Payment News

Latest Branch Announcement Causes Australian Anxiety

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank is to scrap over-the-counter cash withdrawals at new cashless bank branches. Cash will still be available at ATMs. This is part of a move for branches to focus on ‘complex’ banking including business customers and loan products.

The bank has responded to robust criticism of this change by pointing out there are only a very small number of these specialist centres, that they are only in major metropolitan areas, and all are very close to full-service branches and that Commonwealth Bank maintains Australia’s largest branch network for customers.

The criticism is prompted in part by a wider move by Australia’s ‘big four’ banks, such as ANZ and NAB, to digital banking. Australia has recently announced that by 2030 cheques will be removed from circulation. Organisations representing the elderly and rural areas are particularly concerned. They have also pointed out that there are often fees added onto digital transactions.

In June, the Commonwealth Bank app experienced an outage that lasted hours which prevented customers from accessing their money at all. On this occasion the outage was not cyber-attack related.

Spanish Bank JV to Fight Fraud

Three large Spanish banks have teamed up to share data in the fight against financial crime. To do this Banco Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank have had to set up a company called FrauDfense. The plan is to widen this to include other banks and organisations.

A tool is being created that will share information on fraudulent practices and effective response measures. It has to ensure information remains private and secure.

Dutch Police Raid ATM Gangs

Gangs operating out of the Netherlands have been attacking ATMs in Germany for some time. In Bavaria alone there have been 31 explosions causing about €4 million worth of damage and the theft of €3.4 million. In February German police organised a series of raids and now Dutch police have raided 25 locations in the Netherlands, successfully seizing explosives organised for nine attacks and other supporting equipment.

The gangs have had to attack targets in Germany following the response of the Dutch authorities who closed ATM networks overnight and moved ATMs to more secure locations.

Digital Payments Embedded in Malaysia

The use of contactless cards is now commonplace in Malaysia according to the Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes 2022 study. Those making contactless payments has increased from 56% in 2022 to nearly 70% today. Visa says Malaysia now has one of the most developed contactless markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

The survey said 67% of Malaysians had tried to go cashless for at least a few days. Part of the reason for this was more places adopting cashless payments. People were using contactless cards, making QR-code payments, shopping online or using in-app payments. Almost half of respondents were carrying less cash.

Alipay+ Enters Malaysia Market

Ant Group, who own Alipay+, are expanding in Malaysia. All of the 2,400 7-Eleven stores in Malaysia can now take payment using Alipay+. In fact, four Asian mobile wallets are now accepted by 7-Eleven, AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR), GCash (Philippines), Kakao Pay (South Korea) and TrueMoney (Thailand).

Alipay, an Alipay+ partner mobile wallet, has been accepted by Malaysian merchants since 2016.

The acquiring partner in Malaysia is Razer Merchant Services (RMS). Alipay+ is now integrated with more than 80,000 merchant touchpoints in Malaysia.

Time for the End of Coins?

David Hensley, a cash expert at Enryo, has asked whether it is time to ‘ditch coins’. His argument starts with the cost of production, moves to the space and weight of coins in pockets or purses, and he then argues that their usefulness is declining as digital payments increase. Clearly, high rates of inflation don’t help. He ends arguing that they are bad for the environment, both the challenges of distribution and that they end up on landfill at the end of their lives.

His solution is a move to one of the many digital wallet-based solutions that exist. It may resolve the short comings of coins that he states, it may help make banknotes more convenient to use, but if coins, why not banknotes too?

Good to have the challenge so publicly stated?

A2A Payments Growing Slowly

A payment infrastructure provider, Token.io, and a payment processor, Total Processing, are offering account-to-account (A2A) payments to European customers. Token.io provides payment infrastructure to 567 million bank accounts in 16 European countries.

When A2A payments are made, the users authenticate directly with their banks. The result is a high success rate and a frictionless experience for the users and merchants have lower costs and get instant settlement. A2A payments are currently widely used for e-commerce and recurring payments. They are also used for alternative payment methods such as pay by link.

Currently A2A payments are in their infancy. In 2023 $53 million was paid for using A2A channels. They are made possible by open banking and their use is rapidly increasing.

Visa and Mastercard Sued, Again

Block is better known as Square, which provides a payment platform. In the US it is now suing Mastercard and Visa over interchange and other fees. It claims that they have conspired to fix these and to maintain market power.

Square pays interchange fees directly on behalf of its customers, including the costs in the fees it charges its users. It is unhappy about other fees on the basis that they complex, difficult to calculate and unavoidable. The fees are calculated based on the size and location of merchants.

Pix Takes Market Share from Credit and Debit Cards

In the first quarter of 2023, Brazil’s Pix payment scheme achieved the milestone of having more transactions made on its instant payments platform than the number made by credit and debit cards added together, 8.1 billion compared with 8 billion. 35% of all transactions were made using Pix, up from 23% a year before. Credit cards fell 2% and debit cards 4%.

30% of transactions were made using QR codes.