Episode 15: 22nd October 2015

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 22nd of October 2015, some trending stories for today are:

TOP STORIES

The Dutch bank ABN-Amro is setting up a 10 Million Euro fintech fund. Not wanting to be left behind in the recent wave of banks like BBVA, Santander and Barclays who are pouring money in fintech, ABN-Amro’s Digital Impact Fund (as it is called) will invest in companies that have already launched a product or a service and are in their growth phase.

European Union’s top court rules in favor of Bitcoin. The top court for the EU cites that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies transactions are exempt from VAT.

eBay’s first post-split quarter results were better than expected. Revenue was slightly down 2.4%, but still at a healthy $2.1 billion.

American Express reported its earnings that declined 16% from a year ago. Stronger US Dollar and higher expenses were some of the elements contributing towards the decline. Amex’s breakdown with Costco is also to be blamed for lower earnings.

W3C or World Wide Web Consortium launched a Web Payments Working Group that will help come to a consensus on how to facilitate payments easier online, as the world gravitates to a more digital world. The group will study all the existing standards and protocols (including bitcoin, distributed ledger, etc.) and then standardize this into a an API for all to use.

Network International launches NeO (Network Online), a payment gateway in UAE. it is the first gateway that is created for the middle-east market that takes into consideration the local payment options and the needs of local merchants and consumers.

Just yesterday we discussed YouTube and its paywall, well it's here. YouTube Red is a membership program designed to offer users with exclusive content, better steaming (including the ability to save videos and no ads), all for $9.99 per month.

BLOG OPINION:

If you’ve ever wondered how the FDIC (the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) works, there is an informative YouTube video from 2009, done by 60 Minutes on the FDIC and how it takes over a failing Chicago Bank. The link is provided on faisalkhan.com/podcast.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

RushCard a prepaid debit card provider recently suffered a technical issue which prevented 100,000s of its users from using their prepaid card. The outage which in many instances lasted for more than a week for some, users simply did not have to their money. Whilst a prepaid temporary block may not mean much to you and I, it does mean the world to people who barely make it over the poverty line and are what I would call the lower-banked people. Luckily in the US, the Consumer Protection laws are inherently better than the rest of the world. Imagine no access to your money for one week. We certainly have to work together to improve on this problem for financial inclusion and financial services provisioned for the lower-banked population.

That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor.