The CFPB’s Arbitration Study, released this week, found nearly 75% of consumers surveyed were unaware whether the contracts they signed included an arbitration clause. Of the consumers surveyed, fewer than 7% actually understood that an arbitration clause would preclude them from suing the company.
Fiserv released a white paper that offers financial institutions insight on how to develop a comprehensive enterprise mobile alerts platform to boost customer engagement and meet regulatory requirements related to customer notifications. The paper discusses consumer use of alerts, considerations for building an alerts platform and strategies for deployment in phases and across channels. The white paper, “Enterprise Alerts: The Superhighway to Delighting Customers with Timely, Relevant and Actionable Information,” can be downloaded at www.fiserv.com/enterprise-alerts. An enterprise alert system, or a “superhighway” of two-way informational flow, should be seamlessly integrated with all banking channels to support information access and management reporting. The “Enterprise Alerts” white paper outlines considerations for building and rolling out an enterprise alerts platform, as well as best processes for supporting alerts across channels.
Western Union global payment services from its Payments Money Mindset Index showed a growing consumer preference for online and mobile bill payments continues to grow as 39% of consumers will pay more bills online in 2013, and 12 percent intending to pay more bills by mobile phone. Meanwhile, 14% will make an urgent payment via their mobile device in the next six months and 25% will send fewer checks in the mail to pay their bills. Additional Western Union findings show 46.5% of bills are paid via a biller, bank or credit union website; 20.2% paid via mail; 19.6% are paid via an automatic deduction or recurring payment; 8.7% are paid in-person; 3% are paid via a landline phone and 2% are paid via mobile phone.
American Express announced a series of offerings for both golf fans and American Express Cardmembers to enhance the 2012 U.S. Open Championship experience at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif., including the release of its updated Course Curator digital concierge, the first-ever Golf Fitness Studio and the fan-favorite American Express CourseCast Radio. Located near the main entrance to the course, the American Express Championship Experience provides an extraordinary, interactive space for fans to learn more about the game of golf and the latest Championship news, improve their golf game, and enhance their experience while out on the course, including: Presented exclusively by American Express, golf fans on and off the course can follow all of the U.S. Open action on the ESPN Radio broadcast available on ESPNRadio.com, the official iPhone Application of the U.S. Open and through CourseCast Radio earpieces. Radios will be available Thursday through Sunday. Fans can also tweet questions using #AskAmexGolf for a chance to have their question answered live, on-air by one of the ESPN golf commentators.
Global Axcess self-service kiosk solutions released its 4Q/10 and FY/10 fiscals posting positive, year-over-year gains in both regards. The Company reported consolidated revenues of $6.1 million for 4Q/10, compared to $5.4 million for the 4Q/09, for a 12.6% increase. This was thanks in great part to $790,000 of DVD rental revenue for the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to approximately $33,000 in the year-ago period. Gross profit was $2.0 million, or 33.7% gross margin, for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2010, compared to gross profit of $2.5 million, or 47% gross margin, for the same period of 2009. Meanwhile, for the fiscal year 2010 Global Axcess total revenue was $22.7 million, an increase of 5.8%, compared to $21.5 million for the same period of 2009. Gross profit for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2010 was $9.4 million, or 41.3% gross margin, compared to $10.2 million, reflecting a gross margin of 47.4% for the comparable 2009 period.
Subsequent to these figures, 1Q/11 surcharge transactions are expected to be 8% above 4Q/10 surcharge transactions, thanks in part to having increased ATM surcharge fees to select ATMs. The average surcharge fees per company-owned ATM after the increase was $2.80 per surcharged transaction compared to $2.58 prior to the increase. Meanwhile, total DVD services revenue in 1Q/11 is expected to be a 52% increase over total fiscal year 2010 revenues in the DVD services business while total ATM services revenue for the 1Q/11 is expected to be the highest quarterly revenue the Company has reported for its ATM services business.
American Express Business Travel, a global leader in business travel management, announced it is offering its automated central command post complimentary for those customers who implement its business continuity suite. Information learned from the volcanic ash cloud situation demonstrated the importance of continuous information exchange between corporate security, travel, finance and other departments and combining that with the creativity and persistence of experienced travel counselors became the formula to successfully manage through this unexpected situation. American Express Business Travel reported its client base had more than 150,000 travellers impacted by the travel cancellations. American Express recommends for companies to consider to ensure preparation and business continuity for any unforeseen travel disruption that include the following tips: Be a safety net. Distressed travellers seek solace in their travel
managers and expect a personal touch from their service; Take a fresh look. Nothing is more important than knowing the
whereabouts of your travellers and verifying their safety; evaluate your servicing configuration. Does it include allowances for emergency and after-hours service; revisit your traveler communications strategy. It must allow for
two-way, real-time communication with employees and travellers both
individually and company-wide and consider a traveler portal solution that can target individual travellers based upon their preferences and travel history then post and push timely
and relevant information; embrace telepresence and teleconferencing. due to travel interruptions; utilize an automated ticket tracking
application to identify all unused tickets; create the dialog with your peers through online forums
and discussion boards. Share your experiences and pick up a new tip
or learning along the way and debrief while the situation is still fresh.
