CONSOLIDATION LOOKS set to continue reshaping the structure of Western Europe’s merchant acquiring and processing market, according to a new report from Lafferty Group. This restructuring is likely to be driven by a range of forces including the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and the impact of alternative players working towards providing a viable debit scheme to challenge the dominance of Visa and MasterCard in Europe.
Letter from the editor
June has certainly been a historic month for financial regulation. With the US House of Representatives approving a sweeping financial reform bill on 30 June 2010, the legislation will now go to the Senate, where the vote on the bill is expected to take place in mid-July 2010. President Obama had hoped to sign the bill into law by 4 July, but the process was delayed by the death of Democratic senator Robert Byrd, which meant that the Democrats have been scrambling to secure enough votes to get the legislation passed.
Delinquencies dampen Indian boom
The Indian payment cards market has massive potential for growth, but a recent boom has been tempered by rising delinquency rates. Major issuers in India have become more cautious and have been paring down their portfolios and closing unproductive accounts. As a result, the number of cards in issue in the Indian market in 2009 decreased by 13.7 percent because of concern over delinquencies
Onwards and upwards
MTN Uganda’s mobile money service enables consumers to send and receive funds anywhere in Uganda by using their mobile phones. The Ugandan telecommunications company is expecting to have more than 2 million users of its mobile money service by the end of 2010, increasing to 3.5 million by 2012. Richard Mwami, head of mobile money at MTN Uganda, speaks to Ronan McCaughey about the company’s business model and future strategy
Chilean retailers challenge banks
Payment cards are widely accepted in Chile, with MasterCard and Visa dominating the market. One particular characteristic of the Chilean market is that retailers have comparable market clout to banks, and have penetrated the consumer finance market through the issuing of private-label cards
Varying degrees of progress
Plans for a third debit card scheme in Europe to challenge the dominance of Visa and MasterCard are beginning to take shape, with a number of developments beginning to emerge. Some experts have been sceptical that the vision of a third pan-European debit scheme will ever come to fruition. However, varying degrees of progress are being made by the Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes (EAPS), the Monnet project and the PayFair network.
Lafferty Council Headline Conclusions
Members of the International Cards & Payments Council met in Lisbon in May 2010 to discuss the latest developments in the global cards and payments industry.
Databank
APAC credit card profitability metrics
Issue: 2010/07 Date: 23 Jul 2010
Deep impact of US banking reform
THE JOURNEY OF the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has been heralded as the most significant legislation to affect the US banking industry since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The new regulatory regime will certainly leave a lasting impact on the US retail banking industry, although much of the detail will be left to the regulators to finalise.
Letter from the editor
The pace of change in today’s global retail banking industry continues to accelerate and nowhere is this more evident than in the regulatory space, as can be seen by the sweeping reform package of the US financial system that was recently signed into law by President Obama.
The case for breaking up Barclays
Growing political and commercial pressure may lead Barclays to consider spinning off both its investment and corporate banking operations and the Barclays Wealth division into a new company, leaving the remaining business as a predominantly pan-European and pan-African retail bank. Lafferty Retail Banking Insider assesses why Barclays might be about to embark on this bold change of direction.
Major surgery for Spain’s savings banks
A regulatory overhaul designed to bolster Spain’s troubled savings banks, or cajas de ahorros, which opens the door to private ownership, has been reportedly hailed as the most important reform of Spain’s banking system by the country’s Prime Minister. The Spanish government’s approval of the reform package will help to make the governance of the cajas more transparent and professional as the sector restructures.
Building a banking powerhouse
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) is focused on becoming a retail banking powerhouse in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This target was boosted by its recent agreement to acquire The Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) retail banking business in the UAE. Arup Mukhopadhyay, executive vice president and head of consumer banking at ADCB, speaks to Ronan McCaughey about the bank’s ambitions and the state of retail banking in the UAE.
Dealing with internal fraud
Fraud prevention in the global retail banking industry has typically been focused on preventing outsiders from stealing data, but now banks are facing up to a serious risk that is much closer to home: their employees. Jane Cooper examines the extent of this problem and ways that financial institutions can combat it
Finding a sustainable P2P model
Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending websites, which threaten the traditional intermediary role of retail banks, function as online ‘matchmaking’ sites between borrowers and lenders, and aim to offer better rates to consumers than they would otherwise find at mainstream financial institutions.
Databank
Benchmarking Europe G5 markets
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