Visa put a stake in the ground today to be viewed as the innovation leader, a position that American Express has claimed for some time with its chip cards, social media efforts, and even an online lab site. At today's "innovation briefing" in NYC, Visa announced several pilots and upcoming initiatives.

Mobile person-to-person transfers
The most far-reaching announcement was the ability for Visa cardholders to transfer funds from one card to another via mobile device. So far, there is just one bank participating in the pilot. US Bank says it will make the service available to a few thousand cardholders as a test later this year. PaymentsNews has more details here.

It sounds good, but as always the devil is in the details. For instance:

• What hoops will cardholders have to jump through to enable their card and phone for the service?
• Will the transfers be treated as cash advances triggering fees and finance charges?
• Will it be available to all cardholders using any mobile phones? 

Visa jumps on the Android bandwagon
A more immediate innovation is a location-and-alert-based service built for Google's Android platform, a new mobile system launching in late October. Visa's new service, to be rolled out initially by Chase Bank (no time frame given), promises some important new developments:

• "Near real-time" purchase alerts (see note 1) so you can see immediately whether your server added an extra digit in front of your tip on that bar tab. The real-time alert pilot was announced a month ago (here) involving several thousand accounts at PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, US Bank, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank, and Vancity.
• Visa merchant finder based on your location-based/GPS technology  (nice!) with targeted marketing offers (hmmm??) The merchant locations will be integrated with Google Maps.

Again, PaymentsNews has the entire press release here.

Notes:
1. Visa says that the alerts will arrive "typically before (the consumer) leaves the store."

2. For more information on see our Online Banking Report on Mobile Money & Payments.

After seeing the little blurb buried deep in today's Wall Street Journal
(p. B-9), I checked out the press release, and then headed to Facebook to see Visa's new app aimed at small businesses. To gain that all-important viral effect, Visa is giving away $2 million in Facebook advertising credits, $100 to the first 20,000 businesses that join its new The Visa Business Network on Facebook (see note 1).

Visa's Facebook page advertising the network looks good (see screenshot below). It's very "corporate," but I prefer that over lame attempts to look hip. It's dominated by a large video at the top explaining the program, plus three more along the bottom explaining other aspects. 

Visa Business Network (promotional) page on Facebook (24 June 2008)

Selecting the Join this Network button takes you to a page where you are encouraged to add the Visa Business Network app to your Facebook profile. After adding the app, you must complete a short form to identify your business to the network and upload a picture if desired.

It only takes a few minutes, and your company is visible to anyone searching the Visa Business Network. It doesn't appear that Visa's network is searchable through the regular Facebook search. If and when that happens, the network would gain considerably more value.

Here's how my Visa Business Network page looked after uploading a graphic:

Summary
The application also features a Business Resource section with the usual collection of business tools (from Google), articles and videos plus an Ask the Expert section. 

While the idea of a general business network within a larger network seems a bit superfluous, Facebook hasn't exactly been known as particularly accommodating to business needs. Maybe this will work. Certainly, if Visa attracts the 20,000 businesses it's earmarked advertising credits for, it will have a head start on others wanting to do the same thing.

However, we wonder how much effort the card giant will devote to the service. It doesn't seem to align that closely to its core card-processing business. But if its goal is to merely improve brand recognition with small business owners, it could be a valuable effort. Clearly Visa has the deep pockets to fund it for the long term. Who knows, maybe some lucky Business Network member will appear in a Visa Super Bowl ad some day. 

Note:
1. The $100 advertising credit was handled flawlessly. A few minutes after joining the network, I received an email to my main email account explaining how to redeem the credit.

The big news this week of Wells Fargo and Visa's mobile payments partnership is just another sign of how much momentum the mobile trend has gained in recent months. That momentum truly struck home as I read this article from CNBC about the roster of major banks with mobile banking initiatives.

