Asia’s e-commerce ecosystem is growing in vibrancy, and while there are a few international online payment service providers that cater to the region, many local providers have stepped in to enable merchants to accept online payments to fill the gaps where foreign companies have not been able to traverse.

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By downloading this e-book,you will learn:

• Who are the top payment service providers in the region

• What makes each of them an appropriate payments partner

• What type of solutions they provide to enable the growth of e-commerce

• What are the long-term benefits of their solutions

Download e-book here.

Total Payments Asia 2013, will be held in Bangkok from October 8-9, gathering the key influencers and innovators driving this region’s growth.

If you would like to get involved as a potential sponsor or exhibitor, please contact Melissa Ang +6322 2756 or email Melissa.ang@terrapinn.com for a customised proposal.

Alternatively, you may download the sponsorship brochure here

It’s undeniable that Singapore boasts one of Asia’s most efficient transport systems and EZ-Link, a subsidiary of the Land Transport Authority (LTA)has played an integral role in improving the way commuters travel in the country. As Singapore’s largest contactless service provider for payments on public buses and Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) trains, EZ-Link has been pushing for NFC adoption in Singapore since 2007.

At Cards & Payments Asia 2013 conference, Ms Johanna Toh, VP Sales and Marketing fervently shared about the company’s journey as a key player in boosting NFC adoption.

Download the presentation here >

From the presentation, you will learn:

• What does it take to educate the masses and encourage mass adoption of NFC?
• Deploying NFC ticketing in Singapore’s public transport
• Getting buy-in from the key stakeholders in the NFC ecosystem

Download the presentation here >

Total Payments Asia 2013, will be held in Bangkok from October 8-9, gathering the key influencers and innovators driving this region’s growth.

If you would like to get involved as a potential sponsor or exhibitor, please contact Colin Carter at (65) 6322 2776 or email colin.carter@terrapinn.com for a customised proposal.

Alternatively, you may download the sponsorship brochure here.

All eyes in the payment world are currently on the US, as the last major economy to tackle the migration to EMV. This shift is part of the global initiative to combat payment fraud, by moving away from the old mag-stripe standard to EMV-chip enabled cards.

The project has been a success in countries which have already adopted the standard, where fraud levels have reduced dramatically. However, the ultimate goal of stamping out payment fraud altogether will be unachievable whilst regional ‘loopholes’ exist.

Fraudsters are skilled at identifying and targeting weak links in security, and the US has suffered as a result. While ATMs still accept mag-stripe cards to withdraw cash, it has been the ideal playground for fraudsters to test and use skimmed mag-stripe cards. Cards from other EMV-mature regions are not excluded from this, as the mag-stripe remains on the card for legacy reasons This scenario is brought to life through findings from a number of fraud and security reports.

Financial Fraud Action UK recently revealed that counterfeit fraud from skimmed or cloned cards decreased from £169.8 million in 2009 to just £42.1 million in 2012. By contrast, according to the Nilson Report in 2011, US payment card fraud losses reached an estimated $3.56 billion. The impact of fraud migration from non-EMV mature markets is stark when considering that this figure accounts for 47 per cent of all reported worldwide fraud losses.

EMV migration is a significant undertaking. The transition to the new standard affects every element of the payment chain, making it a costly and complex project to implement. This is true in any region, though is particularly evident in the vast US market. Faced with the modification of an entire payment ecosystem across a large geography and numerous time zones, it is perhaps unsurprising that the US is lagging behind the global EMV adoption curve.

The importance of global interoperability of devices and systems within this initiative is highlighted by the rigorous testing and certification processes put in place by EMVCo. EMVCo is the standards body setup by the Card Brands to manage all aspects of EMV. Although these are necessary to facilitate truly global adoption, the testing process can be time-consuming and expensive. With resources in short supply amongst both certification labs and the wider payments industry, a certification bottleneck, which could slow down global adoption, is a real possibility.

