Cards and Payments Middle East - Payment innovation for banks, retail and government

15-16 MAY ADNEC ABU DHABI

Cards & Payments Middle East is the region's largest event for banks, retail, telcos and government

Now in its 13th year Cards & Payments Middle East brings together the world leaders in cards and payments strategy and technology.

Find out best practice and forward thinking strategy from regional and international banks, on acquiring and retaining profitable and low risk customers, risk and fraud strategies and to source the latest technology and solutions.

6 amazing conference with industry superstars including ADCB, National Bank of Kuwait, Sharjah Islamic Bank, Samba Financial Group and many more.

To register go to : https://secure.terrapinn.com
To look at jobs in the card and payment industry, go to http://ww.cardandpaymentjobs.com

SagePay - Marketing Manager, Frankfurt

SagePay have recently advertised a Marketing Manager role based in Frankfurt on the http://www.cardandpaymentjobs.com website. The job board dedicated to the card and payment industry.

Sage Pay is the fastest growing division of The Sage Group –a global FTSE 100 business management software and services company.

One of the most trusted payment brands in the UK & Ireland, we now have an exciting opportunity to build our business in Germany. The Marketing Manager will be a critical member of the team, building the brand and driving revenue in the German Market.

About the role
Reporting the Head of Marketing, the Marketing Manager will play an active role in PR, lead generation, customer retention and cross-selling/up-selling product offerings; localising Sage Pay’s messaging appropriately.

Skills and experience
Working closely with the Marketing team in the UK, the ideal candidate will have experience of marketing in a similar role and be willing to execute across the full marketing mix.

You'll have worked extensively on projects involving direct mail, advertising, email marketing, social media, digital marketing & PR. An understanding of brand strategy and partnerships is advantageous.

Who we're looking for
Strong communication skills and confidence are a big part of this role as you'll be dealing directly with customers, partners and internal stakeholders to deliver a demanding schedule of customer campaigns.

You’ll have a creative, innovative and proactive approach to work and be highly self-motivated to work both individually, as well as part of a team. You’ll also have a keen eye for detail as well as an ability to understand and interpret complex product information.

It is essential that you are able to multi-task, prioritise work and manage your time effectively.

To view more jobs in the card and payment industry, go to http://www.cardandpaymentjobs.com

O2 becomes latest company to launch a digital wallet

Hot on the heels of Barclay’s Pingit and Barclaycard’s Paytag, O2 has become the latest company in the UK to offer a digital wallet.

The product allows a number of functions, including:

·         Money Message – enabling  daily transfers of between £1 and £500 to any UK mobile phone number

·         Shopping via your mobile – A  barcode and search engine function compares the prices of millions of branded goods from more than 100 online retailers

·         Your phone as your wallet – O2 Wallet enables consumers to digitise their existing debit and credit cards making paying for goods or services via their mobile a reality. Customers can load money into their O2 Wallet account via one of their debit cards, by receiving a Money Message or with cash at more than 30,000 locations including O2 stores, PayPoint and epay retail outlets. O2 Wallet’s ‘transaction history’ will allow consumers to keep on top of their expenditure with text alerts when the account balance changes; a 30-day payment history on the app; and a 12-month history online

·         O2 Money Account Card – O2 Wallet offers both a physical and a virtual O2 Money Account Card. Both are based on a Visa prepaid account. Consumers can also apply for the physical O2 Money Visa Account Card, a contactless card  to pay for things on the high street or withdraw cash from ATMs available for use at more than 100,000 contactless payment points across the UK

James Le Brocq, Managing Director at O2 Money, said O2 believes that the new product “will transform the way people manage their finances and spend money.”

But in reality, how long will this “transformation” take ? And who is the demographic it will appeal to the most? How long before it trickles down to the late adopters?   

Additional functionality will soon enable consumers to use O2 Wallet to top-up mobile airtime, and buy train tickets.

O2 Wallet is compatible with the majority of smartphones as well as iPads. Even those without a smartphone can use various features of O2 Wallet – for example Money Messages – providing they have web browsing capability on their handsets.

It will be interesting to see the take up of the O2 Wallet. The proportion of people using mobile banking increased from 9.7% in 2010 to 20.4% in 2011. It is predicted that shopping on mobile devices is set to increase by 53% in the next 12 months hitting £4.5bn and making Brits the biggest mobile shoppers in Europe.

