Payments Monitor

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 9th of October 2015, and some top stories of interest in my feed are: TOP STORIES Starbucks will soon be accepting Apple Pay. This announcement was made by Jennifer Baily at the Code/Recode Mobile conference in California. Starbucks has already started trials of accepting payments via Apple Pay in some of it stores and expect a complete rollout by 2016. British Bank Standard Chartered’s CEO Bill Winters announced plans to lay-off 1,000 top managers, as part of the overhaul in progress to turn the bank around. Oddly enough Mr. Winters was issued more than 6 Million British Pounds worth of shares in compensation for leaving City of London hedge fund that he founded. Will the US economy, the largest in the world, expect a recession in 2016? A delayed Fed rate hike and turmoil in global equity markets might suggest so. The probability that US will enter a recession jumped to 15%, the highest since October 2013. However, in a separate survey, many economist predict that the US will not enter a recession until 2019. Trouble in Malaysia where the Central Bank – Bank Negara has sought criminal proceedings against the troubled state investment fund 1Malaysia Development. The fund which has setup in 2009 by Prime Minister Najib Razak to spur growth, is actually US$ 11 Billion in debt and is also the focus of many international investigations, including the Prime Minister himself. Many sovereign investors fear their money into this fund is now essentially doomed. With the possibility of any 2015 rate hike by the Federal Reserve fading, markets all over the world are up, including the US. This also prompted oil extended gains this Friday which have been the biggest weekly gains in over 6-years (since 2009). US ride sharing company Lyft announced that it is implementing a faster payout solution called “Express Pay” one which allows drivers to get paid the same day. Powered by Stripe, the new service will allows drivers to get instant deposit into their bank account (minimum payout of US$ 50 applies) BLOG OPINION Luis Buenaventure, one of the co-founders of bitcoin remittance company rebit.ph recently published in his blog post, that bitcoin do not make remittances cheaper. Luis points out various reasons to support his claim, particularly having been inside the industry and seen where the mechanics of bitcoin and remittances are falling apart. No surprise that a Singapore based cryptocurrency company in the remittances space, previously known as Cryptosigma has changed its name to Toast, raised new money and has pivoted away from Bitcoin. ONE LAST WORD... It seems it would be fintech unbecoming if we don’t include the word disruption in everything banking and payments. There are literally 100s of players trying to disrupt one thing or the other in the payments arena, yet very few players are talking about stitching it together. Perhaps it is time we started talking about collaboration instead of disruption, considering how disjointed, fragmented and isolated the various payment system in the world are. Collaboration just might be the key. That’s all for today, have a great weekend, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 12th of October 2015, happy thanksgiving to all those listening in from Canada, to the rest, its Monday! Anyhow, here is what is trending today: TOP STORIES Dell agrees to buy EMC for US$ 67 Billion – the largest tech deal ever. Dell announced a few hours ago its intention to buy the corporate giant for software, storage and security as part of Dell’s transformation from the consumer PC business to an IT solutions provider for companies. SnapSwan, a cryptocurrency gateway that used to trade Ripple’s XRPs (without license I might add) was granted a license to provide services as a regulation Payment Institution (by Luxembourg). SnapSwan will now offer payments, remittances and currency exchange services in Europe.. UK’s VocaLink, the company behind UK’s Faster Payments has reason to celebrate. Thailand signed a deal with VovaLink for instant mobile payments. This is a big win for VocaLink which is also the front-end contender in countries like Singapore and Australia. The deal, announced at Sibos (Singapore today) is signed between VocaLink and Thailand’s interbank payment network: National ITMX. A point worth mentioning, this is a Letter of Intent that will explore the potential development of a real-time mobile payments system in Thailand. Oil rose slightly after Kuwait’s oil minister said OPEC forecasts more demand for oil next year, in face of removal of high-cost producers, who eventually would be removed from the production count, thus tightening up the global fuel balance. After the recent spate of hacking attacks (or disclosures – however you want to look at it), cyber insurance premiums have rocketed. Deductibles are being raised significantly and coverage caps are now being placed to US$ 100 Million by many insurance companies. Renewals have also been made prohibitively expensive. Don’t be expecting any sympathy from the insurance industry anytime soon. BLOG OPINION First there was the 2008 financial crisis. Then the European debt crisis (which still isn’t over by the way), now Goldman Sachs is saying, get ready for the third wave of financial crisis. Who does it affect? Emerging Markets, or EM-Wave as it is called. Now usually when an investment bank like Goldman Sachs lets this horse out in the open, the key word to understand is, losses have already been taken. ONE LAST WORD... Disruption it seems is difficult to accept. I bet at one point in time the buggy-whip manufacturers were up in arms over the introduction of something called the horseless carriage, i.e. the automobile. The same is being shown by cities and countries all over the world, who are trying to place clogs in the machinery, especially for the transportation sector, i.e. Uber and its fellow clones. After Paris, Australia has now cited it will block all taxi-hailing apps like Uber, iHail, etc. in Australia. It is only a matter of time when the consumers will put pressure on their local legislators to have such myopic decisions reversed. