Payments Monitor

Daily #Podcast: Mike Tyson launches a Bitcoin wallet with Bitcoin Direct, China’s stock market still swinging after yesterday’s crisis, Kenyan shilling shows signs of remaining stable after dollar influxes by NGOs. Orange Bank, Paypal + Aramex and more.

A very brief overview of last year and what can we expect this year in the world of banking, payments and fintech.

Daily #Podcast: Will oil breach the $30 floor? The Federal Reserve might be planning to raise interest rates for the first time since the Great Depression - the .bank domain is finally available - how decentralized ledger and the world of instant payments is changing the landscape for payments & banking.

Daily #Podcast: Has the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto been revealed? TransferWise gets two money transmitter licenses in the US, Money Laundering - How big of a problem it is in the US, Turkey & Iran - comparing # of POS deployed. Sweden's war on Cash and Microsoft embraces Ripple on Blockchain-as-a-Service.

Daily #Podcast: Xoom is coming to Bangladesh while M-Pesa will soon begin services in Ghana. Abn Amro Bank to allow signing up with a Selfie, oil prices edging closer to 2015 low, Argentina president aims to dismantle currency controls and some insights from the Mobile Money global conference in Istanbul.

Daily #Podcast: BBVA Bancomer Mexico and Gemalto announce first rollout of Dynamic Code Verification Solution, Bank of England challenges students to create a blockchain solution, Wechat launches mobile wallet in South Africa, China’s Shanghai Composite Index sinks 5.5 percent, Will Britain spend over 1 Billion Pounds on Black Friday?

Today’s #Podcast: Barclays gets fined again. Goldman Sachs charges staffer, Hilton Hotel has a data breach, VISA experiments with blockchain and Remittances, SWIFT says Virtual Currencies not ready for EU Regulations, $60 Million is the asking price for the large uncut diamond and Thanksgiving in US today with shopping season kick-off tomorrow.

Daily #Podcast: Distributed Ledger Technology could render the Central Banks useless (cites a BIS report), Spanish Bank BBVA now owns nearly 30% of UK Challenger Bank: Atom, Samsung Pay adds more issuers, Apply Pay plans to launch in China and Jeff Bezos rockets lands back. Turkey's action with the downing of Russian jet, causes markets to fall, and oil to move up slightly, and in closing thoughts, the Saudi stubbornness on oil production.

Daily #Podcast: Diebold agrees to $1.8 Billion takeover of Wincor-Nixdorf, China could be heading for a Yuan devaluation, Coinbase issues Bitcoin Debit Card, Brazil might regulate Bitcoin, Jack Ma wants a piece of SCMP, Argentina's fever or optimism is high, Discover Around The Coin and Where is Bitcoin going?

Daily #Podcast: China cracks down on $64 Billion “underground bank”, top 20 non-bank money transfer providers based in the UK now account for over £40 billion of foreign exchange per year, Martha Stewart moves to Amazon’s Handmade platform, Dunkin’ Donuts testing a mobile ordering app, world’s 2nd largest uncut diamond discovered in Botswana, MIT now offers a degree in Fintech, Samsung Pay coming to budget phones & Square makes its debut.

Daily #Podcast: Barclay's gets fined US$ 150 Million by NY's DFS. Nigeria's central bank cuts back on US Dollar supplies, EU seeking a crackdown on Bitcoin. Most US shoppers will use Amazon.com this holiday season, and UK Government's report cites Bitcoin "pose lowest money laundering risk"

Daily #Podcast: Barclays facing another fine, Western Union and Wechat to offer cross border payments service, Silicon Valley Bank survey shows 43% think red tape is main hurdle to growth in fintech growth, Blockchain startup Align Commerce raises $12.5 million, Viber might be jumping into the payments game and Groupon continues its exit from Nordic countries.

Daily #Podcast: Webmoney gets an e-money license, Bank of Canada concerned over Bitcoin, Baidu and Citic Bank forming a bank, FCA wants firms to use cloud services, Bitcoin price on the rise again and IMF approves China’s Renminbi as a reserve currency.