How long before digital wallets and mobile payments trickle down to the late adopters ?

For the latest jobs in cards and payments, go to http://www.cardandpaymentjobs.com

Cash will all but die out by 2032

Clive Kahn, chief executive of CardSave, a POS terminal provider to SMEs, believes that cash will account for less than 10% of transactions by 2032.

A new generation of consumers who are regular users of credit and debit cards could mean the end of the road for cash as we increasingly prefer to flex our plastic.

Kahn’s statement comes at a time when CardSave  has seen business double in the past five years, as a significant number of SMEs accept card payments.

Statistics from the UK Cards Association show that between 2008 and 2011, the number of UK card transactions increased by over 25%.

According to a YouGov survey commissioned by CardSave, 74% of the public carries less than £30 in their wallet, while 93% carry a credit or debit card.

The survey found that 57% of people believe that cash will become extinct in the future – 50% predicting  that it will happen by 2035 and 36% by 2025.

In addition, it also found that 40% of consumers believe that being able to pay for everything by card would make their lives easier.

CardSave has seen an increase in small businesses and sole traders - such as electricians - taking card payments to help boost customer numbers and end the hassle of cash-handling.

Devices such as Barclays Pingit mobile payments service is a recent  innovation that could also contribute to boosting the cashless society. It allows individuals and sole traders to send and receive money by mobile for free - and enticingly you don’t have to be a Barclays customer to sign up.

It is expected that more payment companies and banks will follow Barclays' initiative and launch competing systems.

The CardSave report also states that  30% of people say that they have found themselves inconvenienced in the past year by retailers that do not accept card payments, with as many as 16% of people walking out of a shop without making their intended purchase because the retailer didn’t accept cards.

Kahn believes that is one of the reasons retailers are leaning to accepting card payments.

He said: ‘In today's difficult times shopkeepers need to do all that they can to boost their business, which often drives them to accept cards.

‘Taking cards has a positive impact on the business as customers’ spending power is no longer limited to the amount of cash they have in their pocket.’

According to CardSave figures, the biggest growth areas in terms of merchants taking card payments have come from hairdressers, fast food restaurants, car servicing, pubs and taxis.

According to Khan, the main factors driving the demise of cash are generational differences and the increase of technology.

He says that the under 30 tend to carry and use much less cash than older generations, over time as the younger age group makes up a higher proportion of transactions, cash usage will decline.

He believes that the introduction of payment methods that are quicker and easier to use than cash will have the biggest impact on its demise  - and the impact will be felt most within the next five years, when the ability to make electronic payments from smartphones will be prevalent.

Do you think we will be completely cashless in our lifetime?? I can't even bring myself to perform internet banking.... watch this space...........

To view the latest jobs in the card and payment industry, go to http://www.cardandpaymentjobs.com

Visa executive states Mobile won't kill card payments in emerging markets

According to Elizabeth Buse, Visa’s group president for Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa, Visa Inc. still sees a future in payment with plastic, even in the emerging markets where it is aggressively seeking to reach unbanked consumers through new mobile payment platforms. Despite the anticipated ubiquity of a range of mobile payment systems in emerging markets, such as Indonesia and India, the growth of the middle class in these countries means credit cards will still be sought by consumers. "In those markets, you will have people who want feature-rich credit products, typically with a card--those are the people that travel a lot, who do traditional shopping online and who tend to be at the top of the pyramid," stated Buse in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. “Then you will have the people from the rural areas, who today are excluded from financial services, who will likely have mobile as their only way and then you'll have some hybrid in between. You already see some of that in India today." Visa Inc. which publicly listed in the U.S. in March 2008, is holding its first board meeting outside the U.S. in Singapore on the 25th April and 26th April. Singapore is Visa's largest location outside the U.S., employing more than 900 of the company's 8,000-strong global staff base. It is also close to the rapidly growing emerging markets Visa is keen to penetrate such as Indonesia. "There's a ton of cash here (Asia)--the way that we go after it would be different to the way we'd go after it in the U.S. or even Australia and that's where innovation comes in," Buse said. "And it's critically important over here because a lot of that cash is spent by people who don't have access to traditional banking system so they're unbanked to underbanked." Visa is close to achieving its goal of deriving 50% of its revenue from outside its home U.S. market by 2015 ahead of schedule; in the fourth quarter of last year, non-U.S. markets accounted for 46% of revenue. The group last year also acquired Fundamo--a South African mobile payments facility which operates in 40 countries, mostly in Africa--for US$110 million, a company it plans to use to deploy mobile payment systems throughout emerging markets. Fundamo has partnered with a microfinance wholesale bank, Bank Andara, in Indonesia and is in the process of rolling out a mobile payment system in the country using pre-paid Visa accounts. Buse says this programme is targeted at customers outside the major branch networks of Indonesia's banking system, predominantly people in the "bottom half" of the wealth pyramid. "Mobile, we believe, will be the way that electronic payments are brought to the majority of these populations," she said. "The rate of adoption though remains to be seen but we do think there will be a leapfrog in a number of these markets where the traditional infrastructure won't be there."