• Bank of America
• Citibank
• Wachovia
• Washington Mutual
• Wells Fargo
• ING Direct

That's a literal who's who of the banking industry with 4 of the top 5 banks in the country. In addition to that list, the CNBC article includes a basic introduction to the different forms of online banking, a few interesting adoption stats and quotes from just about every research group covering the space. Sadly, they missed Jim, but you can get his insights and predictions via his recent Mobile Banking Report.

UBS Wealth Management US last week launched a new payments-card package for its brokerage customers that among other things cleverly turns an ordinary American Express card into what amounts to a debit card. The program was created for UBS by Barclay’s PLC’s Juniper Bank unit.

The whole idea is to bind its customers to the U.S. brokerage unit of Zurich-based UBS by giving them a payments-card package that the firm hopes will be their primary spending vehicle, says Peter Stanton, executive director of the UBS unit’s Banking Strategy Group. It’s not an effort to enter the very tight U.S. credit card business

“It’s definitely not our intention to be another credit card provider,” he says. “This is a consolidation strategy; it’s all connected to our role as their primary wealth-management advisor, and ties them closer to us because of the services we provide.”

On the surface, the package is an ordinary Visa credit card and an ordinary American Express charge card, bundled with a very extravagant rewards program that offers cardholders enticements like jet fighter rides or a sleepover at FAO Schwartz. Rewards run from one point to 1.5 points per dollar spent, depending on whether the customer chooses the basic “Select” Visa card or one of the more elite Visa cards that carry annual membership fees of up to $1,500. UBS says it has about 15,000 such accounts.

By offering its brokerage customers such payment packages, UBS joins a widening club of brokerage companies trying to retain customers whose loyalty is mercurial at best. “With acquisition costs so high, and turnover very high also, the emphasis has been to keep the customers they already paid for, happy,” says Ariana-Michele Moore, a senior analyst with Celent Communications.

The Amex card allowed UBS and Juniper to create a vehicle that functions like a debit card from the user’s perspective—UBS calls the card a “delayed debit card,” though Amex insists that the cards are ordinary Amex cards—while earning the issuer the much higher American Express interchange fees.

It does this by an interesting sleight of hand that seems to be built around the fact that none of the parties to the deal care what the card is called, as long as they get what they want from it. Cardholders use the Amex card like an ordinary debit card, including being able to use it to withdraw surcharge-free cash at ATMs that accept Amex cards. At the end of the month, their central brokerage account, or RMA (resource management account), is automatically debited, and no bill is sent to the customer. Purchases are limited to the funds available.

This way, UBS gets what amounts to a debit card for its customers, while Amex and Juniper get full price for an Amex card. And as an added bonus, Juniper gets a piece of the debit card market, which is quickly overtaking credit cards as the payment vehicle of choice in the United States.

How the parties came up with this deal is unknown. UBS’ Stanton says his shop approached Juniper around August of 2004 as part of a typical RFP process, and went to contract last April. Juniper refused any comment on the matter, referring all questions to UBS.

“It has in-between functionality,” says Stanton. “It functions as a debit in the sense that it accesses your available funds; it functions as a charge card because the charges accrue, and instead of having to make some sort of payment, the payment is automatic.” The idea, he adds, was to allow purchases to be made without interfering with a client’s trading accounts.

All in all, it’s a smart deal, says Celent's Moore—among other things, because people with brokerage accounts are typically wealthier, and travel overseas, so that the package gives UBS clients a secure spending vehicle.

“It’s all about providing flexibility to their brokerage customers, but it could also be enticement for people considering opening a UBS account—it could be the thing that tips the scale,” she says. (Contact: UBS Wealth Management US, 212-882-5698; Celent Communications, Ariana-Michele Moore, 503-617-6112)

Last week, Visa USA redesigned its direct bill-pay area using Billeo's technology to power biller search and facilitate direct payments via credit card. It is a major coup for the fledgling direct bill-pay solutions provider Billeo, which earned an Online Banking Report Best of the Web last year for its innovative bill-pay toolbar (OBR 116/117).

