Morning Brief 11.19.19: HSBC expands use of the ACH's real-time rails

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the web:

Speeding up

The Clearing House's RTP faster payments network has been gaining momentum over the past few months, particularly as the Federal Reserve's planned real-time FedNow project starts to take shape.
HSBC, one of the banks that helped develop The Clearing House's initiative, is the latest bank to expand support for the RTP network, saying it will allow business and institutional clients to send real-time payments in early 2020. The bank's clients have been able to receive real-time payments since July 2019.
HSBC is using the RTP network for "just-in-time" cash management, instant payroll and refunds.

Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg

Smart and legal

The U.K.'s Jurisdiction Taskforce has recognized smart contracts as enforceable under English law, giving a major boost to cryptocurrency and the distributed ledgers that power new payment types.
Smart contracts automatically trigger transactions when specific conditions are met, generally as part of corporate payments, trade finance or investments. Legal payments are also expected to become less complex and expensive, which could open the law to a wider audience.
The U.K. regulatory board hopes the ruling will create clarity as blockchain usage expands, projecting 10% of the global GDP will be on a blockchain by 2027.

Bring me a Slurpee

7-Eleven has extended a voice ordering and delivery service via Amazon and Google smart speakers in 200 cities. Consumers who link a payment card to 7-Eleven’s 7Now may command Alexa or Google to bring them any of the convenience store chain’s food, drinks or merchandise within 30 minutes. The first delivery is free; subsequent orders are $3.99 each, according to a press release.

Crowded mile

Target recently joined Walmart and Amazon in expanding its same-day delivery to improve user experience for e-commerce shopping and payments, a trend a New York-based startup called Ohi says is leaving out smaller merchants.
Ohi has closed a $2.75 million seed round led by Flybridge Capital Partners to fund a business model that uses local landlords as micro-warehouses, reports TechCrunch.
The landlords get flexible leases, often as short as three months, to create a network for small e-commerce sellers, and uses Postmates and Doordash to deliver packages.

Monzo loses an exec

Thomas Foster-Carter, Monzo's chief operating officer, has left the U.K. payments technology company to launch a grocery startup.
Foster-Carter was also Curve's co-founder, reports The Times in the U.K., and contributed to a rapid expansion during his two years at Monzo.
The grocery startup is reportedly focused on aiding incumbent grocers in their battle against tech-driven startups that offer a lower price.

From the web

Blockchain-based payment processor Radpay raises $1.2 million in series seed round
_{YAHOO FINANCE | Tue November 19, 2019}
Radpay, a decentralized global payment processing company, announced that it had raised an oversubscribed $1.2 million seed round at a $10.2 million valuation, backed by Resiliency Ventures, BlackLaunch, as well as investors from Nebraska and Arizona.

Amex Is Paying Up to Get Businesses to Accept Its Cards
_{THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | Mon November 18, 2019}
American Express Co. wants more businesses to accept its cards. So it is paying them—sometimes in amounts approaching a half-million dollars. The company is offering sign-on bonuses to some businesses that don’t take its cards in a bid to catch up to rivals Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. The payments range from under $10,000 to about $450,000.

Forget the QR code. Facial recognition could be the next big thing for payments in China
_{CNBC | Tue November 19, 2019}
Tencent’s WeChat Pay is testing a system that allows customers to make payments by simply scanning their faces in several retail chains in China. If the technology takes off, the existing practice of scanning QR codes — a type of barcode to make payments on mobile phones — could soon be a thing of the past, at least in China.

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