Daily #Podcast: Rakuten’s $100 M Fintech Fund, Blackstone invests in NCR, China shopping in the West, Visa Europe looking into blockchain for remittances, Overstock spinning away its blockchain division Medici and global oil inventories reach record level.

Daily #Podcast: Today, Alibaba shatters records, Apple in talks with US banks for P2P mobile money transfers, China opening doors for foreign payment networks, Aite’s new report about P2P payments in the US, Microsoft is allowing access to Ethereum for Bitcoin and blockchain and Brian Roemmele’s new Pay Finder app.

Daily #Podcast: Today, Deutsche Bank troubles, Facebook’s revenue growth, Blackberry reboot, Square IPO, Amazon & Payoneer partnership and latest data showing a surge in the US jobs market in October.

Daily #Podcast: Today, 40% of China’s e-commerce products are fake, Oberthur postpones IPO, today’s Bitcoin price highest this year, VISA Checkout hits 7 million users, the missing billions of Malaysia’s 1MDB and thoughts on Bernard Lunn’s Daily Fintech blog.

Daily Podcast: Today, surging price of Bitcoin, Standard Chartered layoffs, Germany’s alternative to Paypal, Chasepay, cutting off credit rating for 8 largest banks, Candy Crush acquired by Activision and Amazon’s first physical store.

Daily Podcast: Today, VISA buying VISA Europe, FBI blowback on Alert, Turkey’s elections & the Lira, China’s first airplane, HSBC results, Facebook “Local Market” Bitcoin’s new price high & Mr. Monopoly.

Daily Podcast: Today, Chinese Yuan biggest rise since 2005, Bitcoin hits a new high for 2015, Amazon’s “Pay with Amazon”, UBS says London/Hong-Kong property bubble cometh, Legal Marijuana and access to banking in the US, Apple opens its flagship stores in the Middle-East.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 29th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES The new bitcoin incubator Digital Currency Group (DCG) has managed to attract many big name investors and this growing list now includes Mastercard. Mastercard, who had previously stated that digital currencies are more a threat than an advantage, seems be adopting a change in its strategy with this latest investment. In Germany, a new law is being proposed which will allow refugees, homeless people and asylum seekers to open bank accounts at any bank within the country. At the moment, Germany’s laws do not allow anyone without a proof of residency or identification to open a bank account and this new law could go a long way towards ensuring the financial inclusion of marginalized communities and decreasing the number of unbanked. PayPal’s 3rd quarter financial result is out, the now separated payments giant reports a strong third quarter, with revenue of US$ 2.26 Billion (19% up from previous year’s quarter). Citing an active user base of 173 Million, processing nearly US$ 70 Billion in payments (up by 27% from previous year’s quarter). Dwolla enters into a deal with its partner CME Group. Dwolla will be providing the Chicago based group with access to its technology to power payments on the Broker Payment Systems and Give Up Payment Systems, enabling customers to process payments faster. US Economic growth slowed down sharply to 1.5% in the 3rd quarter as American companies reel back on inventories and orders. Bill Gates turned 60 and Deutsche Bank is looking to cut 15,000 jobs and sell some of its businesses that employ 20,000 people. Airbus scored a huge deal with China on the purchase of 130 Airbus wide and narrow body aircrafts. OPINION ON CHINA A mammoth shift in policy takes places in China today. The ruling Communist Party announced that it will abandon the one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s. Under the new policy, couples would be allowed to have two children. This represents a monumental shift as to how China’s coming years will shape. More people in an economy means more resources, more spending, more money movement. This can excel the Chinese economy in the next decade or two by providing it with a labour force growth that would be hard to reckon with, especially exportable labour. As the Bloomberg report summed up “You need people to make an economy go!” CLOSING THOUGHTS The oil glut. As many of us saw the oil prices rise and spiral out of control, sovereign investment funds saw their portfolios boom. All was good and then suddenly there was an oil glut - too much oil as they say. Now everyone is reeling in. Shell is readying itself for a long haul of low prices, Middle East is looking down in its money chest, trying to figure out how much money is left, oil production sets in US are filing for bankruptcy left, right and center, and the airlines, well, they still continue to charge high for travel (despite the low oil prices). I don’t know about you, but the word Karma does comes to mind. You can access this podcast and all its links, including the archives on www.paymentsmonitor.com - That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor. Speak tomorrow!

