Financial providers worldwide are working to give small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) quick access to their funds. Digital banks, for one, are teaming up with technology providers to accelerate settlement times for payments collected at the point-of-sale (POS). Legacy banks are similarly at work, with one major FI seeking to beat out FinTech competition by offering same-day access to credit card deposits.
The Septem
ber Faster Payments Tracker explores new initiatives aimed at better serving SMBs’ payment needs as well as other key developments in the space.
Around the Faster Payments World
The Nigerian branch of pan-African banking group Ecobank has been working to serve SMBs with a faster payment system. The firm’s digital payments and collection service enables merchants to offer unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) and QR code-based mobile retail payment acceptance and immediately receive the revenue. Ecobank announced recently that 1 billion NGN ($2.75 million USD) had been processed on this service since its February launch.
Airlines are also seeking to enable speedy mobile payments. Southwest Airlines recently signed an agreement with two payment companies to enable it to accept Apple Pay. Southwest customers can use the mobile wallet to buy ticke
ts and pay for other services.
Person-to-person (P2P) payments providers are also trying to accelerate their services. PayPal recently announced that it would enable users of its Venmo P2P app to instantly transfer funds to bank accounts over The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments rail.
Find these and all the rest of the latest headlines in the Tracker.
Meeting Older Generations’ Rising Demands for Mobile P2P
Millennials no longer rule the mobile services space. Generation X and baby boomer consumers are increasingly smartphone-equipped and seeking fast, P2P mobile payments. Small banks can struggle to develop such services and keep them secure, however. In this month’s Feature Story, Kristy Brandon, Comerica Bank’s senior vice president of eBanking, explains how real-time risk scoring and other tools can help keep rapid, mobile payments safe and keep Gen X bank customers coming back.
Find the full story in the Tracker.
Deep Dive: The Benefits and Challenges of Real-Time Push Payments
Push payments are often seen as more secure than pull payments because the former do not require payers to reveal sensitive bank account or payment instrument data. Many real-time payment systems only enable push payments because the rail’s designers believe this lowers the risk of fraud. That does not mean push payments are without their own sets of challenges, however. This month’s Deep Dive explores the benefits of using push payments in faster payment solutions, as well as the push payments security challenges that must be addressed.
Read more in the Tracker.
About the Tracker
The PYMNTS Faster Payments Tracker™, powered by Fiserv, is your go-to resource for staying up to date on faster payments developments and initiatives on a month-by-month basis. The tracker highlights the contribution of different stakeholders, including institutions and technology providers coming together to make this happen.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
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