Cambridge Global Payments.

Digital money app for kids: As youth spending and payment education apps start to proliferate, Commonwealth Bank of Australia has released an app that's specifically geared toward managing money in a cashless society. Finder reports the CommBank Youth App, which targets 5 to 15 year olds, lets kids check balances, make transfers and create lists tied to their money, payments or allowances, such as tracking chores. The bank is addressing parents' concerns that easily available digital purchases make it harder for young people to learn the value of money because e-commerce is less tangible. A bank survey found 42% of parents fear digital payments will make it harder for children to learn the value of money, while 41% believe emerging technology will improve savings and spend management. The app pushes the capabilities of digital to track and monitor spending in real time, which can encourage healthy financial choices, according to Veronica Howarth, head of school banking and youth for CBA, which spoke to Finder.

$6 trillion e-market: It's not just the U.K. where online payments are boosting card spending. Global online card spending is expected to double in the next four years, reaching $6 trillion by 2021, according to the Global Payment Cards Data and Forecast from RBR. The key factors pushing growth are a surge in smartphone adoption, an increase in merchants with an online presence, more impulse spending via mobile apps, and easier payments such as one-click checkouts and other technology that makes it easier to pay. Online payments are already making major headway, reports RBR, noting the value of e-commerce payments grew 26% in 2015 to reach $2.7 trillion, representing 12% of all card expenditures.

Traction in Russia: As mobile payments start to enter the Russian market, On Track Innovations has scored a major deal to bring the technology to the country's vending machines. OTI will partner with several local companies in the Russian Federation to supply cashless payment operations, covering the largest vending systems in the country, coffee machines and snack dispensers. These machines cover most of the country and will deploy OTI's unattended technology for EMV chip and contactless payments via mobile apps and cards. "Entering the Russian Federation, which is currently adopting cashless payment solutions, provides OTI an excellent opportunity for a fast-growing market," said Shlomi Cohen, CEO of OTI.

From the Web

Alibaba sold an astonishing $550 billion of merchandise in just one year: Chief marketing officer
CNBC | Mon Jun 19, 2017 - On June 8, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba drew "gasps of wow" from investors as it presented forecasted sales growth of 45 to 49 percent this year, 10 percentage points ahead of analysts' expectations. And today, Chris Tung, its chief marketing officer, told an audience of advertising and media executives – not CFOs – that it sold an enormous $550 billion of merchandise in the last fiscal year, and served more than 500 million Chinese consumers alone.

AimBrain, a startup that uses biometric authentication to fight fintech fraud, raises £4M Series A
TechCrunch | Mon Jun 19, 2017 - AimBrain, a London startup that offers “biometric identity” as a service to help fintech companies and other financial institutions fight fraud, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. BGF Ventures led the round, with participation from Episode 1, Entrepreneur First (EF), and a number of angel investors including Simon Rozas, Chris Mairs, and Charles Songhurst.

OTT Financial signs agreement with Alipay to provide services in Canada
Reuters | Mon Jun 19, 2017 - OTT Financial says its payment platform, OTT pay, signed cooperation agreement with Alipay of Ant Financial Services Group to provide Alipay services.

More from PaymentsSource

Wikimedia's Latin American fundraising required locally tuned tech
When Wikimedia tries to collect payments in Latin America, it's a mixing two unusual activities. It's a San Francisco-based organization that doesn't have a large presence in the region, and even on its home turf Wikimedia generally doesn't collect frequent payments from consumers.

'Traditional' e-security won't cut it for mobile ATMs
In 2017, we’ve seen several major banks roll out new ATM technology that uses authentication on mobile phones, allowing customers to get services without using a physical card.

PNC adds digital, mobile payments to commercial cards
PNC is approaching corporate clients with new non-plastic card options including Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay.

Chatbot toolkit adds PayPal
Automated messaging platform SnatchBot will allow payments inside chatbots by linking to merchant PayPal accounts, making it easier to pair transactions with digital conversations.