Card-to-card money transfer system introduced by Visa

Visa has launched a new person-to-person payment service that allows users to transfer funds other cards over the VisaNet network.

The service was activated for the first time by Russia's “1st Processing Bank” and Ukraine's largest bank, “PrivatBank” earlier this week.

Visa is in the process of rolling the service out internationally, with a view to capturing market share from PayPal, and other emerging mobile remittance platforms.

Using the new service is simple. Senders provide their bank with the recipient's Visa card number to initiate the payment. Visa says the process does away with the need for senders to fill out complicated forms and provide routing information such as bank codes and branch addresses.

When processed through VisaNet, funds are credited directly to the eligible Visa credit, debit or prepaid account within minutes, freeing recipients from having to visit agent locations to collect cash.

Vikram Modi, Head of Digital Money Transfer and Personal Payments for Visa’s international markets, said that this milestone for Visa in Russia and Ukraine is only the beginning of a new wave of personal payment services on Visa cards – including person-to-person payments, mobile money transfer, electronic bill pay, prepaid reloads and intra-account transfers.

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Financial Services Authority fines mortgage firm for irresponsible lending and poor treatment of arrears customers

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined DB Mortgages, part of the Deutsche Bank Group, £840,000 for irresponsible lending practices and unfair treatment of customers in arrears, and secured redress of approximately £1.5 million for DB Mortgages’ customers.

On lending practices, DB Mortgages failed to show that customers could afford mortgages sold where the term continued after their retirement, failed to consider whether there were cheaper mortgages available for customers seeking self-certified mortgages, and failed to ensure that customers had thought about where they would live at the end of the term if they needed to sell their house to pay off an interest-only mortgage.

On treatment of customers in arrears, DB Mortgages did not consider customers’ individual circumstances or tell them about the range of options that were available to them, and applied charges that were unfair because they were charged repeatedly or did not accurately reflect the cost of administering an account in arrears.

Margaret Cole, the FSA’s managing director of enforcement and financial crime, said:

"Firms need to understand that we will not tolerate lax lending practices and unfair treatment of customers in arrears.

''Firms which fail in their obligations to customers should expect not only a substantial fine but also that they will have to pay back customers who have been disadvantaged by their failings''.

The FSA has taken into account that DB Mortgages worked in an open and co-operative way with the FSA and has made significant improvements to its arrears handling procedures. As a result of early settlement, the firm also qualified for a 30% discount under the FSA’s settlement discount scheme. Without the discount, the fine would have been £1.2 million.

Securities and Exchange Commission charges seven in global warming pump-and-dump

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged a group of seven individuals who perpetrated a fraudulent pump-and-dump scheme in the stock of a sham company that purported to provide products and services to fight global warming.

The SEC alleges that the group included stock promoters, traders, and a lawyer who wrote a fraudulent opinion letter. The scheme resulted in more than $7 million in illicit profits from sales of stock in CO2 Tech Ltd. at artificially inflated prices. Despite touting impressive business relationships and anti-global warming technology innovations, CO2 Tech did not have any significant assets or operations. The company was purportedly based in London, and its stock prices were quoted in the Pink Sheets.

According to the SEC’s complaint, the scheme was perpetrated through Red Sea Management Ltd., a Costa Rican asset protection company that laundered millions of dollars in illicit trading proceeds out of the United States on behalf of its clients. The US Department of Justice has also announced related criminal charges against six of the individuals.

“This group of illicit stock promoters sought to hide their scheme behind offshore entities, but their misconduct was exposed by the excellent cooperation of law enforcement agencies here and abroad,” said Cheryl Scarboro, Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that CO2 Tech falsely touted business relationships that the company had not formed, including a relationship with the Boeing Company. In fact, there were no communications, correspondence or understandings between CO2 Tech and Boeing.

The SEC alleges that certain of the individuals initiated the pump-and-dump of CO2 Tech by utilizing the services of Krome, who issued a fraudulent opinion letter to enable them to have the restrictive legend removed from their CO2 Tech stock certificate. This provided them nearly full control over the freely tradeable shares of CO2 Tech stock. They then hired Red Sea to sell massive quantities of CO2 Tech stock to the investing public through its web of nominee brokerage accounts. Zigdon caused the materially false and misleading information about CO2 Tech to be disseminated in press releases and on CO2 Tech’s website.

According to the SEC’s complaint, these individuals redistributed the false information through websites, spam e-mails and fax blasts. A group of stock promoters were also enlisted who then executed illegal “matched orders” with Red Sea’s nominee brokerage accounts in order to “jump-start” the market and increase the price of the stock. As a result of the false media campaign and the illegal matched orders, the market price of CO2 Tech stock increased 81 percent increase in one day and trading volume increased 1,573 percent.