To view the latest card and payment jobs, go to http://www.cardandpaymentjobs.com

Facebook Credits: Should Payment companies be worried?

What are they ?

Facebook credits are a wallet and a currency.

How do they work ?

There's a "Facebook Payments" tab on the left-hand side of a user's account settings in Facebook. When you click on that you are taken to a screen where you can buy Facebook Credits.

Once there, there are several ways to pay. You can enter your mobile phone number and PayPal's Zong will send you a PIN, which you then enter to get your Credits. It takes a few seconds for the round trip. Or, you can use PayPal itself. Once you enter your account and password, you don't even need to leave the page. There's a credit card option and even a Facebook gift card.

The next time you want to buy Credits, Facebook remembers how you paid the last time and that's the default for buying more. There's a little "change" button at the bottom of the screen that allows you to switch to another payment instrument if you want. Facebook remembers all the different funding methods you used so you can easily switch between them.

You might have gone through this process because you knew you were going to need Facebook Credits and went to your account settings directly. For the moment, most consumers probably go through this process because they are playing a game on Facebook, and the only way they can do that is to buy Facebook Credits.

You may also have Facebook Credits because Facebook or applications on Facebook might have deposited some in your account as a reward or an inducement to take an action on Facebook.

Should payment companies be worried? Part One: Facebook Credits are based on wallet

Any consumer who buys Facebook Credits has a wallet on Facebook. That wallet contains one or more funding sources. The wallet provides a one-click method to buy more Credits. Click, Buy, Spend.

At the moment this wallet is only useful for buying Facebook Credits. And it is a pretty limited wallet. It could even be argued that it is not a wallet at all as there is no widely accepted definition of a wallet.

Should payment companies be worried? Part Two: Facebook Credits Is a Currency

Although the Facebook Credits are no different to how we use our cards today to pay into Amazon, iTunes, PayPal, or any other accounts, the concern is that the wallet isn't being used to directly buy a good or service. It is being used to buy a currency-Facebook Credits-which can then be used by consumers to purchase things (currently only virtual goods for social games) on Facebook and for entities to reward consumers.

The standard definition of "money" is that it is a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Facebook Credits is all of those things.

Money is pretty indestructible but even more so when it is electronic! Once money is created people can keep using it. At the moment this isn't significant since the social game companies that are being paid with Facebook Credits are going to want to cash it in for real currency to satisfy their investors. So they are happy Facebook is sending them real money every couple of weeks.

How that changes over time depends on whether Facebook Credits becomes a broad medium of exchange as a result of commerce taking place on Facebook and as a result of enough people doing things that involve Facebook Credits that they don't mind being paid this way. If that happens, it's a game changer.

Here's an example. Social game companies could pay developers around the world in Facebook Credits and small businesspeople could accept Facebook Credits because they could use them to buy other things that they need or reward customers with them. In some countries (especially those with national debts that are greater than their GDPs) Facebook Credits could become a safer currency than the national currency.

Should payment companies be worried? Part Three: Facebook Credits Could Be a Really Smart-Currency

Existing currencies lack innovation.

The inhabitants of Silicone Valley could make Facebook Credits really smart. Facebook Credits could collect data as it changes hands, support sophisticated loyalty, reward programmes, and lack of enough cups of tea this morning prevent me from thinking of anything else.

Should payment companies be worried? Part Three: Facebook Credits Marginalizes Payments Companies

Existing payments business are basically intermediaries that move money between buyers and sellers. There are many and varied steps in this transactional process and the issue is multiplied when it comes to cross-border transactions.

