Brr... order confirmation spam

It's quite annoying. Spam that has the form of order confirmation. But given my consumer rights I have no need to worry. It's a pain though. And the obvious mislink leads to: http://onestepgo.com/



Dear Customer,



Thank you for your order. Your credit card has charged for amount $560.00.

Charges for the transaction will appear on your credit card statement under the name INTEGRAL LLC.



To view transaction status and order details, point your browser to the following URL:

http://www.mybill.com/order=SD25xxx



Sincerely,

MyBill Team

IInternet: browsing not buying...?

Research by Dutch retailers organisation RND demonstrates that a huge group of consumers uses the Internet to look before they buy. Of the 8,7 million active Internet users, 93 % uses the web to be informed about prices/products. Of this group of 8.7 million, 39 % has actually bought something over the web.

Size matters...

Small countries can more quickly cooperate and produce new products. Therefore the Estonians attract Ian's attention with smart cards that work on a national level:

Surprise and Shock! Identity smart cards that work on a national level!.

Dutch Standard for Internet payments: Ideal

In September Rabobank, ABN AMRO and ING announced the development of a Dutch standard for internet payments. The standard protocol essentially routes the shopper from the site of the merchant to the shopper's internet-banking environment, where payment is made in the usual manner. After the payment the merchant gets a guarantee en the shopper is brought back to the merchant environment.



The standard will be available to merchants and consumers from mid 2005 onwards. The name of the standard: Ideal, was announced during an e-banking track of e-Netherlands conference on November 11. It is expected that other Dutch banks will also incorporate the standard for their customers.



Research by Multiscope showed that 87 % of the Dutch population find the standard a good idea; 60 % expect to immediately make use of it. Especially a bunch of those consumers that at times still fear the Internet (70%) expect to use the product.



The poll also outlined that the awareness of bank internet payment products was:

- ING's paypal like scheme Way2pay: 32 %

- Rabodirect betalen: 28 %

- ABN AMRO E-Wallet: 14 %

- Rabo Minitix: 3 %

- ING Tootz: 1 %

Of these current payment products, only Minitix will continue to be offered by Rabobank. Rabodirect betalen will become Ideal; the other schemes will be dismantled.



By the way, during the conference it was stated that the current level of Internet payments in the Netherlands is 10 million. This number allows for some further calculations and estimations as to the total number of internet-payments in the EU. But I will leave that to others.

German Federal Institute for Financial Services Supervision Issues Germany's First E-Banking License to A Telco Operator

The German Federal Institute for Financial Services Supervisions authorised the NCS mobile payment Bank GmbH under NAK 32, Para. 1, Clause 1 combined with NAK 1, Para. 1, Clause 2, No. 11 German Banking Act, to issue and administer electronic money (e-money business). See: http://www.newratings.com/analyst_news/article_501499.html.



Undoubtedly this is the first of many more operators to follow. A new market is now emerging, which is the market of regulated or unregulated mobile operators. In that market NCS mobile payment Bank is now officially the first mover (with Vodafone UK being the unofficial zero-mover; operating under the waiver of a small e-money operator). See also the website: http://www.crandy.com/homepage/en/include/index.html.

Yahoo Direct gives in to Paypal

Emerce reports that Yahoo will stop its payment method: Yahoo Direct as of November 22 this year. It was unable to get a substantial foothold in the market for auction-payments alongside competitor Paypal (who has two thirds of this market).

Dutch banks join hands to develop standard for e-payments

Having built a joint system in 1997 (I-pay met SET) and having discovered the complexity of public key infrastructure technology, Dutch banks set out to develop their own Internet strategies. Having done so, now is the time to join hands once again.



Recently the Dutch banks announced (see in Dutch: Planet Multimedia) that a new internet payment standard will be developed. Current e-payment initiatives by ING (Tootz, Way2Pay) and ABN AMRO (E-wallet) will be stopped. Rabo continues its Minitix however and aims for the mobile market with that application.

9210 (nine to ten): the zip code of another IT-soap

9210: the zip code of another IT-soap1 is the page where interested readers get to learn more about the costs of changing numbering systems in banking.

This blog: plots for horror stories?

So every now and then I check my referer stats to find out how people end up on these pages. Today it turns out that someone seeking plots for horror stories ends up with a single hit: one of my blog-entries on systemic risk.



