The electronic payments business is characterized by batch processing, extended clearing cycles, rigid procedures, complex contractual arrangements, opaque fee structures, and rising fraud rates. Recognising these inefficiencies, central banks have continued to drive reforms, particularly in non-cash, low-value payment systems. And while these reforms are generally aimed at improving the speed, security and cost of non-cash payments, some reforms have…
The global payments paradigm is changing. Worldwide, the dominant international card schemes battle against ever-increasing fraud, exposing their underwhelming response to the emergence of card-not-present transactions. In the developing world, banks are looking to mobile technologies to capture payments by the unbanked and remove reliance on cash. And in the first world, disruptors are carving out pieces of the market…
On Friday 30 March 2017, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced that the country’s largest banks cannot collectively bargain with Apple over access to near field communication (NFC) technology on the iPhone, which would allow the banks to compete with Apple Pay. Rather than enhancing competition, this decision limits Australian consumers and impairs the banks’ profit margins as they…
While you may not have heard of Bluechain yet, we’ve been busy talking to and sharing our vision with the payments industry. In the past 60 days, I’ve logged close to 100,000 miles across four continents and have talked with dozens of tier I and II banks, central banks, regulators, payment service providers and merchants to get a pulse on…