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Discover's delinquencies
Delinquencies, which are on the rise across financial services, clouded an otherwise solid quarter for Discover Financial Services.
Discover said fourth-quarter profit rose 78 percent from a year earlier to $687 million, or $2.03 per share. That year-over-year comparison was affected by an $189 million charge from tax expenses in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Still, the latest earnings per share fell 3 cents short of the mean estimate of analysts tracked by FactSet Research Systems. Discover reported 30-day delinquencies for credit cards were 2.43 percent, up 15 basis points from the prior year and 11 basis points from the prior quarter.
Short supply
B2B transactions are falling in the U.K., says Tradeshift CEO and co-founder Christian Lanng, noting a "huge drop" in purchase orders in December, covering manufacturing, retail and logistics.
Tradeshift, a cloud platform for supply chain payments, says there's a major manufacturer in the U.K. which has one hour of inventory feeding its production line, reports
Medical B2B on the grid
The Hyperledger consortium's supply chain initiative Grid has its first link, with Sabre, a smart contract engine that will provide an interface with platforms outside of the Hyperledger network.
Grid is designed to connect technology providers, companies and application developers to produce the best choice for supply chain transactions.
The initial work with Sabre will be on data storage, followed by more industry-specific supply chain transaction standards and identifiers such as those used in the medical products industry.
Going global
India's Paytm is looking to expand to one or two more "developed" markets, following successful launches in Canada and Japan.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Madhur Deora, Paytm's CFO, said the company has been able to quickly build revenue in developed markets and is building scale to expand further, reports
State of crypto
New York has approved money transfer license applications for two new companies, Robinhood Crypto and Moon Inc.
That expands an already active cryptocurrency market, which has been building since the state introduced its
The state is working on an update to the
From the Web
The Straits Times | Thu January 24, 2019 - A new pan-Asia network for fintech players was launched in Singapore, bringing together Asian fintech start-ups, financial institutions and banks to trade knowledge and expertise in the booming fintech industry. The Fintech Cooperation Committee serves as a platform for industry players to share the best industry practices with one another, hold high-level regional forums and coordinate policies that can further the fintech ecosystem.
CNBC | Thu January 24, 2019 - The amount that Chinese tourists spent on shopping fell to less than a third of the overall trip budget, or 32 percent, in 2018, consultancy Oliver Wyman found in its latest study of outbound Chinese travel. That's compared to 41 percent in 2016. In contrast, food and beverage, and sightseeing and entertainment increased their share of the trip budget, according to Hunter Williams, partner at Oliver Wyman.
Forbes | Thu January 24, 2019 - In an October address, Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard asked for comments on what role the Federal Reserve should play in real-time payments. The Fed got 471, and they kept streaming in well past the deadline.
More from PaymentsSource
Samsung’s been pushing for government support for its blockchain and cryptocurrency technology for much of the past year, and early Galaxy S10 leaks suggest a built-in crypto wallet will be among the handset's planned features.
Jason Oxman is leaving his CEO position at the Electronic Transactions Association to become the president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, a position he will assume in late February.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication reports that its Global Payments Innovation system, which it launched two years ago, now handles more than a million payments a day.
Midsize banks have much smaller security budgets, less mature security programs and less robust controls than their bigger counterparts, writes Leigh-Anne Galloway, cybersecurity resilience lead at Positive Technologies.