The enormous cost of implementation associated with EMV migration has not gone unnoticed by some industry experts, who have recently called the benefits of the transition into question. These doubts are based largely on a direct comparison of the potential financial losses through counterfeit card fraud and the cost of EMV migration. This stance does not take other important market factors into account – the benefits of EMV migration for the industry run deeper than immediate financial gains.

It is important to note that those behind card fraud are often behind larger organised crime units and, according to some reports, terrorist activities. Eleven people across the US, UK and Vietnam were arrested and accused of running a $200 million worldwide credit card fraud ring just a week ago, according to a report from Reuters. In this regard, parties across the entire payments ecosystem have a global social responsibility to protect customers and help prevent money being stolen and used for further criminal activities.

US migration to the EMV standard will close a major loophole for fraudsters, representing a significant step towards worldwide interoperability and adoption of the standard. However, the momentum must not end there. The industry must continue to collaborate, with a synchronised cross-border approach if the core goal of EMV – stamping out global payment fraud – is to become a reality.

This guest blog comes courtesy of Jeremy Gumbley, CTO, CreditCall.

[Image: Paymentmax – Flickr]

It seems that electronic payments are having a profound effect not just upon Myanmar, but also Malaysia.

According to a study conducted by Moody’s Analytics for Visa, electronic payments products like credit and debit cards have added RM13.17 billion to the nation’s GDP.

The study was conducted across 56 countries that accounted for 93 per cent of the world’s GDP. From these results, Visa concluded that card usage had made Malaysia’s economy far more efficient, thus boosting economic growth.

Stuart Tomlinson, Visa’s country manager for Malaysia, said that there’s no denying the benefits of electronic payments in the region, nor the importance of an open marketplace to encourage innovation within the industry.

“We are excited about the prospects of increasing electronic payments in Malaysia through new, innovative solutions, and we look forward to working with local businesses, governments and industry stakeholders to continue to expand and support local economic growth,” said Tomlinson.

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi added that

“The increase in consumption parallels the growing popularity and accessibility of electronic payments among the global consumers.

“At the same time, these findings point to the need for governments to adopt policies that encourage the shift to efficient and secure electronic forms of payments.”

It’s certainly a good sign to be seeing significant growth in an area thanks to the pervasion of payment technologies. Hopefully as time passes other nations within Asia can grow their economy speedily through such measures.

For more information around the world of payments in Asia, take a look at the upcoming Total Payments event in Bangkok.

Despite the influx of information surrounding the growth of mobile payments, NFC payments and the call for EMV to be fully introduced into the US sooner rather than later, it seems that the number of cash-based payments is actually increasing.

According to a study by the UK Payments Council, a growing number of consumers and businesses are favouring cash over cards when making everyday transactions.

Around 20.8 billion cash payments were made during 2012, compared with the 20.6 billion in 2011. Cash payments accounted for 54 per cent of all these transactions.

Cash machines also grew in number across the UK to 66,000 across the nation, with 46,069 of them being completely free to use.

So, why the rise in cash-based transactions?

UKPC believe that this could well be because more people are being careful with their spending. By taking out cash and paying that way, they can see how much money they actually have available to them, instead of just placing it on their card.

“Cash is still a vital part of our day-to-day lives, and more than half of all our payments are in cash,” said UKPC’s head of cash David Hensley, “reflecting its easy use and its wide acceptance.”

Of course, if more merchants were interested in adopting mPOS devices for their stalls, and NFC integration was higher than it currently is, perhaps mobile payments and card payments could win out due to their widespread ease of use.

It’s still far preferable to pay by cash at a bar due to so many having minimum charges, so perhaps until those are combatted the dependency on cash may drop instead of rise.

At this year’s Total Payments Europe, which is part of Europe’s Customer Festival, you’ll see the future of payments and meet people who can help you grow your payments business and provide customers with helpful and novel ways to pay, while also offering your services to highly influential companies.

You can download the free prospectus now.

