Ministry of finance and central bank warn for the 'world-euro'

This press release (in Dutch) is a warning to the public to not try to buy so called World Euro's, issued by the European Union, as avertised last friday. The advertisement claimed that for 10 euro people could buy world-euro coins. 5 Euro would be given to charity, and the other 5 would be converted to world-euro's, to be used as regular cash.

A couple of days later, it now turns out that the one page ad was a free assignment to an advertisement agency. They were asked by the Volkskrant (a morning newspaper) to attract attention of the public for an issue that really should be on the European agenda. And they came up with the idea of the World-euro (and really started believing in it...). But as a result of all the compliance fuss, the real story behind this advertisement was disclosed prematurely and the website of the world-euro was adapted to comply with bank supervision law.



Well, that's 10 points for the ad-agency, I would say.

Or perhaps eleven?

Interpay, Chess and LogicaCMG cooperate to deliver Ideal-platform

Planet Multimedia reports that Interpay, Chess and LogicaCMG have signed a cooperation agreement to deliver platforms and services related to the Ideal-payment standard.

OV Chipkaart becomes reality: first launch this monday

Automatisering Gids report that tomorrow, the first public transport contactless chipcard will be distributed to customers of the ferry service Vlissingen-Breskens. It is the first pilot group to be followed by the whole of Netherlands later.



Last week, I noticed that the Rotterdam underground is also preparing for the contactless chipcard. There is a confusing mix of new and old machines. The new entry doors are installed but we are still able to walk alongside of these towards the regular ticket validating machines.



Anyhow, as also our National Railways will be migrating, next year will definitely be the OV-chip year...

Mobile Payments 2004: brief summary

Some highlights of an interesting conference in Amsterdam:

1. Consumers are willing to pay for mobile payments, especially for parking, public transport and road pricing.

2. RTL Netherlands receives about 60 million premium sms-es per year; their demand to better payment mechanisms focuses mainly on squeezing the current operator marging of 20-40%.

3. Netsize estimates the EU market for mobile services at 23 billion euro and the Dutch market at 1 billion euro.

4. Mobile operators still are the opinion that pre-paid purses with eurovalue in them, from which third parties are being paid, have nothing to do with e-money, money and need not be regulated. The representatives of those operators that effectively operate the most use mobile payment channel, downplay the importance of their payment channels, while not disclosing any data to back this up.

5. Banks intend to expand the internet payment mechanism Ideal for use on mobile channels as well. But first concentrate on the Internet part

6. Simpay will go live in second quarter of 2005; merchants accepting simpay will be faced with 30% fee to be paid as a merchant service charge.