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 13th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Author, Speaker, Futurist and CEO of Moven, Brett King announced at Sibos today that Moven raised US$ 12 Million in a Series B financing round led by Route 66 Ventures, bringing the total capital raised to US$ 25 Million. What started out as a mobile based PFM / wallet, is now more of a cooperative mobile app, that has licensed deals with banks in the regional countries Moven is operational. Good going Sir. Navi Ravikant, of AngelList has ventured East and won. The cofounder of AngelList has managed to secure US$ 400 Million from China! CSC Ventures, the US arm of China Science and Merchants Investment Management Group is pushing the private equity money to US and wants a piece of the action on all the potentials that AngelList can throw at them. Needless to say, this is going to shake a few trees on Sand Hill Road. Worldpay made its debut in UK on the London Stock Exchange, valuing the company at 4.8 Billion Pounds. Towards the end of the day, shares were trading at the debut price range. WorldPay has raised 2.5 Billion Pounds from the IPO. Twitter Cofounder & CEO Jack Dorsey is going to be giving the pink slips to about 8% of its global workforce under a new restructuring plan. J P Morgan Chase executive James Staley has been picked as the front-runner for the Barclays CEO position, a void left after former CEO Antony Jenkins left in wake of financial problems at the British Bank. Joining other countries, India and China are now issuing guidelines for taxi-hailing apps. BLOG OPINION Facebook’s new product called Canvas allowed users to tap on carousel format ads, and rather than be taken to the advertisers own website (which often takes time to load), product pages will load directly within Facebook. Yet another step closer for Facebook before it becomes the Shopify of the Internet world. E-Commerce is just around the corner. ONE LAST WORD... Microsoft now has 25 active money transmitter licenses in the US, my sources tell me an all new adaptive payment app is ready at Microsoft, just cannot be launched because not all the licenses are in (especially, NY, CA and TX). The app which will work with Skype and natively within Windows 10 and Windows Mobile has been in development for over two years internally within Microsoft. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 14th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Hyperledger, a Blockchain startup who’s co-founders are based out of China and the US, just got their first big break. At Innotribe in Singapore, Hyperledger won the $50,000 Innotribe startup prize. Hyperledger is a distributed ledger that allows banks and other financial institutions to clear and settle financial transactions in real-time. The hits just keep on coming, the US charity shop chain America’s Thrift Stores just reported a data-breach, as per a press-release, the hacks originated from somewhere in Eastern Europe. With a recent trademark filing by LG (Lucky Goldstar) for a product called GPay, there is now speculation if the Korean company would be entering the payments market and be offering payments on its mobile devices. A quick search of the NMLS database shows no money transmitter licenses awarded to LG. Goldman Sachs role in 1 Malaysia Development (1MDB) transactions are now being probed by the FBI and US Justice department. As you may recall 1MDB is the state development fund of Malaysia that is in trouble over its $11 Billion debt and payout to the standing Prime Minister of Malaysia. UK Jobless rate drops to pre-crisis levels to 5.4 percent, the lowest since early 2008. The data offers some assurance that the UK economy is growing despite the global slow down and market turmoil in China. JP Morgan Chase’s 3rd quarter earnings were mix, but there was good news on the mobile side of things. The US banking giant now reports that it has surpassed 22 Million active mobile customers. In the early morning today, its all red on the markets, everything seems to be down as investors digest earnings. BLOG OPINION There is a crisis brewing in Brazil, and everyone knows about it. Bloomberg has a great 3 series article that you must read on Brazil, why it is scaring bankers and wiping out jobs. It seems nothing is going right for the 9th largest economy in the world. STARTUP OF THE WEEK... The startup of this week is TawiPay, started by brothers Broid (Francois and Pascal) and their friend Laurent Oberholzer, the Swiss startup is all about money transfer (i.e. remittances). They offer a very nice comparison engine, along with a data observatory for all things money transfer. All the links referenced on this website can be accessed at faisalkhan.com/podcast. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 8th of October 2015, and some top stories of interest in my feed are: TOP STORIES Lets start with the bad news. If you’re a Deutsche Bank shareholder, you have everything to be worried about. The German bank just announced 6 Billion Euro loss for its 3rd quarter, and a new record. The 7 Billion Dollar loss sent shockwaves throughout the financial world, no one was expecting this. Germany’s been experiencing an extended summer of discontent, considering the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Deutsche Bank will be initiating jobs cuts, pay cuts, and cleaning up banker’s bonuses. As far as dividend to shareholders is concerned, I’m afraid things aren’t looking rosy on that front either. The European parliament just formally adopted the revised Directive on Payment Services, better known as PSD2. The new directives essentially set new rules to boost competition and innovation whilst at the same time improving consumer protections. The revised rules will make bill paying less costly, and will allow payment players to use mobile and online tools to make these payments on client’s behalf. Also add to this mix, data protection and liability rules for payment service providers (PSPs) and foster competition by creation of more banking APIs. China steps up its game to establish its own cross-border interbank payments and settlement system, as an alternative to SWIFT. Called CIPS (China Interbank Payments System) will be connecting 11 domestic banks and eight foreign institutions. The system’s default currency will be the Chinese Yuan (which if you hear yesterday’s podcast, became the 4th most traded currency in the world after the US Dollar, Euro and British Pound). China’s move in establishing the CIPS is to buffer any counter threat that the US and EU can apply on the de facto platform, i.e. SWIFT. It seems the hacking wave (or rather the discovery of being hacked) is never ending. Hackers affiliated with the Chinese Government have breached LoopPay, the near-field payment technology company bought by Samsung. Samsung Pay, which was launched in the US last month has amassed an impressive US$ 30 Million in transaction since its debut. Samsung spokesperson say, while they were hacked earlier in March this year, no customer data seems to have been stolen. Samsung also is expect to rebound both profits and sales on third quarter earnings. Profits are expected to hit US$ 6.3 Billion. BLOG OPINION If you’re looking for an authentic place to get solid research on financial inclusion, I would highly recommend that you look at intermedia.org – they publish detailed reports, especially their Wave Reports on financial inclusion for many countries. Worth a look if that’s your arena. DID YOU KNOW That by 2017, China will have more IMAX screens than the US, a little something I picked up this morning on Bloomberg GO! Oddly enough Google just bought the domain abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com – why? I have no clue. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor.