Cards

While a majority of business payments are still made by checks, faster payments and increased cash flows will pressure a move to digital options, contends UMB's Brian Hutchin.

The use of digital payments offers significant savings over check cashing. Payroll cards and public-sector prepaid cards issued for the deposit of government benefits are two of the best known examples, writes Andrew Gillen, vice president for Global Public Sector Payment Solutions for Mastercard.

NatWest has started a three-month testing period of a payment card using biometric fingerprint for authorization with 200 customers, saying it is the first such card issued by a U.K. bank.

By allowing instant issuance to be executed from the most secure infrastructure available, PCI-CP introduces greater flexibility and protection than older standards, according to Ranjeet Khanna, vice president of financial issuance at Entrust Datacard.

There are many motivations for implementing faster payments, such as paying gig economy workers after each job, sending funds overseas, or improving insurance payouts. In all of these examples, the demand comes from the payments recipient.

PSD2 and other moves push a higher level of authentication, and are a welcome development for biometrics, according to Lina Andolf-Orup, a senior director at Fingerprints.

If American Express is going to soar in the future, it plans to do so firmly attached to the new 11-year contract it has signed with Delta Airlines.

As major payments M&A deals mount, some free agents are awaiting deals of their own — and one area where that’s most apparent is in debit and ATM networks.

French card issuer Prepaid Financial Services has partnered with Google to allow its customers in the U.K. to add their prepaid cards to the Google Pay mobile wallet.

Mastercard and MercadoPago, the payments arm of Latin American e-marketplace MercadoLibre, see opportunities for contactless prepaid cards among unbanked consumers even though local issuers have been slow to adopt the format.