The implementation at Visa bears careful review. It wisely uses biller search to engage users (see inset), then prompts them to save their personal biller list using Billeo. After registering, users download and install the toolbar directly into their browser, then input credit card information to facilitate payments. After the initial setup, users can pay select bills directly from the toolbar using the saved credit card and biller info.

Next week, we'll look at Visa's implementation in more detail and share insights from our conversation with Billeo founder, Murali Subbarao. In the meantime, you might want to give it a spin yourself at Visa's bill-pay site, <usa.visa.com/personal/using_visa/pay_bills_with_visa/> (click on screenshot right for a closer look).

Previous articles:

• NetBanker posts on Billeo
• Online Banking Report #85, Grabbing Desktop Mindshare: Private-branded browser extensions can make online services easier to use

-JB

People have grown wary of credit cards. They’re paying them off faster; generally, debit cards are edging them out as payment vehicles. And at least for now, home equity loans are increasingly more popular than credit cards among consumers (click on inset for more details and see tables below).

The result? Credit card portfolios are losing profitability, even though net losses and delinquencies are down, and serious questions about the industry’s future are surfacing. So are questions about how wise banks were when they snapped up most of the monoline credit card operations last year. The business model needs an overhaul, says observers, but so far, issuers are just changing the oil. And there may be no way out.

Continue reading "Credit Card Portfolios: More Pressure, Less Profitability." »

The potential of cellphone-based mobile payments to eventually squeeze banks out of their central role in payments can already be seen in East Asia, says Andrei Hagiu, a principal at Market Platform Dynamics, and by ignoring it, American banks have nothing to lose but their business.

Hong Kong’s Octopus prepaid debit card (see inset) is one example: Issued by Hong Kong’s subway system and several other transportation companies—with no bank involved—Octopus cards drive about $2.2 billion in annual payments volume.

Continue reading "Mobile Payments: Japan Leads the Pack" »

In the coming year, low-value payments and prepaid cards will be increasingly mentioned in the same breath, especially in conjunction with off-line, contactless methods, says Gwenn Bezard, partner in Aite Group.

Pilots, and even some deployments of contactless payment cards, will be making a significant appearance, if only because banks are pushing them. The main sticking point from the merchant perspective, Bezard says, will be the cost of interchange, but he expects some banks to offer breaks on fees, if only to give the venue a running start. He is optimistic that big merchants will follow Starbucks’ model and offer rechargeable, merchant-specific stored-value cards as a means of gaining market share and promoting customer loyalty.

Continue reading "Low Value Payments & Stored Value Cards" »

Don’t hold your breath, but the Secured Electronic Transfer (SET) standard for Internet credit card purchases is almost here. MasterCard, Visa and their partners expect to issue the first SET mark — think of it as the SET seal of approval — by Aug. 31, according to industry execs speaking at a recent Internet payments conference in Berkeley, CA.

SET specs were published in June and in late July, MasterCard and Visa formed a body called SetCo to test, certify and police SET-compliant applications. “But it’s not (happening) nearly as fast as vendors would have you believe, and it’ll be up to you to make sure the pieces work together,” Nick DiGiacomo warned bankers attending a meeting sponsored by the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) and Citation Internet Consulting Group.

DiGiacomo is CEO of Tenth Mountain Systems Inc., which will handle testing with SetCo. Companies that pass will sign a trademark licensing agreement to display the SET logo on their Web site.

Meanwhile, SET pilots continue. Beginning this month, Mellon Bank and MasterCard will issue SET credit cards to Mellon and federal employees to purchase U.S. Savings Bonds and federal surplus merchandise online. Bank of America is slated to conduct a live trial by September.

DiGiacomo urged retail banks to get in on the action by issuing SET-compliant wallets to customers — but don't be surprised when they call with questions, he said. “We recommend setting up informational Web sites to take the offensive,” he said. DiGiacomo’s 10-step SET plan for banks:

1. Learn about it. Give responsibility for setting up a SET program to a staffer, not consultant. “You have to have an internal advocate.”

2. Create plans for marketing, security, roll out, and customer service, and establish criteria for choosing platforms and vendors.

