People who love to complain have lots of opportunities to do so with the European payment market: everything is dominated by large financial institutions, we lack a European payment scheme, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) may lead to losing some sales, innovation is slow, etc. In addition, not only the interchange level is low, but it is even decreasing: Mastercard and Visa just agreed to significantly reduce (on average by around 40%) their multilateral interchange fees (MIF or interchange) for payments in the EEA with consumer cards issued elsewhere. However, the European payment market remains attractive to non-European players. Softbank, a major Japanese mobile network operator and
The European Union is working on a new set of specifications for ID cards of its member states. The specification is set to be aligned on the ICAO MRTD (Machine Readable Travel Documents) one for passports. Announcing an aggressive planning, the European Parliament expects member states to start issuing new ID documents within the next two years, replacing the existing 250 different types of ID cards currently issued by the European member states issued to their citizens and permanent residents. In addition, current cardholders will have to replace their cards within five or ten years according to their degree of security. As of now, it is estimated that around 80 million ID cards in the EU
Photo credit: Apple For long many companies from diverse horizons have been trying to enter the financial transactions arena. Apple is perhaps one of the best example of a long series of attempts to become a payment stakeholder. The latest embodiment in this series is the Apple credit card announcement. Already since the inception of the App Store, Apple has been collecting and keeping credit card numbers of its customers. Then, in our secure transactions industry, we all remember about Apple Pay launch and its controversies: Is apple trying to become a financial institution, a payment processor or a payment player? We know now Apple has found a place for Apple Pay in the payment value chain
Deal done! The EUR 4.8 billion acquisition of Gemalto by Thales, which was originally announced in December 2017 is finally completed! The companies just announced that, as of March 28, 2019, approximately 85.58% of the Gemalto shares have been tendered to Thales’ offer. Consequently, Gemalto is consolidated as of 1 April 2019 in Thales’s financial statements. Thales will acquire the outstanding shares and Gemalto will be delisted from Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Paris. Gemalto will now form one of Thales's seven global divisions, to be named Digital Identity and Security (DIS). Gemalto was the heir of Gemplus created in 1988 in Provencal village Gemenos. With this acquisition, the “Gem”
