9.20.17: Your morning briefing

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

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:

Smart contracts for flight delays: AXA is automating compensation payments for late lights by using a blockchain-based insurance product. Finextra reports the product, called "Fizzy," places the insurance premium and related agreements on a smart contract while the flight is tracked in real time through global air traffic databases. Fizzy transfers funds into the consumer's bank account if the flight is delayed more than two hours. This transaction is based on data in the AXA blockchain, and not on the consumer making a claim or the insurance company assessing the loss. AXA is testing the program on flights between Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and the U.S., with deployment expected in the U.K. by early 2018.

Guido Vrola - Fotolia

Roadmap for new rules: The Financial Conduct Authority has issued new guidance on how it will manage the pending changes to the Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which is scheduled to go into effect in January 2018. PSD2 governs data sharing among financial institutions to accommodate the expansion of m-commerce and the increasing role of technology driven startups that provide payments and other services. PSD2 will bring more services into the FCA's scope. That includes account aggregation, or an accumulation of different financial relationships in a single place to aid money management, marketing, CRM, shopping and digital wallets. There will also be new requirements for customer service and fielding consumer complaints. While PSD2 is geared toward European payment markets, it's expected that many of the concepts will transfer to banks outside of Europe in practice if not regulation.

Transfer shopping: ING's money management app Yolt has added a group of features including a service that compares transfer apps. The app just came out of testing and is designed to store bank accounts and credit cards in a single place to tie personal financial management more directly to payments. Yolt has also added new spending categories such as coffee, lunch, charity and expenses--and will also support a hash tagging function that allows people to add notes to payments and other transactions. In another move, Yolt has partnered with Moneytis, which will allow users to compare exchange rates for international transfers.

iZettle draws funds in Europe: Swedish payment company iZettle has been expanding over the past year, and has picked up new funding to accelerate its pursuit of new markets. The European Investment Bank will provide about $40 million in debt funding over the next three years. The money, which comes in part from the European Fund for Strategic Investments and the Investment Plan for Europe, is earmarked for research and development of payment and merchant services for smaller companies. As part of the funding, iZettle will develop machine learning and artificial intelligence, new payment infrastructure and further automation of commercial processes. "It’s the type of offer you can’t refuse and it will allow us to further accelerate our growth and continue to level the playing field for small businesses, giving them access to tools to take on the big corporations," said Jacob de Geer, CEO and co-founder of iZettle, in a release.

From the Web

Finnish authorities to help promote Alipay
China Daily | Wed Sep 20, 2017 - Chinese digital payment platform Alipay has got the endorsement by Finnish authorities to promote the use of the paying method. Finpro, an umbrella organization comprising sectors that promote tourism, investment and export for Finland, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Alipay on Monday to enhance the cooperation. The number of overnight stays by Chinese tourists in Finland from January to July this year grew by 43 percent compared with last year, which is the fastest growth among all foreigners, according to Heli Mende, head of global sales promotion of Visit Finland, a tourism industry committee under Finpro. Mende said it is very important to understand the needs of travelers coming to Finland so that they can enjoy better travel experiences.

Massachusetts says Equifax hack exposed more than half the state to risk of fraud
CNBC | Tue Sep 19, 2017 - Equifax left sensitive consumer information exposed to hackers by relying on a computer code it should have known was vulnerable to attack and without having safeguards to protect the data, the state of Massachusetts said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. It's the first lawsuit filed by a state against the credit reporting agency for the massive hacking that was revealed earlier this month. The state's attorney general said still-unidentified third parties entered Equifax's system through a section of its website where consumers could dispute information on their credit reports. The hackers were in the system from mid-May through July without Equifax detecting them, the lawsuit said.

CryptoMove protects sensitive data by fragmenting it and moving it around
TechCrunch | Tue Sep 19, 2017 - CryptoMove thinks that data encryption is not enough. If you want to protect your data against hackers, the startup is using a new strategy by fragmenting your data, encrypting it and moving it around so that it doesn’t stay still on a server somewhere. CryptoMove is participating in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. At the same time, CryptoMove doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It works with your existing storage architecture and uses existing encryption algorithms. If you’re storing data on your own servers, you can hook them up with CryptoMove. And if you’re using a public cloud infrastructure, CryptoMove also works thanks to APIs and integrations with Box, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. But the moving target defense strategy is something new when it comes to storing data. The idea is that a hacker can study your infrastructure and slowly find a way to get into your servers. By constantly changing your infrastructure, it becomes much harder for hackers. Even if a hacker steals some data, chances are it’s going to be useless as CryptoMove fragments your data into tiny chunks.

More from PaymentsSource

Does PIN-on-glass need a more secure screen?
Even if the use of PIN hasn't garnered much momentum in the U.S. beyond debit, it is an authentication technology that's not going to go away anytime soon.

Equifax has also mismanaged its post-breach strategy
Equifax’s crisis communications strategy dealing with its security hack has been an epic fail. And the credit reporting giant continues to make the situation worse.

Lyft’s plea for faster payments
Ride sharing companies like Lyft and Uber are famous for making the consumer’s end of the payment nearly invisible. But it can be a bumpier ride on the driver’s end.

How Alipay uses data to power its growth
China’s Alipay has rapidly expanded its global reach by building acceptance at merchants in Chinese tourist meccas around the world, but data also plays a surprisingly big role in the mobile wallet’s growth, according to Souheil Badran, president of Alipay North America, an affiliate of Ant Financial.