3. Choose a certification authority and get SET software certified through SetCo.

4. Choose a SET server that connects to the Internet, existing banking systems, payment networks.

5. Integrate SET with merchant account balances, statements, payment networks.

6. Select customer electronic-commerce software.

7. Have your SET service tested, preferably by an outside party “so you don’t run into blind spots.”

8. Establish support services such as operations, maintenance and customer service, and make sure systems are in place to meet regulatory, compliance and audit requirements.

9. Participate in a pilot with explicitly stated entrance and exit criteria. Pick “friendly” partners, not Net-heads, as testers. Use results to measure acceptance or resistance to e-commerce in and outside your organization.

10. Keep your SET service updated.

SET was among several Internet payments issues discussed at the first of a series of seminars to be held around the country through October by NACHA and Citation, a Texas-based consulting group.

Other Conference Highlights

Online Bill Pay: Do consumers want to pay their phone bill at the phone company Web site, their gas bill at the gas company site, and so on, or visit one place to pay everything? Checkfree, MECA, Microsoft and BillSite are betting on the latter and building mega-Web sites they’re marketing to telephone companies, utilities and others. But CyberCash VP Richard Crone believes consumers will want to hop from site to site, and utilities will want to stick bills on their own sites so they can sell ad banners. Meanwhile, Internet bill trials continue, and a few pioneers such as National Utility Investors  www.nui.com and Brooklyn Union Gas www.bug.com are already online. Predicted for the future: PointCast type systems that broadcast bills to consumer’s e-mail boxes.

Other Net-Based Debit Transactions: EFunds Corp., a Tustin, CA, online payments company, has outfitted 150 to 200 merchant clients to accept debit payments via the net. Of 100,000 to 150,000 payments processed so far, only 10 haven’t cleared, “so small it’s probably bank error,” said Neil Godfrey, EFunds CEO. According to Godfrey is EFunds is unique in providing merchants with a turnkey system — hardware, software and gateways to banks.

By the Numbers

• 90% of top 50 U.S. banks will offer full-service Internet banking by 1999.
• By 2000, 1,100 banks will offer full-service Internet banking.
• By 2000, 85% of Internet-capable banks will offer DDA accounts.
• Consumers made $1 billion in purchases on the Web in 1996.
• Women now constitute 42% of the Internet population.
• By 2000, consumer and biz-to-biz e-commerce transactions will hit $150 billion.
• Commercial “.com” Web sites jumped to 623,002 in May 1997 from 123,372 the previous year.
• 69% of all billers with five million or more customers will begin building BPM by the end of 1997.

Source: Various speakers at CICG/NACHA Internet Payments Conf.

Micropayments: Digital Equipment Corp.’s Millicent micropayment system should be available to consumers by year’s end, offering script in increments of a tenth of a cent to $5. Companies offering content during a trial phase: Reuters, Music411, Songline Studios and Investors Daily. Digital expects Millicent micropayments to grow to $4 billion in revenue by 2000. That’s counting on 25% of the net population spending 50 cents a day, said Stan Hayami, Digital’s Micro-Commerce Business Mgr.

Net-Based EDI: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a $1 billion government research lab in Livermore, CA, spent 10 months and $60,000 moving its electronic data interchange (EDI) operations to the Internet, working with banking partner Bank of America. Two years later, the lab uses the system to make $15 million in monthly payments to vendors, and 96.3% of payables go out on time. So far, Lawrence Livermore is Bank of America’s only EDI customer using the Net, but the bank’s working to line up new customers, according to BofA EDI Specialist Rett Summerville.

Electronic Postal Service: Add the U.S. Postal Service to the list of players wanting into the e-commerce arena. The USPS is looking for partners for test of a time and date-stamped electronic postmark to begin this fall, with commercial availability in summer 1998. Proposed price: 22 cents per message of 50K or less. Law firms and financial services companies are two top prospects for the services, said Leo Campbell, USPS e-commerce manager. The USPS is also looking into offering electronic P.O. boxes, and hasn’t decided whether it will become a certification authority for digital certificates.

