On its return to Asia for the second year running, Money20/20 put on a world-class event in Singapore and welcomed senior leaders in financial services, fintech and payments to connect over major developments in digital money.
To continue reading, log in.
This article continues once you are signed in. To view and comment on this Finextra Exclusive Report, log in or sign up - it's free....
ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced that Eafricalab will utilise its UP Retail Payments solution for Postillion to better serve consumers across 25 African countries.
ACI’s market-leading payments platform will empower Eafricalab to modernise its payments offering, fostering further innovation and financial inclusion across the continent. Eafricalab will utilise ACI's UP Retail Payments solution for Postillion which provides seamless configuration and scripting, allowing the processor to quickly launch new value-added payments services for its clients, including card management, gift cards and prepaid solutions. In addition, Postilion will enable the company to process modern electronic payments, such as non-card withdrawals, retailer transactions and new alternative payment methods.
“We are excited to adopt ACI’s proven payments technology, which will allow us to offer new payments capabilities as well as stronger services to our clients,” said Simplice Anoh, CEO, Eafricalab. “Together with ACI, we are committed to leading the digital payments revolution across Africa.”
“This new partnership reaffirms our commitment of enabling rapid innovation for the African market with cutting-edge payment solutions,” said Manish Patel, vice president, Middle East, Africa and South Asia, ACI Worldwide. “ACI's UP Retail Payments solution for Postillion enables new, digital payments to be offered in any marketplace, ensuring that processors, acquirers, payment card networks and banks are able to participate in the new payments ecosystem.”
For at least the last three decades, fraud monitoring of transactions and portfolios has been a cornerstone of protecting the brand, be it for scheme, bank or consumer reputation. There have been a number of heavy-duty products in the market place in that time that target specific monitoring needs. However financial institutions can meet regulatory requirements with an excel sheet – (the main card schemes mandate that their members should use a fraud system – but do not necessarily mandate what that system should have as functionality). So, what is the tipping point?
The main concept around card scheme monitoring is to be below a certain fraud threshold defined by the scheme; and if you are monitoring transactions in batch – whether you are using a excel report to detect transactions that are above thresholds or using a simple rule based system – a confirmed alert means that you can block the card and reissue, preventing future fraud in the compromised card.
Alternatively, a digital challenger bank for example may go down the road of developing their own tools and software. Being agile in nature as part of the general start up programme means that development changes can be implemented quickly to meet the needs – and these can sometimes be very advanced in the functionality they can perform. I have seen new start ups showcase technology that appears to be beyond the scope of the traditional market leaders in terms of look and feel – and general ease of use.
However, with growth comes volume. As portfolios grow and the number of transactions increase – there is more focus on how to balance the cost of a system or process against the losses attributed to fraudulent activity. So, what is the tipping point to move to a more advanced system?
For the manual process it can be attributed to a number of things;
the number of staff required to manage the volume increases – and may not be cost effective Caseloads have to be interpreted in bulk – e.g. closing off a number of cases as false positive's that fit a certain profile (which may miss actual fraud) Fraud increases as organised crime identify weaknesses in the institution's fraud detection process Increased scrutiny (either internally or externally) on general fraud prevention performanceFor an in-house developed solution the tipping point is different. By developing in-house the ability to react to new requirements is initially a benefit. However, there are still ways in which the need to consider other provisions becomes apparent:
The financial institution incurs the cost of development, maintenance etc. The knowledge of the product has to be maintained and continued with the organisation. For a challenger organisation for example – that knowledge could reside in one person. Detection techniques and strategies may not be robust enough to cope with volume increases. As with manual solutions – fraud increases as organised crime identify weaknesses in the institution's fraud detection process And again, Increased scrutiny (either internally or externally) on general fraud prevention performanceSo it is by no means a hard and fast rule, but there is ultimately a decision to be made as to whether the cost to move a 3rd party solution will provide a benefit that improves fraud rates, FTE costs/efficiencies, or reduce maintenance/development costs. As mentioned at the beginning of this blog there is a lot of successful usage of simple fraud monitoring and prevention techniques or insourced developed solutions. It's whether that strategy is sustainable in the long run.
Open API card issuing and processing platform Marqeta is closing in on a $250 million Series E round at a $1.875 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch.
The figures come from a filing provided to TechCrunch and are currently provisional, but the round could close within weeks, the blog claims the blog.
Details on investors are not known, but a $45 million June 2018 round was led by Iconiq Capital and joined by Goldman Sachs. Visa is also an investor.
Marqeta says that its platform and Just-In-Time Funding feature allows companies of all sizes to authorise their own card transactions, fundamentally changing how they engage with issuing and processing.
Developers on Marqeta’s platform can sign up for a sandbox in under a minute and then leverage a set of card controls and configurations to get a fully funded card programme to market in a matter of days.
The startup powers card programmes for big names including Instacart, Square, Affirm, Kabbage and Alipay.
