Retail-betaal-gedachten

Sunday, January 02, 2005

All good things come to an end.....

As I won't be able to update this blog, this is my last post.
Some useful other weblogs/resources on payments are:
- Payments News,
- the new EPSO-website, maintained by ECB,
- the old EPSO-website with epso-newsletters.


Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Ministry of finance and central bank warn for the 'world-euro'

This press release (in Dutch) is a warning to the public to not try to buy so called World Euro's, issued by the European Union, as avertised last friday. The advertisement claimed that for 10 euro people could buy world-euro coins. 5 Euro would be given to charity, and the other 5 would be converted to world-euro's, to be used as regular cash.

A couple of days later, it now turns out that the one page ad was a free assignment to an advertisement agency. They were asked by the Volkskrant (a morning newspaper) to attract attention of the public for an issue that really should be on the European agenda. And they came up with the idea of the World-euro (and really started believing in it...). But as a result of all the compliance fuss, the real story behind this advertisement was disclosed prematurely and the website of the world-euro was adapted to comply with bank supervision law.

Well, that's 10 points for the ad-agency, I would say.
Or perhaps eleven?



Monday, December 27, 2004

Interpay, Chess and LogicaCMG cooperate to deliver Ideal-platform

Planet Multimedia reports that Interpay, Chess and LogicaCMG have signed a cooperation agreement to deliver platforms and services related to the Ideal-payment standard.



Sunday, December 12, 2004

OV Chipkaart becomes reality: first launch this monday

Automatisering Gids report that tomorrow, the first public transport contactless chipcard will be distributed to customers of the ferry service Vlissingen-Breskens. It is the first pilot group to be followed by the whole of Netherlands later.

Last week, I noticed that the Rotterdam underground is also preparing for the contactless chipcard. There is a confusing mix of new and old machines. The new entry doors are installed but we are still able to walk alongside of these towards the regular ticket validating machines.

Anyhow, as also our National Railways will be migrating, next year will definitely be the OV-chip year...



Saturday, December 04, 2004

Mobile Payments 2004: brief summary

Some highlights of an interesting conference in Amsterdam:
1. Consumers are willing to pay for mobile payments, especially for parking, public transport and road pricing.
2. RTL Netherlands receives about 60 million premium sms-es per year; their demand to better payment mechanisms focuses mainly on squeezing the current operator marging of 20-40%.
3. Netsize estimates the EU market for mobile services at 23 billion euro and the Dutch market at 1 billion euro.
4. Mobile operators still are the opinion that pre-paid purses with eurovalue in them, from which third parties are being paid, have nothing to do with e-money, money and need not be regulated. The representatives of those operators that effectively operate the most use mobile payment channel, downplay the importance of their payment channels, while not disclosing any data to back this up.
5. Banks intend to expand the internet payment mechanism Ideal for use on mobile channels as well. But first concentrate on the Internet part
6. Simpay will go live in second quarter of 2005; merchants accepting simpay will be faced with 30% fee to be paid as a merchant service charge.



Monday, November 29, 2004

Brr... order confirmation spam

It's quite annoying. Spam that has the form of order confirmation. But given my consumer rights I have no need to worry. It's a pain though. And the obvious mislink leads to: http://onestepgo.com/

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your order. Your credit card has charged for amount $560.00.
Charges for the transaction will appear on your credit card statement under the name INTEGRAL LLC.

To view transaction status and order details, point your browser to the following URL:
http://www.mybill.com/order=SD25xxx

Sincerely,
MyBill Team




Friday, November 19, 2004

IInternet: browsing not buying...?

Research by Dutch retailers organisation RND demonstrates that a huge group of consumers uses the Internet to look before they buy. Of the 8,7 million active Internet users, 93 % uses the web to be informed about prices/products. Of this group of 8.7 million, 39 % has actually bought something over the web.



Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Size matters...

Small countries can more quickly cooperate and produce new products. Therefore the Estonians attract Ian's attention with smart cards that work on a national level:
Surprise and Shock! Identity smart cards that work on a national level!.



Saturday, November 13, 2004

Dutch Standard for Internet payments: Ideal

In September Rabobank, ABN AMRO and ING announced the development of a Dutch standard for internet payments. The standard protocol essentially routes the shopper from the site of the merchant to the shopper's internet-banking environment, where payment is made in the usual manner. After the payment the merchant gets a guarantee en the shopper is brought back to the merchant environment.

The standard will be available to merchants and consumers from mid 2005 onwards. The name of the standard: Ideal, was announced during an e-banking track of e-Netherlands conference on November 11. It is expected that other Dutch banks will also incorporate the standard for their customers.

Research by Multiscope showed that 87 % of the Dutch population find the standard a good idea; 60 % expect to immediately make use of it. Especially a bunch of those consumers that at times still fear the Internet (70%) expect to use the product.

The poll also outlined that the awareness of bank internet payment products was:
- ING's paypal like scheme Way2pay: 32 %
- Rabodirect betalen: 28 %
- ABN AMRO E-Wallet: 14 %
- Rabo Minitix: 3 %
- ING Tootz: 1 %
Of these current payment products, only Minitix will continue to be offered by Rabobank. Rabodirect betalen will become Ideal; the other schemes will be dismantled.

By the way, during the conference it was stated that the current level of Internet payments in the Netherlands is 10 million. This number allows for some further calculations and estimations as to the total number of internet-payments in the EU. But I will leave that to others.



Sunday, October 31, 2004

German Federal Institute for Financial Services Supervision Issues Germany's First E-Banking License to A Telco Operator

The German Federal Institute for Financial Services Supervisions authorised the NCS mobile payment Bank GmbH under NAK 32, Para. 1, Clause 1 combined with NAK 1, Para. 1, Clause 2, No. 11 German Banking Act, to issue and administer electronic money (e-money business). See: http://www.newratings.com/analyst_news/article_501499.html.

Undoubtedly this is the first of many more operators to follow. A new market is now emerging, which is the market of regulated or unregulated mobile operators. In that market NCS mobile payment Bank is now officially the first mover (with Vodafone UK being the unofficial zero-mover; operating under the waiver of a small e-money operator). See also the website: http://www.crandy.com/homepage/en/include/index.html.



Monday, October 25, 2004

Yahoo Direct gives in to Paypal

Emerce reports that Yahoo will stop its payment method: Yahoo Direct as of November 22 this year. It was unable to get a substantial foothold in the market for auction-payments alongside competitor Paypal (who has two thirds of this market).



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Retail payments are still very much influenced by local conventions, regulations etc.....
Readers should not base any decision on the basis of the information provided in this weblog.
This weblog serves as an archive of public events in retail payments. It is an individual account which should not be construed as a formal viewpoint of any organisation.


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