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 28th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES With the number of increasing innovative payment methods like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, it should come as no surprise that Juniper Research’s new study predicts a huge increase in biometrically authenticated transactions. Biometric payments are cited to go up to nearly 5bn by 2019, up from less than 130 million this year. Speaking of Apple Pay, there’s good news for people in Canada and Australia. Apple Pay will be available in these countries later this year thanks to a recent tie-in with Amex. While Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain will be able to use Apple Pay in 2016. In the world of Cryptocurrencies, Nasdaq’s new blockchain-enabled platform has signed up its first batch of clients. The operator plans to use distributed ledger technology for a host of other tasks and it will be interesting to follow its development. Meanwhile, Russia's Ministry of Finance has decided to tighten regulations about Bitcoin by suggesting a four year sentence for the issuance of cryptocurrencies. Reasons cited for presenting this bill include the negative impact of cryptocurrencies on economic stability and the use of digital currencies by drug traders and anonymous hacking groups. After the recent scandals, Volkswagen has experienced its first quarterly decline in more than a decade. A net loss of $1.84 billion was reported in the third quarter. Remember that Volkswagen had to spend €6.7 billion on recalling and repairing about nine million cars which had been equipped with the illegal software. Analysts predict that sales and revenue is likely to get even worse in the coming quarters. Fastacash, the Singaporean company that is making waves with their social media payments product has now added Xpress Money to their list. XOPO is the newly launched money transfer service using social media messaging. STARTUP OF THE WEEK This week’s startup is a Canadian company called Mogo. Mogo is engaged at reducing debt. As we all can fall into the debt trap pretty easily, getting out is difficult. Mogo provides two things: (a) A prepaid VISA, so that you spend the money that you have in your bank and not on your credit card and (b) they provide lower APR loans, so that you can transfer your credit card loans to their and pay it off using on-time payments. Their website is www.mogo.ca. CLOSING THOUGHTS Another interesting monetary fact for you. The savings of top 100 CEOs equals to 41% of the US families, i.e. 116 Million families in America = savings of just top 100 CEOs. You can access all the links of this podcast on paymentsmonitor.com - If you would like to suggest an improvement or would to comment (provide feedback), please send me an email at podcast {at} faisalkhan.com That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor. Speak tomorrow!

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 27th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES JPMorgan Chase announced that its Chase Pay product (a challenger to Apple Pay) has signed up with the retailer consortium MCX. The Chase Pay wallet is all set to go into battle with the likes of Apple Pay, Google, Samsung and PayPal. MasterCard is wanting to make everything a payment device. MasterCard believes that the IoT (Internet of Things) will enable consumers to make payments that have never been thought possible before. No surprise when Accenture’s report cites that almost half of the world’s largest banks do not have directors with technology experience on their board. The world’s largest money-transfer company Western Union is jumping onboard the social media bandwagon. The remittance giant launched WU Connect, a technology platform that integrates with consumer messaging and social media platform, enabling users to quickly send money throughout the world. Pretty much same thing as FastaCash one would presume. China’s big B2B panda, Alibaba saw a revenue boost, predominantly attributed to mobile. Alibaba’s profits surged to US$ 3.57 Billion for its quarter ending on 30th September. The revenue recorded beat Wall Street forecasts. BP plans to reorganize itself in view of the lower oil prices, whilst the US plans to sell down strategic oil reserves to raise cash. It seems despite the optimism of some oil producing countries in the middle-east, oil prices won’t be climbing back to the near record levels of US$ 100 and above, anytime soon. Last week Credit Suisse released its annual Global Wealth Report. Something true and pretty astonishing from the report: if you have US$ 10 with you, you’re wealthier than 25% of all Americans. BLOG OPINION: There is a really interesting paper out, called “Public versus Private Blockchains” which was put out by the BitFury Group. It is an easy to read paper that explains how Public/Private blockchains can be used. It specifically cites use cases of who, how and where some blockchain implementations are being experimented. CLOSING THOUGHTS For nearly the past two years, myself, and my co-hosts, Brian Roemmele and Mike Townsend have been doing a weekly podcast called Around The Coin. The podcast, which is an hour long recaps some of the stories of the week as well as our perspective on all things banking, payments, fintech, startups and entrepreneurs. We publish the podcast every Sunday and if you’re in the field of banking payments or fintech, rest assured this is worth a listen. Again the URL for that podcast is www.AroundTheCoin.com You can access all the links of this podcast on paymentsmonitor.com - That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor. Speak tomorrow!