More on Digital Certificates: Market leader VeriSign will issue Class I, II and III digital certificates, to be used in SET transactions. Free Class I certificates verify an e-mail address; Class II cost $19.95 and include name, address, e-mail address authenticated against Equifax or other consumer credit database and verified via snail mail (see also QSpace p. 5). Class III aren’t being issued yet, but will involve some type of in-person identity check, said Bob Pratt, VeriSign Product Line Manager. VeriSign plans to roll out a digital certificate corporate outsourcing service this fall.

NACHA: To help speed up development of Internet payments, NACHA’s Internet Council is participating in a project with Mellon Bank, Bank of America, ABN AMRO, and others to test issuing and honoring digital certificates. A NACHA Internet Council working group is analyzing whether consumers could use the Internet to make direct ACH payments, with or without a signature. “If a consumer could transact with a bank to pay a merchant, it could be more practical and useful than making a payment directly to a merchant they don’t know,” said Leilani W. Doyle, a NACHA Internet Council member and Division Manager, Citation Internet Consulting Group.

Coming Attractions

NACHA and Citation Internet Consulting Group will hold Internet payments conferences in Denver, Chicago, Atlanta and Boston between August and October. Find more information on the NACHA Web site www.nacha.org  or call 703.742.9190.

Contacts: Rett Summerville is EDI Specialist at BofA, 415.436.5488. Leilani W. Doyle is Division Manager at Citation Internet Consulting Group, 713.461.1592, ldoyle@cicg.com . Richard Crone is VP at CyberCash, 415.413.0165 or rcrone@cybercash.com . Stan Hayami is Micro-Commerce Business Manager at Digital, millicent@digital.com . Neil Godfrey is CEO at Efunds, 714.259.5266, info@e-funds.com . Nick DiGiacomo is CEO at Tenth Mountain Systems, 619.458.2655, nick@yourservice.net . At the U.S. Postal Service, Leo Campbell is E-Commerce Manager; Kim Parks is New Business Sales Manager 703.526.2655. Bob Pratt is Product Line Manager at VeriSign, 415.429.3427.

Michelle V. Rafter

Michelle V. Rafter covers the Internet for Reuters, WebWeek, the Los Angeles Times and others. Reach her at mvrafter@deltanet.com .

Most online banking programs feature the same features and benefits. Add some pizzazz to your offerings and distance yourself from the encroaching herds.

Last month we looked at fee-based revenue opportunities for online banking, an important medium-to long-term aspect (3-5 years out). But in 1998, it’s not about fee income but differentiating your financial institution (below); serving your wired customers online; and getting noticed.

First, we’ll assume that you’ve already implemented or are working on the five basic Web banking functions. If not, these are first priority:

Where do you go from here? We think the best ways to make a name for yourself online in 1998 and 1999 are in three areas:

• Push services, also know as alerts, e-mail, Webcasting, Netcasting, or outbound messaging.
• Bill presentment and automated payment processing services.
• Privacy-protection and fraud-prevention services.

We’ve written about this so much during the past four months our word processor practically refuses to type these buzzwords any longer. But there is a reason we are harping on this subject. Not since the invention of the ATM has there been such a promising new way to differentiate banking services. Following are five push tactics designed to bring you fame, fortune and new customers next year:

1. Send “event” reminders by e-mail, fax, or voice message a few days in advance of any due-date such as CD renewal, IRA funding, loan payment due, etc.

2. Offer free rate watch services sending a message when loan or investment rates hit user-preset values. Can be used on mortgages, CDs, bonds, and other loans. Alternatively, users could signify a target loan amount/payment.

3. Send balance alerts when checking, savings, money market, or overdraft protection accounts reach prespecified high and low limits. Since not everyone checks e-mail every day, consider fax and/or voice message options.

4. Offer “deposit assurance” with confirmation messages whenever certain types of transactions occur such as checking account deposits, out-of-state POS purchases, telephone transfers, etc.

