July 9, 2019

Freedompay, a commerce payments platform, has extended its five-year partnership with Agilysys, a provider of hospitality software solutions and services, according to a press release.

Agilysys customers will be able to enhance their guest experience by leveraging Freedompay's security, payment and value added services, including pay-at-table technology, dynamic currency conversion and mobile wallets.

"Agilysys was one of our earliest partners and, from the outset, has been one of our strongest," Scott Carcillo, senior vice president of client solutions at Freedompay, said in the release. "We are very excited to be extending the relationship's term and scope as we continue to serve merchants and customers using Agilysys."

"This agreement covers rGuest Pay, our secure payment processing solution, and allows us to continue enhancing our customers' access to validated P2PE, EMV payment gateways as a fully integrated solution along with our existing robust point of sale and property management system solutions," said Prabuddha Biswas, Agilysys chief technology officer.
 

Topics: EMV, Mobile/Digital Wallet, Mobile Payments, Restaurants

Companies: Agilysys

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July 9, 2019

By Bart Tomkins, managing director, payments, Amadeus

Travel is a large industry no matter how you choose to define it. The latest numbers from the World Travel and Tourism Council show travel contributed $8.8 trillion to the global economy in 2018, equating to 10.4% of all economic activity. Clearly, this economic activity is underpinned by a wide range of payment flows from consumers to agencies, airlines and hotels as well as from intermediaries like agencies to their suppliers. But it's only relatively recently that the industry has grasped the strategic importance of payments.

Technology has been transforming how people search, shop and book travel. Innovations in search technology that inspire travelers along with rapid advances in personalisation have enabled more satisfying experiences and increased revenues. These developments have typically overshadowed the role that payments play in the digital travel experience. In short, payments hasn't been the sexy aspect of the digital travel revolution. But that is beginning to change.

Heightened traveler expectations

Travelers have been exposed to the simplicity and first-class payments experience offered by digital leaders like Amazon and Uber. When you can pay for virtually any product to be delivered to your door with a single-click, why should it be any different when you're booking travel?

The industry has listened and we're beginning to see travel brands prioritise the critical role that payment plays in the customer experience. Japan Airlines is a case in point. The airline offers 26 versions of its website in 12 different languages with digital an increasingly important channel, particularly for growing the airline's all important international sales.

The complexity of the airline's international business meant it needed to cater for a wide range of payment methods and work with multiple Payment Service Providers (PSPs) across markets. Since working together we have been able to support the airline's drive to deliver an outstanding experience by removing the need for travelers to be re-directed to individual PSP sites. 

Costly and complex

As part of a research study we commissioned in 2018 we found that on average, travel companies spend about 6.2% of revenue on payments. For airlines that benefit from economies of scale, this figure falls to around 3% but for smaller retail travel agencies it can be as high as 7.5% of total revenue. Clearly this situation isn't sustainable and there is an increasing desire from travel brands to streamline their approach to payments.

At Amadeus, we have invested significantly to provide technology that delivers a complete single-view of a travel firm's payment flows. The platform delivers analytics that enables a business to understand the relative performance of its PSP partners in different markets and to easily swap them in and out accordingly. An orchestration layer means companies can set this process up to happen autonomously based on predefined objectives such as minimising cost or fraud.

Driving B2B payments innovation

The travel industry is built on close and collaborative partnerships; there are few closer than those of travel agencies and the airlines that supply them. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) agencies pay airlines $236 billion each year, typically using traditional corporate cards or good old fashioned cheques. In recent years, this situation has changed to incorporate single-use virtual cards delivered via B2B digital wallets that make paying suppliers easier and overcomes the long-held problems of spreadsheet-based payments reconciliation and higher than acceptable levels of fraud. But the industry is now asking how payments can be a strategic enabler of greater collaboration.

Today it's clear that payments is taking its place in digital travel and technology innovation. Payments has rapidly become a differentiator for travel brands that are now able to deliver an outstanding experience whilst mitigating cost and complexity. With new regulations like PSD2 spurring even quicker innovation over the coming years, We expect this trend to continue.

Cover photo: iStock

Topics: Carriers / Operators, Mobile Payments, Online Purchasing, Technology Providers

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July 9, 2019

GoCardless Ltd., a London-based startup that helps companies collect recurring payments, has entered an agreement with Docusign, which will use the platform to simplify recurring payments for its European customers. 

GoCardless uses a cloud-based platform called Zuora to help companies automate subscription-based payments using direct debit, which the company says is a more efficient method of collecting recurring charges than using credit and debit cards.

"Our research with YouGov shows that around one third of consumers around the world prefer to pay for online subscriptions by bank debit/direct debit," Pranav Sood, general manager of strategy and international expansion at GoCardless, told Mobile Payments Today via email. "This might be a streaming service, recipe box service, software subscription or an online magazine."

Sood said that for consumers the direct debit method is easy to set up and reliable, and since bank details rarely change a consumer faces a lower risk of having the subscription disrupted due to a lost or stolen card. 

GoCardless in February raised $75 million in a Series E fundraising round, led by Adams Street Partners, GV and Salesforce Ventures. 

The company now has offices in San Francisco, according to Sood, and is hiring staff to build out its U.S. operations. The company is also working on an integration with Automated Clearing House Network to allow U.S. companies to set up payment collection via direct debit. 

Topics: Bill Payment, Mobile Payments, Region: EMEA

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July 9, 2019

The New York Attorney General's Office has filed a Memorandum of Law against cryptocurrency exchanges Bitfinex and its sister company Tether. The filing claims Bitfinex and Tether have run an unregistered security offering, issued tethers as loans and illegally conducted business in New York, even though they are banned from operating there, according to a report by Yahoo Finance.

If the allegations are true, it would mean the exchanges offered unbacked tethers as loans, despite claims that these "stablecoins" were backed by real money in offshore back accounts. Bitfinex has now claimed that the tethers are 74% backed.

This is not the first time Bitfinex has run into trouble with the law. In April 2019, the NYAG alleged the exchanged had dipped into Tether's reserves to use a slush fund to fill a $850 million hole due to losses from its payment processor Crypto Capital Funds. The company then paid back Tether with a line of credit through a ledger entry with Crypto Capital. Law enforcement in the past have seized multiple bank accounts of Crypto Capital Funds in Poland, Portugal and the U.S.

The NYAG claims that it has jurisdiction over Bitfinex and Tether because it opened accounts in multiple New York banks and operated in the state despite being banned from doing so.

Topics: Bitcoin, Mobile Payments, Regulatory Issues

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