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:
High expectations for Alibaba: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is pushing for future growth through myriad investments in
Curve founder jumps to Monzo: Thomas Foster-Carter is leaving Curve to join digital financial institution Monzo as COO. Along with Shachar Bialick, Foster-Carter created Curve in 2015. Curve's core product allows users to store multiple card relationships in a single app, and it recently added
Advancing invoices: Supply chains are
Good bill hunting: Royal Bank of Scotland, which has been issuing bank notes since 1727, will launch a new 10 pound polymer note on Oct. 4 featuring an illustration of Mary Somerville, a famed Scottish mathematician and scientist. Behind the portrait is an illustration of Somerville's hometown, Burntisland. A moon diagram from her book, Mechanism of Heavens, appears when the note is viewed under ultraviolet light. Somerville's image was chosen after a public vote on social media. The reverse side has images of the otters that are often found in western Scotland, as well as snippets of works from Scottish poet Norman MacCaig. The bank will also soon launch a new 20 pound note, which will have an image of Catherine Cranston, a philanthropist and entrepreneur.
From the Web
TechCrunch | Sat Aug 12, 2017 - If you don’t care too much about loyalty programs, chances are that you’ve been relying on platforms like Booking.com and Expedia to find the cheapest flights and hotel rooms. Moneytis wants to do the exact same thing, but for foreign exchange services. Moneytis is applying the Booking.com model to international transfers. The experience is quite straightforward as you just have to put two different currencies and how much money you plan on sending.
The Wall Street Journal | Sun Aug 13, 2017 - Mastercard has set its sights on millennials. Martina Hund-Mejean, Mastercard Inc.’s chief financial officer, says the company is positioning itself to take advantage of a shift toward greater use of credit cards by millennials as they become more confident about managing credit and debt. The number of credit cards held by millennials in the U.S. amounted to an average of just over two per person in 2016, up 52% from 2010, according to Experian PLC, with an average balance per person of $3,542, up 32% from 2010. Grabbing as big a slice as possible of that growing market would help Mastercard compete with Visa Inc. in the overall credit-card market, where Visa captured 53% of purchases in the U.S. in the first half of this year, compared with 22% for Mastercard, according to the Nilson Report, a trade publication.
Huffington Post | Fri Aug 11, 2017 - For years, headlines have touted that mobile payment apps and mobile wallets will revolutionize the way consumers pay for items. With the explosion in the number of mobile devices and corresponding apps, and the convenience offered by mobile payments, how could mobile payments fail to become the dominant payment method? Mobile payments may well dominate in the future, but they are being adopted more slowly than the tech world expected. Multiple platforms are fighting for dominance in the field and attempting to distinguish themselves from the pack. Tech companies and retailers alike are clogging the field with possibilities, and that may be part of the problem.
More from PaymentsSource
It can be an uphill battle asking someone to put down their phone these days. One of the reasons we’re so reticent to do so is the sheer power contained within these devices.
With this year's iPhone announcement getting closer, more rumors are spreading about how Apple plans to overhaul the way its phones handle payments. Some of these have already been confirmed by Apple; others are leaking in code the company has released.
Seeking to better monitor online payments and tighten potential loopholes for fraud or money-laundering, People's Bank of China has set a June 2018 date for firms such as Ant Financial, Tencent and others to route transactions through a new central clearing house.
Barclays has hired credit card industry veteran Barry Rodrigues as CEO of its credit card operations in the U.S. and Germany, and to supervise payments acceptance in the U.K.
