Beaconized Payments
South Africa’s Ovations Group is taking the leap onto a beaconized payments platform. The provider of business process transformation solutions will use the platform from San Francisco-based Pay With Drop.
Fiserv and the Money Management Institute Partner
Fiserv financial services technology solutions will be providing exclusive data on the managed investment solutions industry to the Money Management Institute (MMI) and Dover Financial Research. The release of this data represents an industry first and enables industry participants to track key trends within the Separately Managed Account (SMA) and Unified Managed Account (UMA) market segments. The data will help provide insight on product trends that will help wealth management firms better service their clients and grow their wealth advisory businesses. MMI will include the Fiserv data in the 4Q issue of Central, an MMI quarterly publication, and subsequent issues of Central. Through industry advocacy, educational initiatives, regulatory affairs, data reporting and professional networking, MMI supports and advances the growth of advisory solutions.
Malauzai Announces mBanking Research on Usage Data
Malauzai mobile banking SmartApps for community financial institutions, has released “Monkey Insights,” a monthly research service based on the company’s Real-Time Experience Behavioral Analytics (REBA). Monkey Insights will reports on two indices: The Mobile Engagement Index (MEI) which tracks end-user engagement with mobile banking and the M-Money Index (MMI) that summarizes statistics related to mobile money movement such as transfers, bill payments and deposits. Malauzai will analyze the user behavior associated with more than 350,000 unique logins and nearly 52,000 registered users to provide a summary index for both engagement and money movement. The MEI shows how end-user engagement with mobile banking changes over time, exploring metrics such as login frequency, feature usage and overall end-user activity to derive a unique engagement score.
Fiserv Appoints New President, Investment Services
Cheryl Nash has been named President of its Investment Services division with Fiserv. A 28 year veteran of the Company, Nash brings to the role a record of industry leadership, technology expertise and commitment to serving clients to this role. Nash played significant roles in the acquisitions of Upstream Technologies and AdviceAmerica, providing Fiserv clients with an integrated model management environment and financial advice and planning technology, respectively. She has been the driving force behind the Fiserv convergence strategy for Investment Services, which comprises many initiatives that are on track to deliver an integrated wealth management solution; a single managed-account platform; and an aggregated view of client assets and liabilities for a more robust Unified Managed Household (UMH) experience for Fiserv clients.
Fiserv Named Service Provider of the Year
Financial technology service provider Fiserv was recognized as
the Service Provider of the Year by Money Management Institute (MMI),
the national organization for the managed investment solutions and
wealth management industry. Award recipients are selected though a process of client nominations and
voting by industry leaders including MMI members, service providers,
industry press and members of the MMI board. MMI cited the continued
commitment of Fiserv to develop industry-leading managed account
solutions that help its clients to drive efficiencies, manage risk and
grow revenue as just part of the reason Fiserv was honored with this award.
Fiserv is the leading technology provider for the managed accounts
industry, its APLSM platform processes and manages more than 3.4 million
accounts daily and it is the chosen technology provider for more than 1
million UMA sleeves and more than $1.8 trillion in assets.
SAADIQ CREDIT CARD
Standard Chartered Bank has introduced its Shariah compliant “Saadiq
VISA Gold Credit Card”, designed with Islamic financial expertise, to
ensure that the guidelines meet Ujrah requirements. The Ujrah concept
ensures that customers pay card fees only at a fixed rate, rather than
a rate that is reflective of the customer’s card balance, on a monthly
basis. This fixed rate allows customers to choose to pay 5% or AED 100
of the outstanding balance monthly. The remaining balance is then
transferred to a non-interest bearing / non-profit bearing Service Account.
In addition to the “Saadiq VISA” Shariah compliance, card members are
also afforded free comprehensive travel coverage, 5% discounts on travel
with MMI Travel LLC and ‘Saadiq Rewards’ on everyday-purchases for
redemption against transactions or for select charities.
95% of New Bankruptcies Still Chapter 7s
The largest credit counseling organization in the U.S. says that in the 13 weeks after the new bankruptcy law took effect, a mere 4.5% of the 14,907 debtors it counseled had enough income to enter into a repayment plan. The National Association of Legal Document Preparers say that the evidence from Money Management International shows that “Chapter 7 Bankruptcy” is still the only option for most consumers to get a new financial start. Bankruptcy filings fell to a weekly rate of about 3,500 compared to 315,000 just before the new law took effect on Oct. 17, but the numbers have increased to about 5,000 per week and are expected to climb.
Edentify Lands Lisker as an Adviser
Joel Lisker, former SVP for Security and Risk Management for MasterCard, has joined the Board of Advisors for Pennsylvania-based Edentify. Lisker was most recently the Senior Vice President for Security and Risk Management for MasterCard International. In this capacity, he served as the company’s worldwide senior security representative for matters relating to the fraudulent use of its numerous card products, and was instrumental in developing technical solutions and strategies to thwart the efforts of organized crime. Edentify is dedicated to developing and deploying technology solutions utilized in preventing identity theft and fraud.
MMI & CCCS San Diego Merge
CCCS San Diego has merged with Houston-based Money Management International. Consumer Credit Counseling Services of San Diego has been serving the residents of the San Diego community as a non-profit credit counseling agency for more than 37 years. MMI is the largest full-service non-profit credit counseling organization in the United States with more than 90 branch offices in ten states. The combined organization will operate locally under the CCCS name and nationally under the name MMI.
Money Marketing & Innobeta
Innobeta Systems, Inc., an ATM transaction processor, has completed converting nearly 2,000 ATMs owned by independent sales organization Money Marketing, Inc. to the to the Innobeta processing system.
National Credit Education Week
To help promote National Credit Education Week (April 14-18, 2003), Money Management International asked “what’s the weirdest thing you ever charged to your credit card?” and got some very interesting responses.
Counseling Consolidation
The growing consolidation in the consumer credit counseling industry continues to pick up speed. Yesterday, the Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Baton Rouge announced its merger with Houston-based Money Management International. CCCS of Baton Rouge has 15 offices throughout much of Louisiana and has operated for 38 years. The Baton Rouge merger is the sixth agency since 2000 to merge with MMI. Previous mergers include agencies in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Virginia. MMI is now the largest full-service non-profit credit counseling organization in the USA with over 75 branch offices in nine states.