Credit card asset-backed securities (ABS) ratings are expected to remain stable in 2010, with strained performance due to regulatory changes limiting issuers’ ability to employ risk-based pricing strategies in conjunction with 10%+ unemployment. This, according to Fitch, is sure to see a 12% credit card chargeoff level in 2010, subsequently leading to narrowed excess spread and three-month rolling averages to hover between 4% and 5%. The Fitch Prime Credit Card Delinquency Index for January, measuring credit card performance through Dec. 31, declined to a low 4.19%, mostly thanks to Bank of America’s lower early stage delinquencies for the period. The Fitch Prime Credit Card Chargeoff Index for January decreased by 43 bps to 10.25%, mostly thanks to Chase’ 195 bps drop in chargeoffs, while gross yield continued to grow rapidly 94 bps to 21.15%.
RETAIL CARDS ABS
Delinquency Charge-Offs
Jan 09: 5.58% 10.94%
Mar 09: 4.81% 11.05%
Jun 09: 4.88% 12.23%
Sep 09: 5.18% 11.75%
Dec 09: 4.19% 10.25%
Source: FitchRatings
A new report from from Frost & Sullivan= titled “Asia
Pacific Contactless Smart Card Market” reveals that the market earned
revenues of $769.4 million in 2008 and estimates this to reach $1356.0 million in 2014.
The ongoing issuance of projects such as e-passport and mass transit
ticketing will continue and applications will expand to include contactless and mobile
payments. Some other contactless applications that will insulate the market from
the downturn are upgrades and replacement cards. To ride out this unstable phase, market participants should promote
their product’s ability to create a more efficient and cost-saving system in the long
term, be it in the mass transit, government, or other industry. This benefit will be
even more apparent if there are multiple applications. At a time when participants
need to restrain spending, vendors should revisit successful business cases and
emphasize the long term cost savings and efficiency that resulted from them.
American Express Business Travel reports it has helped its clients save
over $2 billion in T&E expenses.
New business acquired reached $3.4 billion and global customer wins
increased 172 percent compared to 2007, with a global retention rate of
98 percent1. The North America Middle-Market client segment experienced
a 63 percent year-over-year growth increase, while Advisory Services
achieved a 33 percent annual growth rate, globally, in consultative
sales. In 2008, American Express reported $25.4 billion in travel sales.
The “Free Travel Program Assessment” program provided clients and
non-clients of all sizes located around the
world with the opportunity to identify areas for further savings, and
offered advice on how to best recession-proof travel budgets. In less
than four months, the program has identified more than $2.6 million in
potential saving opportunities for participating mid-size companies by
using proprietary methodology to analyze key indicators. Other services
offered include
Global Advisory Services; Small Meetings Solutions; aXiom in
International.
FX International Payments (FXIP) Solution; BusinessTravelConneXion.com
(BTX);
Eco Solutions; Pre-Trip Approval (PTA)and aXis @ Work.
The roster of newly-won business and renewed customers cuts across all
industries and client segments, revealing a diversified global and
regional base, including notable brands such as British Telecom, which
decided to consolidate its program and use American Express Business
Travel in Europe, Asia and the United States; and Rio Tinto, which
globally consolidated its program in Australia, Europe and North
America. Leading companies that expanded travel programs into additional
regions include ExxonMobil in India; Commonwealth Bank in Australia;
Akzo Nobel in China; and Citi, Walmart and Philips in Argentina.
Innopay and Telecompaper have released an update to
their annual report “Mobile Payments 2008” that reveals that market experts are now predicting that the
market will reach 10 billion by 2010. The updated report includes a detailed listing and graphical mapping of
more than 100 worldwide mobile payment initiatives including 27 initiatives
launched in the last four months and presents over a hundred pages of
analysis on the attraction of mobile payments and the critical issues that need to be
resolved to make them a success including: a lack of mainstream contexts niche opportunities exist but mainstream
payment contexts saturated with existing solutions; ecosystem – complex value chain with lack of co-operation;
standards – lack of interoperability and technology standards; technology/security concerns; incumbent solutions –
competitiveness of existing payment methods in
developing economies; regulator readiness/regulation not in line with the increasing
interest.
American Express says that based on forecasted economic conditions for
2009 and the substantial increase in fares already experienced this
year, it is possible that airfares in 2009 may decrease between 3% and
5%. However, this doesnât necessarily correlate to a decrease in prices
paid as airlines continue their pursuit of expanding the suite of fees
charged for services such as in-flight meals and baggage. In addition to
the proliferation of new fees is the delicate balance between supply and
demand. Considering airfare, car rental and hotel stay, AmEx expects the
average domestic trip to increase 2.8% to a total of $1139, An increase
of 4.3% is expected for international trips to bring the average cost to
$3556. American Express Business Travel suggests that companies revisit
their travel policies to ensure that travelers have a comprehensive
guide to navigate the current travel environment.
Experts have concluded the consumer payments world is in transition and the current euphoric era for many issuers is expected to change drastically over the next three years. High-cost programs such as free rewards options will be the first to go, replaced with fee-based systems aligning cost with benefits, followed by the introduction of an alternative network by a large payments company, to rival that of major issuers (Mastercard, VISA) and issuers diversifying payments mix to focus on debit payment options/programs. To provide issuers with advice on surviving this change, MA-based Celent has released its “Disruption in the Payments World” report disclosing such advice on taking measures to counteract these “disruptions”. These measures include diversifying payments mix, scrutiny of rewards funding and reevaluating debit card-DDA relationships.