Besides serving as a platform to connect with friends and family, it looks like social media could serve another purpose: protecting against payment fraud. Companies like EBay, PayPal, WePay, Equifax and intuit have begun trials to see whether the information we share on social media can help verify identities or detect whether customers are lying about their finances.

Even from accessing the information on our social networks  that is publicly available, these companies have enough information to surmise whether a transaction is high risk. They can detect, for example, whether the “current city” or recent location check-ins or tags on Facebook matches the shipping address for the goods a person is trying to purchase.

But what about fraudsters with fake social media profiles? Although anyone can create fake social profiles, it’s hard to fake a digital footprint that comes from real social interactions. An average Facebook user, for example, is tagged by friends more than 70 times a year. In addition, a fake social media account can be detected by some criteria like the date it was created, the number of connections, how frequently is updated etc.

Although many social media users are concerned about how companies are using their data for advertising, using data from social media to protect consumers against online payment fraud would ultimately be beneficial for users, especially as online payment fraud costs an estimated $1 billion per year in Asia alone.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-13/using-social-media-to-stop-online-payment-fraud

The competition, designed to be a greulling battle between nations for the greatest ‘hacker’ in the world – although I’m sure that someone should point out to them that hackers don’t really create programmes, more break them.

Offering up a prize of $100,000 to the winner, along with an axe-shaped trophy and a Raspberry Pi computer, the aim seems to be to capture the youth talent and channel it into becoming the future of PayPal development – helping fuel their app infrastructure and innovate beyond their already expansive product range.

It’s a very clever campaign, especially as it draws upon everything stereotypically associated with the geekery surrounding hacker culture: video game, anime, music and film references feature plenty over on ther Battle Hack website.

But most importantly of all, PayPal have found a way to get those who will shape the future of technology interested in the payments market.

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The big issues in the North American marketplace at the moment is in understandnig and adopting mobile payments properly. The second is the implementation of EMV cards across the nation and meeting the requirement date set by issuers for October 2015.

The major problem is that many US retailers just don’t think it’s a cost-effective piece of technology.

You can find out more about what European retailers want from their payment technologies at this year’s Total Payments Europe held in London in September. You can downlaod a free brochure to find out more information about the event and what it can do for you.

Right now, you can buy a number of things online with bitcoin: from soap, illegal drugs, alpaca wool socks, a WordPress blog… but it’s still a long way from widespread acceptance.

Austin & Beccy aren’t the first to try living on Bitcoin. A Forbes staff tried living on it for a week, and while possible, had her living on the fringes at times.

Sound like a crazy idea?

China Mobile and China UnionPay announced on Sunday the launch of an NFC service and mobile wallet, integrating China UnionPay’s contactless payment QuickPass with China Mobile’s mobile wallet services. So far, the joint platform will function in at least 14 major cities and is already available with nine banks, including Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China CITIC Bank, China Merchants, China Everbright Bank, China Guangfa Bank, Bank of Beijing, Bank of Shanghai, and China Minsheng Banking Corp, according to the NFC Times.

UnionPay’s contactless payment scheme is supported on 1.2 million QuickPass point-of-sale terminals, but it is not yet clear whether all are activated.

The mobile wallet will have about 500 KB of space available in its NFC SIMs for applications, including support for transit cards, campus and corporate ID cards, city cards, coupons, membership and loyalty.

While there are currently 5 NFC enabled phones that can support the NFC-enabled wallet, China Mobile has mentioned that it plans to distribute more than 10 million 3G NFC phones this year as well as to introduce more models.

It’s still unclear how China Mobile and China UnionPay’s collaboration will pan out as the service is introduced. However, according to their agreement, China UnionPay and are working together on the SWP-SIM technical specifications of the mobile wallet.

Both companies are optimistic about the untapped opportunity of the NFC mobile payment market, despite global reports of low NFC adoption. Due to disappointing adoption of NFC in 2012, with even high-profile Google Wallet struggling to gain traction, a report by Gartner estimated that the value of NFC transactions will drop by 40%. 

Image source: news.xinhua.com