Mobile payments set to soar in 2010 - Gartner

The number of people using their mobile phones to make payments is set to grow from 70.2 million in 2009 to 108.6 million this year, a 54.5% rise, according to research firm Gartner.

This represents 2.1% of all mobile users, with the fastest take-up of the technology witnessed in developing markets such as Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, driven by the unbanked and underbanked.

In Asia Pacific, m-payment users will surpass 62.8 million in 2010 and represent 2.6% of all mobile owners. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa there will be 27.1 million while in North America the figure is expected to be just 3.5 million, or 1.1% of all mobile users in the region.

SMS remains the dominant mobile payment technology, says Gartner, because of its ubiquity and ease of use although Web and app-based systems gaining some ground in developing markets. However NFC technology has failed to take off, with many banks seeing no business case.

Sandy Shen, research director, Gartner, says: "Developing markets have found the right formula for mobile money services - functions that users want and an ecosystem that can sustain the service. The answer for developed markets, however, remains elusive. The offerings for developed markets will take a different format. Instead of a point offering for mobile payment, the service needs to be built on top of the existing payment behaviour and infrastructure so that users can choose any channel - retail, phone, online or mobile - that suits their context at the moment of payment."

Meanwhile, a separate report from Juniper Research suggests that the number of mobile subscribers who use their phones for mobile banking will exceed 400 million globally by 2013.

China regulates third party payments

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has announced that non-bank payment service providers would need a license to conduct third party payment transactions in China. Under the new rules, the companies will have to report to the central bank the commission rates it charges for third party transactions. The companies would also be subject to periodic checks by the PBOC.

According to the central bank, the service providers will have to apply for a license within one year after the policy comes into effect on 1st September.

Analysts said the new rules will help regulate the online payment market, which reached 555 billion yuan ($81.4 billion) last year, up 135.6 percent from 2008.

Non-bank payment service providers will need to have a registered capital of at least 100 million yuan for a nationwide business license, and should have been making profits for two successive years, the central bank said.

"The policy will help in the healthy development of the online payment industry," said Cao Fei, an analyst with domestic research firm Analysys International.

China’s online payment market has been growing at more than 100 percent annually in the past five years. It has also been attracting more and more players. According to industry experts, there are more than 100 online payment companies in China at present.

But at the same time, there are also problems due to lack of regulation.

Some online payment companies have been accused recently of making money through illegal activities. Online payment company 99Bill Corp allegedly helped a gambling company to collect funds of over 3 billion yuan, and one of its senior officials was detained.

"The license rule is fair for all online payment companies," said Wang Ziling, who looks after public relations at Alipay.com Co Ltd, the largest online payment company in China.

Alipay had a 52 percent share of the online payment market in 2009, followed by Tenpay, an online payment unit of Tencent, with 24.7 percent.

Since companies have to be profitable for at least two successive years, analysts said the policy will restrict entry of newcomers in the market.

As for foreign funded companies, the central bank will issue separate rules.

Cao from Analysys International said the new rules are likely to mean stricter requirements for foreign funded online payment companies.

More Indian women go abroad to work

Deepa Gupta, 22, a mathematics graduate from Ludhiana, thought it a great opportunity to go to a postgraduate course in Michigan University. Two years down the line, she is settled in the US and has been joined by her widowed mother.

Gupta represents a trend — that of Indian women increasingly leaving home turf for professional, rather than personal reasons. The World Bank’s report on ‘Gender, Poverty Reduction and Migration’ says more women from developing countries such as India are migrating to the West independently rather than as dependents. It also says that female migration indirectly helps alleviate poverty.

Neelam Soni, executive with an overseas placement agency in Delhi says women in nursing, teaching, social and voluntary work, the hospitality industry, data-entry operations, sales and even housework are able to migrate to foreign shores.

Social scientist Mala Kapur Shankardass says that even though a large proportion of female migration can still be explained away by marriage (estimates say 80%) it is significant that 20% of all women migrants leave for professional reasons. A decade ago, less than 5% of women migrants worked She says that earlier, male migrants used to belong to the ‘Employed’ category and female to the ‘Not in the Labour Force’. This is changing. Shankardass.

But Shankardass cautions that Indian female contribution to forex remittances is still not properly documented. Official data largely focuses on male remittances.

Nepal’s formal remittances drop because of increased use of non-banking channels

Experts blamed the inflow of remittances through non-banking channels for a reduced recorded remittance flow to the country in the current fiscal year.

“Around 30 to 35 per cent of remittance is suspected to flow through non-banking channels,” said Chandra Prasad Dhakal, president of Nepal Remitters Association (NRA) during an interaction organised here in the capital jointly by NRA and Society of Economic Journalists-Nepal (Sejon).

Since the beginning of this financial year, the inflow of remittance has started slowing down to around 10 per cent against the growth rate of 40 per cent in the last financial year, said the remitters.