5. Provide activity-based messaging services that give account holders a heads-up whenever account activity surpasses the preset trigger points. Citibank highlighted this tactic in a recent credit card direct mail piece calling it Fraud Early Warning (Brochure copy reads: “If we notice any unusual spending on your account we may alert you to confirm that is was you who incurred those charges.”)

Digital Bill Payments

We have long advocated a go-slow approach to offering so-called electronic bill payment. The customer service headaches have made electronic bill payment less than optimal both for consumers and financial institutions.

It’s time to end that cautionary thinking. Web-based bill presentment is just around the corner and with it will come the critical mass of billers ready and able to receive payments and accounts receivable information completely electronically. You can start now to position your company as a player in this area. When the Microsoft/First Data venture gets off the ground in 1998, there will be a flurry of consumer interest. Take advantage of the hype by being the first bank on your block to put bill presentment on its Web. You could end up being the local expert source on the subject for years to come.

There are several ways to go about positioning yourself as a digital payments pioneer:

6. Develop your own in-house bill presentment program with just one or two local billers. You get a head start on the field, while differentiating yourself and the biller as highly innovative.

7. Enthusiastically embrace the Microsoft/First Data joint venture, MSFDC. Get in the press now as the first financial institution to publicly commit to offering the service. Work with MSFDC to put a customized version of the bill presentment demo onto your Web this fall.

8. Become the first bank to offer “100% Pure Electronic Bill Payment,” by limiting bill pay merchants to just those that offer end-to-end electronic payment.

9. Become the first bank to offer “100% Guaranteed Bill Payment.” Back up your marketing claims with a bullet-proof guarantee that takes full responsibility that all payments are made on time.

10. Help users put their payments on autopilot by automating repetitive payments, setting up preauthorized debits, having bills automatically charged to credit cards, establishing automatic average payments, and consolidating redundant accounts (e.g. roll those three $50 credit card payments into one home equity account/payment).

Privacy and Fraud Prevention

In August’s FutureBanker (published by American Banker), cyberpundit John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, advocates an unusual role for banks. Become the “Swiss Banks” of the Internet, providing total confidentiality for buyers. Banks would issue Internet aliases that consumers would use to conduct transactions on the Internet. Merchants would know only that the bank guaranteed good funds. The consumer’s identity would be confidential, only divulged under court order. An infrastructure would be needed to handle delivery of physical goods. Shippers such as Federal Express could contract with the bank to divert shipments to the proper party.

This is probably more privacy protection than the average law-abiding citizen needs, but it’s worth pondering. There might be a happy medium that banks could fulfill. The whole area of financial privacy and fraud protection has been a source of discomfort for consumers for several years. And the Internet has only exacerbated the situation. Financial institutions, which rate high in consumer trust, could step in and take on the role of privacy fiduciary.

This month MasterCard and Visa have done their part to boost consumer confidence in card products. First, MasterCard formally extended the $50 maximum liability to debit cards. Visa one-upped them by declaring a new “zero liability” policy on all its card products (if the stolen card is reported within two days, $50 otherwise).

Here are some of the things you can do in 1998 to become a financial privacy advocate:

11. Offer branded e-wallets, such as that from CyberCash. The wallet allows consumers to pay by credit card without revealing their number to the merchant. This will boost consumer confidence in purchasing goods and services from unknown Web merchants. It will also prevent the kind of screw-ups experienced by ESPN SportsZone which had an unauthorized user access an order processing file that contained credit card numbers. (The security breach was not malicious…no accounts were compromised.)

12. Provide credit report information, either through a relationship with the major marketers of merged credit reports, Credco’s Confidential Credit, or CUC’s Privacy Guard. For an easy solution, simply provide a link to the online credit reports at QSpace or Experian when its service goes back online (see opposite page for details).

13. Develop a fraud protection icon such as “100% Fraud Free” or “protected by yourbank.” The intent of the label would be to ensure users that whenever they use your checking/ATM/credit card, they needn’t worry about being on the hook for fraudulent activity. You already absorb these costs anyway, why not get some credit for it.