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 26th of October 2015, some stories for today are: TOP STORIES Trouble is brewing for Deutsche Bank as the US Justice Department and the New York Department of Financial Services are expanding their probe of money laundering at the German Bank’s Moscow unit to what now may seem like potential breach of Western sanctions against Russia after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. The US Dollar trades being investigated amount to US$ 6 Billion. Some good news for China in the coming days, the International Monetary Fund have given strong signals that the Chinese Yuan could soon join the fund’s basket of reserve currencies, better known as Special Drawing Rights. SDRs were created in 1969 to boost global liquidity as the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates unravelled. Champagne bottled are undoubtedly being uncorked at VocaLink, the British firm behind UK’s Faster Payments, as it signed a letter of intent with US bank based ACH The Clearing House. Clearing House says the ISO 20022 standard real-time payments system will be designed to help US financial institutions gear up and execute real-time payments. This is a big win for Vocalink that lost the Australian real-time payments deal to SWIFT, while it did bag the Singapore real-time payments deal. All this pushes up reasons for the rumors of a SWIFT + Ripple merger to happen. You can tell a lot about an economy from the way it orders its nuts and bolts. Daniel Florness, Chief Financial Officer of Fastenal Co told investors “The industrial environment’s in a recession. I don’t care what anybody says”. His reason for saying so? Declining orders for his company’s nuts and bolts. Spending across the US industrial sector has slowed down, with some industrial giants downright pulling back on machines and parts orders. Quarterly profits and revenue at big American companies are all set to decline for the first time since the recession. The markets are mixed on this Monday morning. The Dow Jones, Nasdaq and Crude Oil are all in the red, while US 10 Year Treasury Note along with the a stronger Euro are looking good in green! BLOG OPINION: We’ve all been educated in more ways than one, of how the US Federal Reserve makes money. How it can magically go to an imaginary printer and print US Dollars. What about the reverse, what does the Fed do when it needs to take money away from the money supply? Does it just go towards a shredder? Not quite. Episode 659 of NPR’s Planet Money addresses just that, titled “How to Make $3 Trillion Disappear”. The answer will surprise you. CLOSING THOUGHTS Fourteen years ago Steve Jobs showcased the iPod to the world. The reactions were mixed. MacRumors.com one of the oldest websites dedicated to the Apple fan community recorded the moment. In hindsight it is very easy to scroll back and roll-eyes at the naysayers. That 23rd October 2001 was a pivotal moment, and fast forward to today where Apple Pay just turned 1, it will be interesting for us to scroll back a few years from now and look at how the Naysayers reacted to Apple Pay. You can access all the links of this podcast on paymentsmonitor.com - That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor. Speak tomorrow!

