SEPA and European Payments

The Single Euro Payments Area, the Payments Services Directive, the Eurosystem, TARGET2, STEP2, the Euro and related matters.

Retired Member 

Interchange regulation only benefits merchants

Mandated reductions in interchange fees in Australia were supposed to cause retail prices to drop, directly benefiting consumers. Instead, interchange regulation has redistributed wealth in favour of merchants, with no other tangible benefits. The whole idea is that interchange is a “hidden fee” that retailers bundle into their prices, and that a ...

05 May 2008 /payments

Gary Wright Analyst at BISS Research

SEPA XML formats concern European Corporates

I have written evidence that some of Europe's largest Corporates have expressed a number of serious issues to the EPC where SEPA is failing and in danger of deteriorating to a simple Bank to Bank system. But a picture has been presented in the media that SEPA is on course to achieving its end objectives at some stage in the future; however, the do...

30 April 2008 /payments /retail

Gary Wright Analyst at BISS Research

When will we know SEPA is working?

Now this might be a really dumb question but I ask it in response to Chris Skinner's blog published on the SWIFT Community website. According to Chris, SEPA is working and he substantiates his claim by announcing various polling scores from an American audience at a recent conference. I am not sure how much relevance any poll on SEPA in the USA is...

29 April 2008 /payments /retail

Gary Wright Analyst at BISS Research

Has SEPA failed?

We are already a third of the way through the SEPA year and its time to review where the industry is with this project? The feedback I have had from a number of corporates across the EU is that SEPA has still to make any significant impact on them. Many banks also appear reluctant to give SEPA the major thumbs up so far. So what's going wrong? It ...

24 April 2008 /payments /retail

Retired Member 

Free payment processing

Google has been offering free payment processing to Internet merchants since they launched Google Checkout almost two years ago. Merchants get free credit and debit card processing when they also use Google Adwords, a direct marketing service that displays paying advertiser’s names alongside search results. Could a marketing subsidized payment pro...

26 March 2008 /payments /retail

Retired Member 

Contactless has a much bigger foe than security: Apathy

Retailers are very pragmatic people. If something makes sense, works well and solves real problems, they’ll adopt it. Otherwise, no chance. While the banking community hypes up contactless cards and mobile payments, retailers in the US are saying something different. Evan Schuman of StorefrontBacktalk writes about the problems he ran into when he ...

14 March 2008 /payments

Retired Member 

Uncovering the hidden value in interchange fees

OK, I know that’s a provocative title, but bear with me. My last post showed how printing targeted promotions at the bottom of POS receipts costs merchants a few cents per impression versus close to a dollar for traditional direct marketing campaigns. The customer checking out right now hasn’t been here in over a month? Print a special offer to e...

13 March 2008 /payments

Retired Member 

What can merchants spend on value added payment services?

PIVAS – Payment Information Value Added Services: A platform that lets retailers deliver targeted promotions at the POS, via credit or debit card receipts (lots more here). A few of my prior blog posts provide some insight into the value of marketing rich payment services, mainly at a macro level. For example, there’s the Deloitte study that show...

11 March 2008 /payments

Retired Member 

More companies adopting interchange based sales pitch

This company has developed an interesting interchange based ROI story for banks. Here’s the pitch: “Bill Pay Solution Enables Card Issuing Financial Institutions to Earn $150 Per Consumer Per Year in New Interchange Revenue” (The company is Yodlee. Here's their press release <http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080228/20080228005484.html?.v=1> .) I fi...

04 March 2008 /payments

Retired Member 

Acquiring margins squeezed, profits up - what's the story?

The average interchange rate in the US has increased by 22% in ten years, yet total actual fees charged to merchants, including interchange, have only increased by 11%. Acquirers appear to have swallowed a large portion of the increased interchange by lowering their own transaction fees, presumably in response to merchant pressure. It’s tough bein...

03 March 2008 /payments