Shopkeep & Ambur & CMO
ShopKeep has acquired Ambur, an iPad and iPhone point of sale system for more than 1,500 restaurants. Also, ShopKeep ankled Andrew Gorrin as the company’s new Chief Marketing Officer.
YellowPepper Chairman
Latin America’s payment pioneer, YellowPepper, has ankled Mohammad Khan, former president and founder of ViVOtech as Chairman. Prior to founding ViVOtech in 2001, Khan held various leadership positions at Verifone, the global leader in secure POS solutions, which he joined in its early stage in 1983.
MAB Prepaid MC
Myanmar Apex Bank has teamed with MasterCard to develop the local payments infrastructure with the launch of new prepaid card. MasterCard has launched prepaid cards together with Co-operative Bank Ltd, Kanbawza Bank, Ayeyarwady Bank, and Myanmar Citizen Bank with 2C2P, the last of which was also Myanmar’s first smartphone-enabled prepaid card.
Wearable Payment Apps
A global wearable financial app hackathon produced three top winning apps. Atlanta-based Global Payments and CaixaBank in Barcelona held there FinAppsParty this month.
Digital River Webinar Offers Merchants Best Practice Advice
Digital River is set to host a free webinar to help businesses learn how to drive online revenue growth with Google Shopping, formerly known as Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs). The webinar, “The Power of Google Shopping,” is now open for registration (http://driv.ws/2d) now. The webinar will be led by Mahmood Khan, senior program manager for strategic marketing at Digital River. Mahmood will be joined by a guest speaker from a multi-national branded manufacturer. Working with Digital River, this branded manufacturer launched a Google Shopping campaign that drove an 115 percent increase in quarter-over-quarter online revenue.
SimplyTapp Announces Newest Board Member
SimplyTapp Host Card Emulation (HCE) solutions for mobile payments announced Mohammad Khan has been named to its Board of Directors. Mohammad Khan co-founded ViVOtech in 2001, the early leader in contactless and Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile payments. As its President and Board Member, Khan paved the road for mobile payments by shipping more than one million NFC POS terminals to a wide variety of brand name merchants around the world. Khan and the team also ran multiple successful field trials globally for mobile payments, offers, and loyalty programs confirming to the industry that consumers liked using their mobile devices to shop, save and pay at physical stores. Prior to ViVotech, Khan worked at VeriFone for 15 years joining in its infancy days, and contributed in making magnetic stripe and smart cards to be the leading payment medias for the industry globally.
MoneyGram Expands Global Footprint
MoneyGram signed an agreement with Southeast Bank Limited (SEBL), a Bangladesh-based private commercial bank, and is now offering money transfer services at the bank’s branches across the country. The agreement increases MoneyGram’s presence in Bangladesh, adds it to its growing agent network, and makes the company’s services easier for customers to access. The addition of SEBL to MoneyGram’s agent network in Bangladesh creates an easy-to-access footprint of locations with MoneyGram services.
BitPay Expands Investment Round
BitPay bitcoin payment processing expanded its Seed round of funding by adding more angel investors, including Ben Davenport, Trace Mayer, and A-GRade Investments. BitPay now has over 3,200 merchants using its platform to accept bitcoin payments, and recently disclosed that in 2012 they processed over $3.3 million in bitcoin payments for its merchants. BitPay has developed significant expertise in this area, understanding all of the edge conditions and scalability issues that a company would face trying to use bitcoin, and this expertise puts BitPay way out in front of the bitcoin processing space. Having developed a suite of software tools that allow businesses to collect payments over the bitcoin peer-to-peer payment networ, BitPay can accept a payment from any country on earth, instantly, with zero risk of fraud.
Euronet Pakistan Awarded Outsourcing Agreement
Euronet Pakistan signed a comprehensive Electronic Financial Transactions (EFT) Outsourcing Agreement with Burj Bank. Burj Bank will utilize Euronet’s PCI DSS compliant processing platform, replacing the current in-house system. Euronet will enable and launch MasterCard debit cards for Burj Bank customers along with other innovative services as part of their extensive overhauling roadmap and offer new transactions and services to their customers in a timely and cost-effective manner, to ensure that the Bank stays ahead of its competition.
ViVOtech Wins 2012 Frost & Sullivan Product Line Strategy Award
ViVOtech NFC software and systems has been honored with the 2012 Frost & Sullivan Product Line Strategy Award in Contactless Mobile Payment for its superior product line and overall market strategy. According to the report, ViVOtech delivers “the key building blocks of the NFC ecosystem,” including smart applications for enhancing the customer experience, trusted service manager (TSM) software, interactive marketing platform and point-of-sale systems, allowing consumers to enjoy an interactive and informed shopping experience in physical stores so that they can purchase the right product at the right price, while consumers are empowered with a full control of opt-in. On the other side, ViVOtech’s solution provides a powerful and personalized marketing channel to merchants, card issuers, consumer product group (CPG) marketers and other advertisers to influence their respective customers through sending coupons, offers, and rewards to consumers based on who they are, where they are, and what their interests are when they opt-in through a simple touch of their NFC phone on touch points like at the entrance of a store for check-in or at a shelf-tag to get more information on a specific product. In result, the most relevant and contextual information and marketing messaging are provided to consumers, resulting in high traction and redemption rate for an efficient marketing channel.
Western Union and Roshan Partner for mMoney Transfer
Western Union global payment services and Roshan total communications partnered to kickoff the Western Union Mobile Money Transfer regionally. This will add international remittances to the “M-Paisa” service, part of the Vodafone mobile money family. This lets customers receive their salaries, pay bills, receive and repay microfinance loans, send and receive money and purchase airtime directly from their mobile phones. With the introduction of the new service, M-Paisa customers will be able to receive Western Union Money Transfer transactions from around the world directly in their mobile wallet accounts.
Travelex Expands Number of Outlet Locations
Travelex opened its new outlet in Bab Al Bahrain and is now the largest Western Union provider in the Country. The new outlet relocated from the 24-hour supermarket to the opposite side of the road, in the Bahrain Air Office Building, offering more spacious facilities for customers. Travelex will offer more than 30 foreign currencies, a buyback guarantee, Western Union services as well as the Travelex Money Transfer (TMT) service which was launched in December 2011. Travelex Bahrain’s 24 outlets are part of a global network of more than 1,000 stores and over 500 ATMs across 25 countries.