Connective Payments Insights

An onboarding process with a state-of-the-art user experience, while ensuring compliance with legal requirements and limiting the risk of fraud, money laundering and other financial crimes, should be central to your business strategy. Designing and executing it can rightly be called an art: the Art of Onboarding. 

This episode of Connective Payments Insights is about a benchmark research we conducted last year into the onboarding processes at 13 financial institutions active in the Netherlands, aimed at small and medium sized business clients. 

SPAA, an initiative of the European Payment Council (EPC), is a new, voluntary payment scheme. Enrollment  for banks and third-party providers has opened on 1 September 2023.

The scheme's ambition is to drive ‘open payments’ in Europe and to become the de facto European standard in the field of open banking.

As the end of the investigation phase comes into view, it is noticeable that the discussion about the digital euro is definitely shifting from the technological to the political domain. The European Parliament is playing an increasing role in the discussion, among others with papers casting doubt on the attractiveness of a digital euro. Meanwhile, the Eurosystem is trying to generate public interest in the project, including through surveys of focus groups in the various euro area countries.

Anyone who travels through Europe by public transport shares the experience that it is not always clear how to pay your fare. Payment methods and schemes for public transport vary significantly across European countries, reflecting cultural, technological, and economic differences. Is there a trend towards standardisation, which would be in the interest of foreign travellers? And what trends do we distinguish?

As the European Commission is still busy evaluating the impact of the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), the banking community is looking beyond the Directive and preparing a new scheme for open banking, called SEPA Account Access (SPAA). In this podcast you will get an update on recent developments.

At a time when banks are becoming more cautious about lending to small and medium-sized businesses, opportunities are emerging for non-banks to offer banking services to these customers. Accountancy software suppliers have begun leveraging their customer data to offer financial products and payment services to their portfolio, thereby competing with traditional retail banks. Indeed, ’embedded finance’ is disrupting the banking industry and forcing traditional banks to adapt and innovate to remain competitive. However, whether this development will really take off depends on many factors, touched upon in this podcast.

Whether you need to employ compliance specialists on a permanent basis depends on a lot of factors, such as the size and type of organisation, the product portfolio and relevant laws and regulations. In addition, the same questions are raised as with any Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) decision. 

Compliance om demand, a service by Connective Payments specialists, is valuable because we have deep expertise in the payment industry, the right network of professionals needed in the process, as well as our commitment to adding value to our customers. We believe we can support payment organisations in overcoming their compliance challenges with the mentioned benefits of outsourcing.

Until recently, there was little public interest in CBDCs and the digital euro in particular. But in the Netherlands, criticism is growing of the technocratic nature of the process, which seems to take place largely outside the political arena. The subject also seems to be coming to life in the (social) media. Doubts are widely shared within the House of Representatives and mainly concern the lack of democratic control and the privacy aspects of the digital euro. On the other side of the spectrum, Dutch banks have their doubts: they wonder aloud what such a digital euro is actually needed for. 

The online payment processor Wirecard turned out to be a fraudulent money machine of a bunch of megalomaniac managers, who eventually got entangled in their own web. That sounded like the scenario of an exciting movie and sure enough: in September 2022 a smooth report of the demise of “the German version of Paypal” appeared on Netflix: Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard 2022. This is our review of the documentary. In short: for those who have slowly forgotten the Wirecard story, and how the bubble finally burst, Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard 2022 is a highly recommended thriller.

The pursuit of greater sustainability will transform many companies in the coming decades. Regulations have come into place to force businesses around the world to change their behaviour. Most of us are well aware that mitigating climate change and the depletion of the Earth’s resources is of the utmost importance for ourselves and for future generations. But acting on it is something else. 

This article focusses specifically on sustainability in connection to the payments industry. We present a “Sustainability in Payments” framework comprised of three layers, “Comply”, “Act” and “Excel”, aimed to help financial institutions assess possible sustainability approaches. In this first article on sustainability in payments we specifically focus on one of those approaches, the “Act” layer, and we highlight a number of sustainability solutions that are available in the market.

The lightning-fast substitution of public money for private money, and the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies, have raised concerns about financial stability worldwide. Given that cash in Sweden is fast becoming something of a tourist attraction, it’s not surprising that Sweden is leading the way in Europe with the e-krona project. Already in 2017, the Swedish Riksbank started a study on how the e-krona could be issued to the general public. This article summarises the technical infrastructure and the two-tier model that was tested in phase 2 of the e-krona pilot.

Central banks worldwide have to make many choices during the design and implementation of digital central bank money (CBDCs). It must be prevented that large amounts are transferred simultaneously from private to public money, which can lead to self-fulfilling effects and financial instability. A study by the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research suggests that these risks of CBDCs may be smaller than they appear. There seems to be yet another tradeoff central banks have to consider: between maturity mismatch of commercial banks on the one hand, and the benefit of real-time information on the other.

Nearly two and a half years ago, the Dutch Minister of Finance launched the so called FinTech action plan to let FinTech companies grow faster and give opportunities to new companies. According to the plan, The Netherlands´ strong points are its digital infrastructure, attractive culture, English language, central location and high quality of supervision. The so-called FinTech census showed that supervision in the Netherlands is perceived as relatively strict compared to other countries, but that a Dutch license is therefore also seen as a stamp of quality. However, there is also room for improvement.
Let’s take a look how things have turned out since the plan was published.

ING, NXP and Samsung have developed a method that allows smartphone users to pay among themselves via ultra-wideband. According to the parties, the method called “NEAR” is the first “peer-to-peer payment application” where users pay by holding the phone close to each other. Users therefore do not have to look up a username, e-mail address or telephone number first. In this episode of Insights, we tell you more about NEAR.

Most Dutch people will hardly notice it, but the new debit card that they will receive in the coming years has a new brand logo. V PAY and Maestro cards are being replaced by Visa Debit and Debit Mastercard cards. In this episode of Connective Payments Insights, we explain the changes and benefits for consumers and merchants, both online and in physical shops, and the strategic choices for issuers and acquirers.