Nepal has seen a boom in inflow of remittances due to increased number of Nepali workers going abroad for work. “However the number of migrant workers has not come down in the current fiscal year,” he said adding that it has gone up by 23.7 per cent. “But the remittance inflow has slowed down to an average of 10 per cent,” Dhakal added.

He also suggested the government to exempt tax on remittances and bring a new policy to refund the taxes collected from workers to discourage non-banking channels and an increase in remittance inflow through banking channels.

Nepal received Rs 209 billion through remittances alone in the last fiscal year. In this fiscal year, by the end of first nine months, Nepal has received Rs 1,164.93 billion. “It shows that the inflow in monetary terms has not decreased,” said Bhasker Mani Gyawali, Executive Director of the Forex Department of the central bank. But he did not deny the slowdown.

“It’s not possible to register 50 per cent growth every year,” said former governor of the central bank Krishna Bahadur Manandhar.

“In the last one decade, remittances have become the lifeline of the national economy as its slowdown has pulled the Balance of Payment (BoP) into a deficit of Rs 22 billion,” said economist Dr Chiranjeevi Nepal.

“The slowdown of remittance can be felt badly in the foreign currency reserve,” he said adding that the forex reserve has depleted in the recent months.

“Nepal Rastra Bank’s data of the first nine months reveals that the forex reserve is enough to pay for imports for six months only wheres it was enough for a year during the same period last year,” Nepal added.

“However, the other side of story has been completely ignored. A remittance-dependent economy cannot attain high growth rate,” he pointed out, “In the remittance-fuelled economy, employment generation and productivity take a beating as the money will be pouring in even without much efforts by the citizens. “

The political instability might have contributed to people loosing faith in banking channels and they are resorting to the informal channels for remittance.

The banking sector is feeling the heat of the slowdown in remittances as they are facing the liquidity crunch.

“The government has taken the problem seriously,” assured revenue secretary Krishna Hari Baskota. “Awareness among workers can also help solve the problem,” he said adding that the remittance should be used in the productive sector as the remittance economy can not last long.

“Around 40 per cent of the remittance goes in the savings and 60 per cent is spent on consumption, which in turn fuels imports,” said secretary. “The trend has to be reversed.”

There are around 52 remittance companies in the country. Remittance contributes 23.6 per cent to the GDP and 30 per cent of the population depends on remittance for their livelihood. It has also helped reduce poverty level.

Text-to-phone phishing attacks show enormous drop in the first quarter

According to the latest report from Internet Identity security company (IID), text-to-phone phishing attacks decreased considerably in the first quarter of the current year. Thus, these attacks have dropped by 62% from the previous quarter.

Nevertheless, credit unions appeared to be the most targeted by text-to-phone phishing attacks, with great amount of them being spoofed in text-to-phone cases. In these attacks, cyber criminals impersonate companies by text message and try to get people to call a fake interactive voice response (IVR) system designed to steal account information.

Meanwhile, the research found that cyber criminals increasingly posed as relief organizations to launch phishing attacks, claiming to help victims of recent disasters, like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.

Besides, increasing volume of phishing was used to carry out Internet Domain Name System hijackings, specifically with China's biggest search engine Baidu.com.

Importantly, the major share of phishing volume moved to targeting money transfer sites.

Google preparing payment system for newspapers: Report

Google might launch a micropayment system for newspapers by the end of the year according to reports in an Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which says Google is encouraging publishers to try out a system called NewsPass.

La Repubblica says that, with Newspass, people will be able to log-in to the sites of participating news publishers using a single login. Publishers will be able to designate what type of payment they want to accept, including subscriptions and micropayments. People who find content from participating publishers in Google search will see a paywall icon next to that content and be able to purchase access directly from there using Checkout.

It’s unclear if such a program would be launched in Italy at first, or worldwide. In response to the report, Google said: “We don’t pre-announce products and don’t have anything to announce at this time.”

The idea of a Google micropayment system for newspapers came to light last September when Nieman Journalism Lab posted an 8-page PDF that Google wrote in reply to an RFP from the Newspaper Association of America. The PDF may be downloaded at; http://www.niemanlab.org/pdfs/Google.pdf

Ernst & Young to face investigation over Lehman Brothers' audit

Ernst & Young, the firm who audited Lehman Brothers' operations in the UK, is under investigation in regard to the advice it gave to the US bank in the run-up to its collapse in 2008.

The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board is to examine Lehman's financial statements as well as the use of controversial accounting practices such as Repo 105, a measure which allowed the bank to hide debts from its balance sheets.

Ernst & Young stated it is confident it will be vindicated by the probe.

"[Our] audit opinion stated that Lehman's financial statements for that year were fairly presented in accordance with the relevant accounting standards and we remain of that view," a statement from the company said.

In March, court-appointed examiner Anton Valukas – who spent a year investigating how the collapse of Lehman Brothers occurred – said the use of the Repo 105 "accounting gimmick" had allowed the firm to keep around $50 billion worth of debt of its balance sheet in the first six months of 2008.

He criticized the bank's executives for giving permission for the misleading financial statements to be published.