In this week’s edition of ‘Payments, Payments Payments’ you’ll find news on Open Banking’s new App Store, an easy yet rewarding experience opening an account with a challenger bank, keep yourself up to date with the new Confirmation of Payee name checking service, check out the latest ATM withdrawal stats and find out about the Bank of England’s newest recruit.

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Welcome to the Open Banking App Store

The UK's Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), has opened an app store to help consumers and companies navigate through the maze of peripheral financial products available to supplement their online bank accounts.

Through the store, individuals and business owners can compare products and services across a range of categories, including budgeting, accountancy & tax, payments, borrowing, debt advice, financial safeguarding and more. 

The store can be found at: Open Banking App Store.

Easy yet rewarding

The ease of opening the account can be compared to that of putting pennies in a piggy bank - easy yet rewarding. Read a guest blog by university student Reuben Taylor sharing his experience on opening a bank account with Starling Bank.

Addressing failed payments

Cashflow is the lifeblood of every enterprise regardless of whether it is producing and / or selling goods, providing services or collecting donations for worthwhile causes. 

Needless to say income exceeding expenditure is key to ensuring the survival of the enterprise, and whilst the vast majority of payments due to enterprises are likely to be received correctly, i.e., the right amount at the right time, the remaining minority of payments can be a real problem and cost the enterprise a disproportionate amount to resolve.

Don Hollingum from Direct Debit 101 has been thinking about addressing failed payments - read Don’s guest blog.

Confirmation of Payee

In just 15 days the UK’s Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service is due to have been introduced by the banks who received a Direction from the Payments System Regulator (plus a few other banks that have voluntarily joined the service).

Confirmation of Payee is a name checking service that helps protect consumers and businesses from certain types of fraud and misdirected payments by letting them know if the account name they have entered matches the account name of the recipient.

The Confirmation of Payee service is intended to give businesses and consumers greater assurance that they are sending payments to the intended recipient.

Whilst not a silver bullet, the implementation of Confirmation of Payee is expected be an effective way of combatting Authorised Push Payment Scams (e.g. where a fraudster tricks their victims into willingly making a large bank transfer to them).

Confirmation of Payee will also help to avoid payments being sent to the wrong account due to ‘fat fingers’ (keyboard errors) when we type in somebody’s Sort Code and Account Number.

Find out more at: Northey Point | Confirmation of Payee Explained.

The UK’s Payments Landscape

For many years I have looked forward to the annual publication of the UK Payment Market Report by UK Finance. The report provides an annual digest of the ups and downs of each of the UK’s payment mechanisms. As you can imagine I was always keen to see how my schemes were performing against other payment types. Today, however, I can be a little less competitive and take a more holistic view of the payments landscape.

The latest subscriber only newsletter provides my analysis of the UK’s payments landscape - you’ll find it at: UK’s Payments Landscape.

For a 60 day free trial to the subscriber version of this newsletter visit: https://northeypoint.substack.com/subscribertrial

Cash ATM Withdrawals

As non essential shops start to reopen LINK have just published last week's volume and value figures.

Four consecutive weeks at 26 million transactions, circa 50% of the equivalent weeks in 2019.

The transition to cashless has clearly been magnified by the impact of COVID but the next few weeks will illustrate the extent to which our COVID payments habits have become sticky.

Slack Integration Arrives at Starling Bank

Today, we saw a big upgrade to ⁦the Starling Bank Market Place with health insurance, energy switching and Slack integration all entering the business banking (SME) Market Place.

Dennis the Menace joins the Bank of England

Dennis the Menace has joined the Bank of England to help the Beano gang share some financial literacy lessons. A new education resource for primary schools, developed by the Bank of England in collaboration with The Beano!

In Brief

Check out some lockdown reading recommendations: Northey Point Bookstore.

Central Bank Digital Currency pitched at the Bank of England.

Recruitment begins for new Chair and INED at Pay.UK.

Digital receipt management rolled out to JPMorgan Chase customers through partnership with Sensibill.

A 47.8% COVID19 reduction in the value of LINK ATM cash withdrawals for the East of England (May 20 on May 19).

The average Brit has gone 44 days since using cash as new research reveals lockdown has accelerated the pivot to contactless payments.

In a move that could signal the beginning of the end for passwords, NatWest is teaming up with Visa to test the use of behavioural biometrics for the upcoming Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) rules.

A humorous approach to payment niggles helped Sage Pay convince a sceptical audience it needed to act and achieved 300% of pipeline target. The campaign was based around two short films, The Restaurant and The Hotel, which between them have attracted 2.8 million video views so far - click for a 3 minute case study (and a couple of video clips).

Muniy, a UK-based digital banking and mobile payments startup, is closing in on a £200,000 crowdfunding campaign. Muniy is targeting the millions of underbanked with its app and contactless card combo, already live in the UK, that offers business and personal accounts in multiple currencies. The service, with freemium and paid accounts, offers instant P2P money transfers, real-time transaction notifications, accounting services, and a passive savings feature.

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Thanks

Mike