Using your phone camera for card payments

US start-up Flint has unveiled an app that lets merchants accept payments by snapping a picture of the card with their iPhone camera.

Unlike PayPal Here or Square, Flint’s app does not require users to attach a card reader to their mobile. Instead, merchants use their phones' cameras to scan customer card numbers and then manually enter the verification details.

The Flint app (currently only available as an invite only beta) automatically sends an authorization request through its PCI compliant payment gateway partner. No card data or images are stored on the phone.

The firm is also pushing its social marketing tools, which allow merchants to customize receipts with loyalty offers and customers to post reviews and recommendations about businesses to Facebook pages.

Augmented reality - UK's Halifax launches 'Home Finder' app

This new app by Halifax called 'Home Finder' uses augmented reality technology to allow users to view and pull up data on houses for sale as they pass them on the street.

Users can hold their phone up on any street and explore properties for sale nearby, overlaid with additional data such as local school rankings and transport links.

The app also offers additional information on selected properties, with photos and floor plans available, as well as information on monthly remortgaging repayments.

MasterCard unveils digital wallet and open API

MasterCard has unveiled a digital wallet that will allow users to make purchases in-store, online and through their mobile phones.

The card giant's PayPass Wallet Services will let customers make contactless payments through cards and mobile phones in stores with NFC terminals. In addition, online shoppers will be able to store their details in the wallet and then make purchases with a single click.

The wallet is open, which means that banks, merchants and other partners will be able to white label their own offerings while consumers will be able to pay with American Express, Discover, Visa cards as well as MasterCard offerings.

At the same time, an API lets partners connect their own digital wallets into the PayPass Acceptance Network, linking to MasterCard's check-out, fraud detection and authentication services and enabling their customers to make purchases wherever PayPass is accepted - online and in store.

The wallet will be available to partners in the third quarter 2012, initially in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, with more countries to follow.

Watch Dave Butler, Head of MasterCard's Open API, comment on the announcements from the CTIA Wireless 2012 Conference



At the same time as the wallet launch, MasterCard also published new research in the form of a Mobile Payments Readiness Index (MPRI) that analyses and ranks 34 markets worldwide in terms of how ready (or not) they are to implement mobile payments.

Initial results suggest it's early days for mobile payments, with the top five markets identified as Singapore, Canada, the United States, Kenya, and South Korea.

Ted Iacobuzio, MasterCard's Vice President of Global Insights, talks about the Mobile Payment Readiness Index

Why has SWIFT become so SLOW?

The dictionary defines the word SWIFT as “coming, happening, or performed quickly or without delay”. I suspect that the founders of SWIFT (the international interbank payments messaging service) had this thought in mind when they came up with the full name of this new interbank messaging service way back in 1973. So why have transactions through SWIFT become so slow?

How do we put banking back into banks?

What has come up persistently over the past decade in all that is written about banks and banking is one simple fact. No one seems to know what banking is about anymore!

Read what Stanley Epstein, one of Citadel Advantage’s Directors, has to say about the current state of banking on his FINEXTRA BLOG.

Citadel Advantage Director interviewed on the Greek TV Business Channel

Our own Richard Barr was in Athens last week where he presented an Interfima Fraud course. He was also interviewed on the Greek business news channel SBC TV by Amaryllis Zeppou on the future of the Greek Banking and the European Banking sectors as well and the future of EURO and Eurozone as a whole.

US Banks encourage kids to save money early

Smart kids make smart adults, at least that's the theory when it comes to most things including money. Now is the perfect time to talk to your children about finances, according to many experts.

This past Tuesday (April 24th) banks across the US are celebrated "National Teach Your Kids to Save Day".