March 13, 2019

State Bank of India is partnering with Financial Software and Systems, a payment and fintech company, to implement a "One Nation, One Card" program meant to enable digital transit payments at mass scale.

The National Common Mobility Card program assures payments interoperability across India's transit providers and allows customers to pay for transit services across India using a single card. 

In the past, transit providers have deployed proprietary payment solutions, resulting in fragmentation and limited adoption of cashless solutions, according to a press release.

SBI has enabled the issuance of FSS prepaid digital solutions for tap and pay contact and contactless cards. The Common Mobility card functions as a digital prepaid account for multimodal transit, linked with a standard debit card for account-based transactions at ATM, POS and e-commerce channels. 

The solution eliminates the need for commuters to pay cash at toll stations and ticket kiosks or tie up funds with multiple transit cards. Instead cardholders simply load transit funds into the stored-value account and pay fares by tapping their card on the terminal reader.

"We are excited to build on our leadership position and bring innovative digital payments experiences to consumers through our partnership with the State Bank of India," Suresh Rajagopalan, FSS president of retail payments, said in the release. "The One Nation, One Card program is a significant step in realizing the Digital India vision by bringing a critical mass of microtransactions into the digital fold."

The FSS platform behind the One Nation, One Card program manages card issuance, transaction clearing and settlement. Issuing capabilities include registration, verification, card issuance, top-up of funds into a prepaid wallet, and card lifecycle management, as well as reconciliation and reporting to help banks efficiently manage their card portfolios. 

The digital prepaid solution supports operator-specific applications — e.g., monthly passes and season tickets. Issuers of the smart card can load, delete and amend applications to tailor a card at the time of issuance and load supplementary applications later, according to the release

The solution supports transaction authorization, clearing and settlement functions for participant entities. Transit merchants where "speed at checkout" is imperative can authorize transactions offline instantly. 

The digital prepaid solution supports multiple fund sources including bank accounts, cash deposits at authorized locations, and card-to-wallet transfers. Customers can also withdraw cash at designated toll points and outlets.

Topics: Contactless / NFC, Mobile/Digital Wallet, Transaction Processing

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March 11, 2019

Bank of England, the central bank of the U.K., has exercised its statutory authority to direct Visa Europe to fully implement changes recommended in an independent review that followed a massive payments outage in June 2018. 

The report, issued in November, found that Visa Europe was not sufficiently prepared to manage such a disruption and needed to take proactive steps to deal with crisis management, communication and other technical areas.

Visa Europe will be required to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers to assess its progress in implementing changes recommended in the report. 

Visa Europe undertook the review in conjunction with the bank and the U.K. Payment Systems Regulator. The June 1 outage, caused by what Visa said was a hardware failure, left U.K. customers unable to complete approximately 5 million debit and credit transactions. 

"Visa's mission is to connect the world through a reliable and safe payments system," a spokesman for the company said via email. "We take our role in supporting U.K. and global commerce seriously and that begins with our commitment to protect consumers, businesses and local economies. 

"Since the service disruption in June 2018 we have implemented significant enhancements to our network operations, and crisis management processes to ensure resilience of our systems and better coordination with our clients on behalf of our customers."

Topics: Card Brands, Mobile Banking, POS, Regulatory Issues

Companies: Visa

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March 11, 2019

Financial Software & Systems Ltd., a Chennai, India-based payment technology provider, has announced an agreement to acquire a 46-percent stake in South Africa-based Ecentric Payment Systems, according to a company press release.

Ecentric, a unit of Standard Bank, processes transactions for many of the Tier-1 retailers and smaller merchants in its home markets and other African countries, according to the companies. FSS says the investment will help it develop a fintech platform for the development of payments solutions in Africa.

"We are very excited to welcome our strategic partner, FSS, a global payments leader, as a new investor," Ecentric CEO Hassen Sheik said in the announcement. "The financial and strategic backing from FSS will help Ecentric accelerate product innovation and grow the business in its home market as well as expand to more countries."

He added that the agreement will help the company achieve its goal of creating a ubiquitous and universal digital payment acceptance model on the African continent.

Topics: Mobile Apps, Mobile Payments, POS, Region: APAC, Region: EMEA, Technology Providers

Companies: FSS

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