Welcome to the many new Payments:Unpacked subscribers who have joined us over the last week (a special shout out to all those that signed up at the excellent Payments Association EU “Payments Tomorrow” conference in Madrid last week) - we are sure that you’ll enjoy reading the free weekly newsletter.
Thank you and goodbye - Flux signs off
After recently reporting that more than one million customers were using its services in the UK and claiming 12% monoth-on-month growth, with an average of 36,000 customers joining the digital receipts network every month, digital receipts startup Flux is shutting down its network in the UK.
Founded in 2016, Flux was accepted on Barclays London-based fintech accelerator programme, Rise, and graduated in 2017 after proving the product’s viability for both retailers and consumers.
Barclays took a minority stake in the firm in January 2020. The startup was also the first fintech to join Starling Bank's Marketplace platform.
Customers linked to the app receive digital receipts and loyalty coupons from retailers signed up for the service, including brands like Pure, Costa Coffee, EAT., post and itsu.
It’s with sadness that we announce that from Friday 14th October 2022, we’ll be closing the Flux network in the UK. This means that, from Friday, you'll no longer be able to receive digital receipts or cashback offers when you shop at Flux retailers. We're proud of what our team has achieved and the incredible network of retailers, banks and consumers that we have built over the last five years.
The Flux Website has now reverted to a holding page bearing the strapline "Thank you and goodbye".
ISO 20022 – A love story
Liz Lumley recently confessed that “I will always feel a bit of affection, love even, for ISO 20022 – the humble standard, understood by but a small group of people globally, that acts as a crucial ingredient for the future of international commerce and trade.”
…..for those of us not working in the factory for international payments, the next few years will see global banks migrate from legacy Swift MT financial messaging to the highly structured and data-rich ISO 20022 standard. The flexible framework provides an internationally agreed business message syntax and semantics. User communities and message developers will use the same message structure, form, and meaning to relay financial transaction information worldwide.
Liz Lumley
More:
and from Bob Lyddon: ISO20022 – The Great Leap Sideways
Railsr selects SurePay as its Confirmation of Payee vendor as fraud rises in the UK
The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has directed around 400 payment service providers, to implement a system to offer the CoP name checking service to their customers (both as payers and payees). The PSR believes that this direction will help to reduce authorised push payment (APP) fraud and accidentally misdirected payments and represents their ambition to achieve near ubiquity of CoP and protect a greater number of payment system users.
The PSR believes that providing this service to consumers, regardless of who they make a transaction with, should be a priority for all firms, which is why they are giving this direction. This is particularly important as the number of APP scams has continued to rise.
On the very day that the PSR published their Direction it was great to see that fintech pioneer Railsr announced that it had selected leading CoP provider SurePay as its Confirmation of Payee vendor.
Railsr, the leading global embedded finance experience platform, has selected SurePay as its UK Faster Payments (UKFP) Confirmation of Payee (CoP) vendor to help its customers combat fraud and misdirected payments in the UK. With SurePay, Railsr can now take the next step in putting customer payment safety first when it comes to payments.
Recent research from UK Finance revealed that the number of incidents of Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud in the UK has increased by 39% from £420.7 million in 2020 to £583.2 million in 2021. It has become increasingly clear that fraudsters are now targeting non-Confirmation of Payee banks and financial services firms.
Railsr collaborated with SurePay and Railsr customer ANNA Money to get its new Confirmation of Payee service implemented and live within a rapid four weeks. By ensuring that a payee’s name matches the name on the intended recipient’s bank account, Confirmation of Payee helps prevent payees from transferring money to the wrong person or business, whether by intent, through payment fraud, or unintentionally through misdirected payments.
As the first CoP vendor and European market leader, SurePay is the driving force in the evolution of payment safety. Today, SurePay performs over 300,000 checks a day in the UK and works closely with Pay.UK to continuously improve its CoP offering.
Pay.UK: New Payments Architecture
On Sibos TV last week David Pitt (CEO of Pay.UK) explains how the UK’s new “state-of-the-art” payments architecture will power payments and give the country choice in how it pays.
This Sibos TV interview explains how the UK can manage the huge changes that this system will allow for while ensuring safe, secure, and reliable delivery.
Can we still pay with cash?
New research from the European Central Bank found that the majority of high street businesses in the euro area view cash as an important payment method. But how long will this be the case as digital payments become more popular, particularly for low-value transactions?
What's the situation in the UK? Aren't all shops #cashless since the covid pandemic?
Join David Hensley and David Fagleman from Enryo as they discuss “can we still pay with cash”?
More: Bank of England “Knocked down during lockdown: the return of cash.”
Can VRP help UK consumers avoid subscription traps?
The cost-of-living crisis is having a devastating impact on British households. Steep rises in energy prices and the cost of consumer goods have reduced the purchasing power of most Brits. With inflation expected to peak at 13% toward the end of 2022, consumers are scaling back their budgets and looking for new ways to save.
Subscriptions are likely to be a prime target. At a time when many Brits are tightening their belts, cutting out unwanted subscriptions is an easy way to make their budgets leaner. A recent survey from YouGov and TrueLayer found that 62% of respondents intend to review their subscriptions in the next six months in the wake of rising costs.
As the cost-of-living crisis intensifies, Truelayer suggest that it’ll be more important than ever to cut out unwanted expenses - suggesting that subscription payments need to be more manageable and transparent. VRP could play a role in making that happen.
The future of Open Banking (in Australia)
Truelayer have released a report on The Future of Open Banking in Australia - a detailed report and recommendations look to the critical drivers to make Open Banking a success by driving consumer adoption, lowering barriers to entry and increasing accredited participants.
Open banking has the opportunity to bring substantial benefits to Australian consumers and deliver the promise of the CDR - choice, convenience and confidence.
Trulayer believe that the experience in Europe holds valuable lessons for achieving a successful rollout of open banking and the CDR more broadly and shouldn't be ignored.
More: The future of Open Banking (in Australia).
In brief
The Missing Crypto Queen Rebuilding trust after Dr Ruja disappeared. Join Jonathan Jensen for exclusive in-person event as he speaks to the author and podcaster Jamie Bartlett along with leading crypto experts and discusses the latest regulation and how to build trust in this financial frontier.
Kate Fitzgerald at the Payment Systems Regulator has been thinking about Unlocking account-to-account retail payments – competitive pricing.
Barclays adopt cashback without purchase.
The launch of Canada's Real-Time Rail (RTR) payments system has been pushed back from the middle of next year to an as yet undetermined date.
Chase UK app suffers day-long outage.
ICYMI
And finally….
Payment friction at the shop till is not a new thing - back in the late 1990’s the Switch scheme certainly thought so.
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