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.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 21st of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Sweden is well on its way to become the first country that would be completely cashless. With greater acceptance of electronic payments, especially P2P payments, cash usage is fast diminishing. Sweden is one of the few countries where consumers use bank cards for even the smallest of transactions. Fintech gurus have been saying for years that bank branches are on a decline. This is especially true for UK, where more than 650 bank branches are set to disappear by the end of 2015. In the past 10 years, over 25% of bank branches in the UK have closed down. With the advent of new challenger banks that are opening up their digital branches, the practical value of visiting a branch has been all but eliminated. Credit Suisse will raise $6.3 Billion in a strategy shift, especially after its recent job cut and poor performance. One investor recently cited that “Credit Suisse is going through a reboot”. Second time’s the charm for Microsoft (hopefully) as the Redmond software giant ventures out into the world of mobile payments again, with its little known Windows Mobile Wallet. Many listeners may not know, but I broke the story of Microsoft getting their money transmitter licenses earlier this year when I stumbled upon their license filing by accident. Alibaba grows its presence in the European market. The Chinese B2B giant recently announced its European expansion plans which includes adding an office in the UK and a new country office in Italy as part of its greater Gateway to China strategy. eBay quarter results are due today, most analysts predict a muted quarter and a focus to buy back shares. MCX adds ACH to its CurrentC wallet, the service is provided by Buy It Mobility Networks (better known as BIM). Rwanda might just become the first country to utilize drones for deliveries to far flung remote areas to boost e-commerce in the region. STARTUP OF THE WEEK: Its Wednesday and that means, time for the startup of the week. This week, I would like to talk about a European startup called “Pouch”, which has released its Pouchcard, a virtual debit card that parents can provide to their kids in seconds. Money can be spent wherever debit cards are accepted. The cool thing about this startup is that it is focusing more on introduction to money and financial responsibility as far as children are concerned, educating them, making them more aware about how they manage and spend their money. The website is www.pouchcard.com CLOSING THOUGHTS If you want to win the business of millennials, better up your game. Millennials who in 2015 surpassed Generation X as the largest living generation and now represent the largest workforce in the US, are tech savvy to say the least. From a better banking experience to wearable technology, millennials are all about the web/mobile experience and they are extremely finicky. Winning their business means upping your game to the same level as the tech startups of Silicon Valley, giving users the same experience that they have with all their other apps. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you were listening to the Payments Monitor.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 20th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Smartcard and security technology company Oberthur announced it will be filing for an IPO on Euronet Paris exchange. The IPO value has not been announced, but it will be close to the previous value of Euro 2 Billion (which was taken from the value assigned to Oberthur when it was a target of a failed private equity acquisition). Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled that Apple Music has 15 Million Users out of which 6.5 Million users are paying subscribers. Spotify by comparison has 75 Million active users and 20 Million paid subscribers. YouTube is seriously mulling about providing a payment wall for exclusive content on its video streaming platform. YouTube feels a paywall would not be out of scope, provided content that can suddenly reach 100s of million of users is available exclusively on YouTube. All this represents a reflection of the exclusive movies Netflix has been sponsoring and paying for, in which it has had a huge success. Google makes its first investment in China after pulling out of the country in 2010 over privacy concerns. Mobvoi is a Chinese language voice activated search engine. Voice technology will become the cornerstone in payments in the coming years as voice biometrics are best poised for authorization that is both quick and secure. Think what Siri will do next. Bitcoin’s price has been on the up, up and up. The latest price of the virtual currency was quoted at US$ 267, fueled by the trading volume by Chinese exchanges Huobi and OKCoin. Some cite the reason for this upsurge in price is because consumers are being sucked into a Russian ponzi scheme known as MMM. In other news, Happy birthday for Apple Pay as it turns 1 year old today. Amazon pulls out of the travel business by quietly pulling its plug on its hotel booking service Amazon Destination, but fear not, Amazon sees a big holiday season around the corner and plans to hire 100,000 temporary workers for its holiday season. BLOG OPINION Daily Fintech has a really good article on how the US can learn about EMV adoption from Australia. EMV has been a major success in Australia however, contactless payments are not far outsrtipping chip and PIN authorisations. Add to this, mobile payments which seem to be heading towards domination. What will it mean for the US - well you can read the article and find out more. CLOSING THOUGHTS Hope of striking it rich were short lived. Germany’s Deutsche Bank accidentally transferred US$ 6 Billion into another client’s account by entering the wrong numbers during transfer. How about that. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you were listening to the Payments Monitor.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 19th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES The world of ATM might be seeing a merger. US ATM manufacturer Diebold is in takeover talk with Wincor Nixdorf in a deal that would put the German OEM at a value of US$ 2 Billion. It would be interesting to see if NCR will be pushed to make a counter offer. If the deal goes through, Diebold will get access to the lucrative European ATM market. Financial Times is reporting that more than 2/3rds of economists expect the Fed to raise US interest rates before the year ends. All this despite the weakening economic data that came out and advisory from several banks that puts the Fed’s inflation target in doubt. In a set of leaked documents that TechCrunch posted, Pinterest may be making its push into the payments arena. The documents which were used for soliciting investments show a forecast in revenue at $169 Million for 2015 and a whopping US$ 2.8 Billion in 2018. The promotional pins that Pinterest introduced, are morphing towards “Buyable Pins”. The hacking incidents refuse to die down. Russian hackers infiltrated the server of Dow Jones in order to steal stock trading information. The US Secret Service, FBI and SEC are investigating the probe which has been going on for the last one year. Contactless payments are coming to Dubai. Dubai metro commuters will soon be able to pay using a smart watch. The driverless metro since it launch has seen a huge influx of commuters, and payments (i.e. buying the Nol cards has always been an issue). Contactless payments will cut down drastically on the buy and board times. Sony Pay? Yep! That might just be coming, but not to America anytime soon. Sony’s contactless payment technology known as FeliCa, can be either chip-embedded in smartphones or plastic cards. Sony plans to use this payment technology heavily in Asia, particularly in the transportation sector, starting in Indonesia. In other short tidbits, China’s economy logs the weakest growth since 2009, Morgan Stanley’s quarterly profits drop 42 percents, sending its shares on a deep dive, and Myanmar curbs the use of foreign exchange by cancelling 1000s of licenses it had issued to business to use US Dollars in its economy as the domestic currency falters and tumbles downward. PAYMENT OPINION ApplePay may be coming to the Starbucks, but have no doubt, Starbucks mobile payments are coming to you. Starbucks is planning internally to now do trials on its dual-use card (that functions both as an open and a closed loop card), with credits interchange (i.e. your Starbucks credits can be loaded to the open-looped card). No word yet on when the trials are expected, but my source tells me most likely 2nd Quarter 2016. CLOSING THOUGHTS The Checkout process - has to be easy. Cart abandonment is a huge issue. In a webinar series by CA Technologies, 13% of merchants will experience cart abandonment due to complicated checkout process. For example in Europe, the SEPA mandate makes mobile commerce a pain, thus leading to a higher rate of cart abandonment. Merchant need to implement a mobile strategy that is geared towards frictionless buying experience rather than just juxtaposing their desktop experience on to a mobile. It just doesn’t work that way. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you were listening to the Payments Monitor.

