The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Fee relief
The European Union's parliament has overwhelmingly approved a regulation that requires banks to charge lower fees for cross-border Euro payments involving non-EU countries.
The bank will have to charge equal fees for Euro payments between EU countries and similar transfers between EU and non-EU nations, a complicated issue as the
For bank transfers, the banks are now required to reveal currency conversion cost prior to the payment. The vote is designed to improve transparency into fees, and is part of a broad effort in the EU to standardize parts of the payments market, including
Cookies in the cloud
The
The organization this year will allow purchases through
Clover will be piloted in the Atlanta area with about 400 local troops. The
Blockchain pros wanted
Fresh off of hiring blockchain experts from London fintech Chainspace,
It's advertising for a "technical program manager, marketplace payments blockchain," reports
Facebook has been building a blockchain unit under the direction of
Checking in
Marriott has set up a way for guests to look up passport numbers to see if they were a victim of the
The check, operated by security company OneTrust, asks for personal information and a passport number, reports
The hotel chain reports more than 20 million encrypted passport numbers and about 8.6 million payment card numbers were affected in the breach.
From the Web
CNBC | Mon February 18, 2019 - British online payments start-up GoCardless has landed a $75 million investment backed by U.S. tech giants Alphabet — the parent company of Google — and Salesforce. London-based GoCardless processes direct debit payments on behalf of businesses.
The New York Times | Mon February 18, 2019 - Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia on Monday blamed a “sophisticated state actor” for the recent hacking of Parliament’s computer network, raising the specter of foreign interference in the country’s politics weeks before a national election.
TechCrunch | Sun February 17, 2019 - An Etsy bill payment error resulted in large amounts of money being withdrawn from several sellers’ bank accounts and credit cards on Friday morning. While the company says the issue has been resolved and was not the result of fraud, the headache isn’t over for affected sellers because Monday was a federal holiday in the United States, and many financial institutions are closed.
More from PaymentsSource
Visa and Mastercard plan to raise interchange while battles over those rates and other levies such as merchant surcharging rage on, setting the stage for extra merchant expense, consumer costs and even more squabbling.
Ant Financial's Alipay is massive in China — so much that last summer, the People's Bank of China formally declared that it was illegal for a merchant to block acceptance of renminbi cash notes or coins. This was seen as an antitrust move, based on the government's desire to prevent Alipay or Tencent's WeChat Pay from dominating the country's payments landscape.
Virtual cards are showing potential to streamline business transactions, attracting a business payment collaboration between Barclaycard and SAP.
JPMorgan Chase's digital currency launch is being hailed by some industry observers as the first step toward broader adoption of blockchain technology in financial services.