New banking Trojan keeps bank account session open even if you log out

A new banking Trojan has been created to steal funds from people’s accounts even after they logged out.

According to findings recently published by Trusteer, a security firm, shows that the new Trojan dubbed OddJob allows hackers to hijack customers’ online banking sessions in real time using their session ID tokens. As the session remains open perpetrators can freely access accounts for illegal purposes.

Trusteer says that OddJob is operated by cyber crooks located in Eastern Europe who attack bank customers in different countries. This has included victims in the US, Poland and Denmark.

Trusteer reported further that the malware has evolved since its first discovery, indicating that it is something of a work in progress. The malware is capable of various functions, depending on its configuration, from logging GET and POST requests, to grabbing full pages, terminating connections and injecting data into web pages.

The malware's configuration is not saved to disk, where it might be more easily detected by anti-virus applications. Instead a fresh instance of the malware is fetched from a control server each time a new browser session is opened.

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Christchurch earthquake – Central Bank responds to ensure banking services

The New Zealand Reserve Bank has announced that it is working closely with authorities and financial institutions to ensure financial services are available to people and businesses in Christchurch following the damaging earthquake.

Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard extended sympathy to the people of Christchurch affected by the disaster.

“We can only imagine how difficult this is with the loss of lives, homes and buildings, the injuries and dislocation for people in Christchurch. The Reserve Bank is working hard to assist the recovery as fast as possible in terms of access to financial services, and ensuring markets remain stable,” Dr Bollard said.

The Reserve Bank is coordinating its assistance in the recovery efforts with the Government’s National Crisis Management Centre in Wellington.

“We are also working with affected banks and cash-in-transit companies to ensure the availability of cash in Christchurch. The Reserve Bank is ready and able to supply any cash required by banks. We have ample cash reserves and will issue cash to banks on any day required during this emergency situation.”

The Bank understands that some ATMs are operational. It is working closely with banks through issues of accessibility, electricity and telecommunications to ensure cash is available.

Dr Bollard said the Bank is monitoring financial markets, noting that New Zealand has well-established emergency procedures and insurance protocols.

“We have also been informed by banks that they are reinstating the loan assistance policies that were put in place after the September 2010 earthquake, and that the four major banks have each donated $1 million to support the immediate and long-term recovery.”

No problems have been reported with the national payments and settlement systems that the Bank operates (ESAS and NZClear).

UniCredit files a suit against Irving Picard

One of the defendants in Madoff case Italian bank UniCredit SpA has filed a lawsuit against Irving Picard, a trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff's assets. According to the papers Irving Picard has exceeded its authority vested by the US Congress.

It became known that UniCredit tries to get the case moved from the US Bankruptcy court and the bankruptcy judge must address many complex matters of non-bankruptcy federal law to resolve trustee's "unbounded claims,".

According to the Italian giant there was a serious risk of duplicative recoveries and inconsistent results and a "virtual certainty of judicial inefficiency."

Also it became known that New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett addressed the Congress with the legislation protecting ex-investors of Madoff from claims of the victims suffered from Ponzi scheme.

According to him the ordinary investors were not aware of the scam scheme and nature of the profits they received. “I introduced this legislation because I am increasingly concerned that the trustee in the Madoff case is ignoring the law and failing to provide prompt assistance to those who have been thrust into financial chaos,” said Garrett.

Global financial reforms - Financial Stability Board reports to G20 on progress

This past Saturday the Financial Stability Board (FSB) published its report to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors at their meeting in Paris.

The report sets out the most recent progress on the implementation of the G20 recommendations for strengthening financial stability.

The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors recommitted to pursuing the reform of the financial sector. To do this the G20;

• will implement fully the new Basel III standards for banks within the agreed timelines,
• issued a call for completion by the November 2011 G20 Summit of ongoing policy work on systemically important financial institutions, 
• will implement in an internationally consistent and non-discriminatory way the FSB’s recommendations on OTC derivatives and on reducing reliance on credit rating agencies’ ratings,
• urged all jurisdictions to fully implement the FSB principles and standards on sound compensation practices, and looks forward to ongoing monitoring, including the publication of the FSB’s second peer review in mid-2011, and
• looks forward also to the preparation by the FSB by mid-2011 of recommendations on regulation and oversight of the shadow banking system.

The FSB has been established to coordinate at the international level the work of national financial authorities and international standard setting bodies and to develop and promote the implementation of effective regulatory, supervisory and other financial sector policies in the interest of financial stability.