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 15th of October 2015, some trending stories today are: TOP STORIES Wearable payment technology has another player, watchmaker Swatch has decided to enter the market. Swatch has partnered with China Union Pay and Bank of Communications to allow consumers to pay with a simple flick of the wrist using NFC technology. The watch is called Bellamy, in reference to Edward Bellamy, the author of an 1888 novel that envisioned a utopian world paying with payment cards. Square files for IPO on the New York Stock exchange under the symbol SQ. The S-1 is filed for US$ 275 Million in stock, however, this is just a preliminary figure, the final figure will be calculated by how much they want to raise and will be announced at a later date. UK Government pony’s up GBP 10 Million into distributed ledger technology research. Economic Secretary to the Treasury Harriett Baldwin emphasised the need to invest in skills, research and development of the blockchain technology for UK to take the lead in this arena, especially since London is being promoted as the fintech capital of the world. US equity markets are up, and a stronger Dollar is dominating on the forex markets. Citibank’s profits jump on lower costs, whilst Goldman Sachs earning dip, citing market turmoil. WORLD BANK OPINION Recently The World Bank made a very significant change to its poverty line. It increased the measuring baseline from US$ 1.25 per day to US$ 1.90 per day. So now if you’re earning below $1.90 per day, you’re officially poor as per The World Bank. This move, being made after 25 years will create ripple effects on economies. Statistics that were earlier pegged to US$ 1.25 per day will now change. Millions just became poor...again! CLOSING THOUGHTS Credit rating scores today are focusing purely on your past and present financial transactions. In this day and age, where social media is a heavy influencer, it is no surprise very few companies are taking social media activities and presence into the equation. In other words, social or social media equity is being ignored. How can we incorporate social media into a credit rating score? A point to ponder about. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you were 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 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 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 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 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.

