Earlier this week, at Trustech, in Cannes, happened the always-awaited presentation of Eurosmart figures and trends. The new chairman of Eurosmart, our industry association, Stefane Mouile, had to collect all his talents to show a positive face when announcing a 3.3% growth in volume for 2017 and 2018. Gone are the days when smart card volumes were growing at a 30% rate very year! Eurosmart is now positioned as the “voice of the smart security industry” and we know that counting smart cards is no longer the key metric in our industry. The secure transactions industry has been diversifying and is now not only supplying cards in the form of banking cards, SIM cards or ID documents but also al
Peer to peer (P2P) payments have been developing silently for a while until the largest players came into the game. Now, most major companies are entering the P2P payment arena and intend to play a growing role in this business. However, as P2P payments are free for end users as long as they do not involve merchants, the business model has always been hard to define. P2P payment operating companies have to invest and operate information systems to run a service that does not generate any significant income. However, some side services may generate marginal income: typically operators charge their customers when they transfer money in and out of the P2P payment app. In addition, as any prepai
At the end of last week, Apple announced Apple Pay Cash, marketed as a means to send and receive money with Apple Pay. The company is the latest to enter the already crowded arena of P2P payments. For the time being, Apple Pay Cash is restricted to the United States, but one may expect the company to deploy it globally. Apple introduces Apple Pay Cash both as a means to simply send money to friends through their own Messages app, and as an extension of Apple Pay allowing payments in stores, in apps and on the web. This way, Apple, on one hand, tries to expand its role in traditional consumer to business payment and positions Apple Pay Cash as a direct competitor of the established leaders in
