The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the web:
Calling for a cleanup
Bank and payment processor
Major banks in the U.K. suffer more than 10 online outages per month, reports the
The outages have covered banks, card companies and fintechs of all sizes, and have often resulted from the fast pace of deployment of
Breach in Italy
UniCredit has reported a data breach that impacted about 3 million people in the country, including information that could contribute to ID theft and payment fraud, such as emails and phone numbers.
It's the third security incident in the past few years at UniCredit, Italy's largest bank, reports
An internal investigation is underway, and the bank did not disclose how the breach happened.
Product placement
NBCUniversal is piloting advertising technology that allows purchases of items featured in a television show that's currently airing.
The purchases use a QR code, which pops up on the screen during specific moments of a show. Viewers can point their smartphone camera at the code and be routed to a sponsor's e-commerce site, reports
NBC has tested the technology in mostly unscripted programming such as sporting events, and plans to gradually add more shows in the coming weeks.
New exec
Mastercard has named Marla Blow as its North American Lead for the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, a new role designed to build programs that advance financial security and promote inclusive financial development in the U.S. and Canada.
Blow was previously CEO of FS Card, a credit card firm that specializes in financial inclusion and payment products for consumers who normally would borrow small-dollar loans.
She has also served on the board of FactorTrust, which provides consumer data for underbanked markets.
Adding partners
Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions is expanding its pending institutional payments and financial services bundle by adding Global Payments' card processing and PPRO's access to local payment methods.
Called Spring by Citi, the service will use Mastercard's payments gateway to allow institutional merchants to support cards, e-wallets and digital transfers such as request to pay, instant payment and open banking.
Spring is part of Citi's effort to counter the
From the web
TECHCRUNCH | Mon October 28, 2019
The American Cancer Society’s online store has become the latest victim of credit card-stealing malware. Security researcher Willem de Groot found the malware on the organization’s store website, buried in obfuscated code designed to look like legitimate analytics code. The code was designed to scrape credit card payments from the page, like similar attacks targeting British Airways, Ticketmaster, AeroGarden and Newegg.
REUTERS | Mon October 28, 2019
Fishing communities on Kenya’s north coast will be the first to benefit from “smart” identity cards aimed at distinguishing genuine fishermen and loggers from poachers who raid waters and cut down mangroves vital to ease climate change threats. Each government-issued Mvuvi card - the word means “fisher” in Swahili - features a photo and fingerprint taken from its registered owner.
TECHCRUNCH | Mon October 28, 2019
Identity Verification-as-a-Service (“IVAAS”?!) is a pretty tortuous phrase. But it’s now established as a key tech area for the tech industry as startups like Onfido, Jumio and others have proved with large funding raises in the last few years. Verifying ID is now also a key part of the gig economy.
More from PaymentsSource
Uber launched a series of financial services to provide real-time wage payments and enhanced account features in a single app, seemingly putting Uber in the role of a digital bank.
There's no shortage of corporate and political efforts to protect the mountains of data generated by e-commerce, but a universal solution remains elusive.
Halloween is often overlooked as a minor holiday that involves no gift-giving. The reality is that Halloween marks the beginning of a long consumer spending spree that goes through major holidays including Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali and others.
A few weeks after debuting voice-supported recurring bill payments in India, Amazon is extending a similar feature to most of its markets.
Flywire is working with Bank of America to streamline cross-border payments for the bank’s higher education and corporate clients, whose foreign transaction traffic is rising along with global commerce.