TOP STORIES China starts dumping US Treasury Debt. The International Monetary Fund (i.e. the IMF), has issued a warning of fresh shocks to the local financial stability. Ben Bernanke states “the Fed should have abandoned inflation targeting.” Starbuck’s hires a full-time CTO The US Marshals Service is preparing to auction the left over 44,341 Bitcoin from the Silk Road Former Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit has invested in TransferWise WorldBank has issued a warning that low oil prices would result in reduced remittances from the Middle East to South Asia SynapsePay a US based a fintech company in the payments spaced just announced all ACH transactions on their branded service are 100% free. PODCAST OPINION Yesterday, I and my co-host Mike Townsend from our weekly podcast of Around The Coin had the opportunity to interview Peter Ohser, EVP Business Development at MoneyGram. We probed Peter about MoneyGram, and how it sees the P2P, B2C, and B2B sector along with some hard questions on Bitcoin and remittances. You can listen to that episode on www.AroundTheCoin.com DID YOU KNOW Every Wednesday, I’ll make a mention of a single startup in the financial space, so, the selected candidate for today is Bridg, that is bridge spelt without the “e” (B-r-i-d-g). Bridg is a mobile-wallet payment app that uses bluetooth and/or Internet (via GPRS) to make effortless payments. The company is based out of Dubai and the product, well, you just have to see to believe it.

TOP STORIES Digital currency network Ripple Labs just received a new round of funding for US$4 Million from Santander InnoVentures. Mastercard is doing biometric trials for payments Google Alphabet invests in Symphony. China’s renminbi is now the 4th most used currency in the world OPINION Payments walls, registrations, OAuth and ChangeTip. DEVELOPING STORY European Union’s 15-Year data sharing pact with the US has now been termed invalid. DID YOU KNOW Apple Pay turns one year old today. And coincidentally has only 1.0% of the retail payment marketshare.

TOP STORIES US Reaches Trade Deal with 11 Pacific Nations Cybersecurity Awareness Month falls flat as Scottrade joins ranks of victims South Korean app firm makes Internet bank bid with Tencent and eBay HyperWallet launches global payout API for the digital market Twitter CEO becomes permanent. OPINION Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 People: SOCIAL MEDIA Two best examples of social media: KLM and XpressMoney CONFERENCES SIBOS - SINGAPORE - 12-15 OCTOBER MONEY2020 - LAS VEGAS - 25TH TO 28TH OCTOBER

- Trump Hotels Data Breach - T-Mobile users data stolen by hackers - Alibab invests in Paytm (again!) - Transferwise app features as best app on the Apple App store - Payoneer's White Paper - Upworks' white paper "Freelancing in America 2015"

TOP STORIES 1. Adyen 2.3 Billion dollar valuation 2. US switches over to EMV 3. WorldPay trials facial recognition technology, also comments on Siri/M-Messenger, using biometrics in payments. 4. Twitter expands the buy button 5. Coinbase - Buy bitcoins instantly from 26 countries. 6. FirstData IPO OPINION Money.net - and how it is beating the Bloomberg Terminal. BLOG ARTICLE Building a Universal Ledger (to block chain or not to blockchain) - Ben Milne, CEO of Dwolla DID YOU KNOW The worldwide Remittance market is 600+ Billion whilst the worldwide B2B market is 23 Trillion dollars.