If most merchants and consumers had accounts with a single provider would there still be any need for payment companies as the intermediary?

What does it all really mean ?

Whilst all the innovations in Facebook credits could be a long way off - what do the short term effects mean ?

• Facebook has a wallet for f-commerce. It can provide users with incentives to use whatever funding mechanism Facebook wants. It is hard to imagine they won't encourage people to fund it through the cheapest mechanism possible. For now though PayPal seems to be the preferred provider because it is easiest
• While that wallet and currency are only useful for virtual goods on social games today Facebook could easily (a) make the Facebook Credits a required tender type for other commerce activity on Facebook and have hinted they will; (b) make the Facebook wallet available to merchants on Facebook even without requiring them to use Facebook Credits; and (c) require merchants that are either on Facebook and that connect to Facebook to use the Facebook wallet or the accept Facebook Credits for payment
• As the use of Facebook Credits and the Facebook wallet for f-commerce expands, Facebook's decisions on funding mechanisms for Facebook wallet have significant ramifications for payments companies. One can imagine Facebook going for payment methods that are really simple or really cheap. Traditional credit and debit cards do not do well in those dimensions in relation to the alternatives
• Once a significant portion of Facebook users have Facebook wallets and Facebook Credits, Facebook could become a very efficient global money transfer platform.

For as long as Facebook Credits remain the currency for a relatively small f-commerce economy there is not much reason for payment companies to take notice. They would lose their commission on a small piece of the action.

The not-so-far-fetched worry for payments companies is that Facebook will plug into a significant portion of online and offline commerce.

Most significant businesses have Facebook fan pages. Facebook and these merchants have a strong interest in moving commerce on to Facebook. The former because that's where the money is, and the latter because that's where their customers are.

There is also Facebook's move to mobile to consider which could provide a link to physical sales. A significant amount of Facebook traffic is coming from mobile devices and the company sees mobile as very much in its future. Whilst mobile devices are not great for selling advertising per se, they are useful for facilitating commerce. Facebook Credits could become a payment method at the physical point of sale and linked in a variety of ways to Facebook fan pages.

Whilst these goals are highly ambitious and somewhat futuristic, they are not beyond the capabilities of the Facebook gurus.

To view the latest jobs in the card and payment industry, go to http://www.cardandpaymentjobs.com

European Central Bank calls for feedback on internet payment

The European Central Bank (ECB) has launched a public consultation on its recommendations for security measures on internet payments as part of the fight against online fraud.

Both payment service providers (PSPs) and card payment schemes are expected to implement the recommendations by July 2014. The recommendations set out minimum standards of best practice covering the control of the payment platform's security environment, specific control and security measures for internet payment, and customer communication and education.

According to the ECB, "The harmonised, minimum security measures will contribute to fighting payment fraud and enhancing consumer trust in such services."

National authorities responsible for supervising card payment schemes, such as the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority (FSA), and other stakeholders, such as e-merchants, are also encouraged to adopt the best practices.

Among its recommendations, the ECB highlights the need to assess risks associated with providing internet payment services. PSPs should also ensure there are strong customer authentication processes in place, alongside systems to identify abnormal customer payment patterns.

The ECB stated In addition that PSPs should engage with customers and raise their awareness of security issues to help prevent fraud.

The proposals form part of the work undertaken by the European Forum on the Security of Retail Payments, established in 2011 at the suggestion of the Payment and Settlement Systems Committee of the ECB. The Forum is a voluntary initiative between European authorities responsible for overseeing PSPs.

A report into fraud in the European Card Payment market by Payments Cards and Mobile Research found that the UK suffered £440.3m in losses due to card fraud in 2010 - almost 10 per cent of the total value of purchases made in the card payment market. It observed that historically the UK was the country in Europe most exposed to payment card fraud, due partly to a rapid growth in online card use.

A separate study by e-fraud management consultants Ethoca in 2011 found that e-commerce merchants can detect and prevent more online credit card fraud by sharing data in real time.

The survey of 95 leading credit card issuers and online merchants revealed thataud in one in ten of all cases studied, a single card was used to commit fraud against more than one more merchant, while in 86% of cases the fraudster stopped using the cards within 24 hours.

To view the latest jobs in the card and payment industry, go to http://www.cardandpaymentjobs.com