Although I personally can imagine quite some horrorful payment stories, I can't imagine the world to be so dull and unexciting as to need to revert to retail payments for inspiration. So whoever was looking for those plots: good luck with your quest !

President Bush's picture on a fake $200 bill

Well, here's a nice one. A (undoubtedly visionary) woman pays in a shop, using a 200 dollar bill with the picture of George Bush on it. See this CNN-story. It's not that strange an idea. If Bush wins the upcoming elections he may start thinking he is a brilliant statesman that ranks alongside Franklin and all the others.



I wonder if, in case I were a US states official, I would be able to make Bush sign a Presidential Decree that -to celebrate his election victory- he's going to be on the next bank note. My guess is that Bush checks the details of such a decision as good as the intelligence reports he gets every now and then. Which would be interesting, because these details state that according to US law, only dead man may become immortal by appearing on US bank notes.

Moxmo, small e-money issuer, is broke

Emerce reports that Moxmo, the small e-money issuer that has been operational for 2,5 years, has gone bankrupt. This is the second failing e-money startup who focused on the mobile phone as a payment mechanism. The first one was Digipay.



Now was their business assessment to focus on the mobile phone as a payment mechanism wrong? No. The market for ringtones, premium services, ticket sales is huge and getting a slice of that at provision percentages (10 %) well below those of mobile operators (30 to 40 %) attracted quite some investors.



What did go wrong was the legal part. The start-up were held to comply with supervision law, given that their payment mechanisms was e-money. And they assumed, given the EU-regulation on e-money, that any player who was operating a similar scheme would be held to the same standards. After all, the regulation clearly aimed at a functional approach; the supervision would apply regardless of technology.



Unfortunately, the functional approach was one bridge too far in practice. The Dutch supervisors did not dare to apply the e-money law to the incumbents in the mobile payment market (5 operators, generating hundreds of million euro in the third-party PRS-market). So during two years, the supervision of these players was stalled. Which was just long enough to wear out the new startups who had betted on equal supervision for all e-money players in the market.



It is only too sad that it took the Dutch supervisors two years to formally recognize that mobile phone operators that allow third-party payment from their pre-paid accounts are indeed e-money institutions that need to be supervised. Even sadder is the fact that we will most likely need some 2 more years of European and national discussion before the whole market is properly supervised.



So in the Netherlands I would like to close the chapter on innovation and regulation with the following hypothesis:

The succesfull innovation of new payment schemes in a previously unregulated market depends not so much on the existence of regulation, but mostly on the willingness/boldness of the supervisor to ensure compliance with the rules, regardless of size and power-position of the supervised.

Oops... payment of 3000 euro via the phone?

An active student, Tjalling Kuipers, has started a public discussion on the new product feature of a phone payment product: KPN Switchpoint. The product now allows for payment up to an amount of 3000 euro. Quite a lot and all the checking is IP-address, account number and phone number. So the premium services fraud and 'ghost-bill' problem may now become bigger due to the unsecurity in the home environment.



In the back office, KPN makes use of a one-off direct debit mechanism. Although formally not allowed by banks, an increasing number of players in the Internet market 'forget' these rules and find their bank willing to use the mechanisms to ensure quick payment. The consumer however has to suffer, as they are unable to reverse the payment in case of fraud.



My solution to this problem, which will hopefully be introduced any time soon now, is to shift the reversability and fraud problem to the acquiring bank involved in these set-ups (see this previous logentry of one and a half year ago). Consumers should always be able to reverse the payment of an off-line direct debit. This provides the merchant, payment service provider and acquiring bank the incentives to ensure that fraud levels remain low.

BRINXPAY.NET ?

Speaking of Paypal immediately makes Brinxpay show up in the Ads. A German version of Paypal, so it seems. See theirsite here.

Receiving payment for Adsense

This summer I received Googles first cheque for payment of the Adsense ads. Of course a cheque, because that's the US way of doing payments. And although the cheque is an obscure payment instrument for the Dutch, I only needed a few mouse clicks to arrive at this Postbank page for information on cashing the cheque. Too bad, that the fee for cashing turns out to be € 12,3 (on a sum of € 104 euro).



It would be better for both Google and me if they would use Paypal instead. Perhaps for the next payment?

Paysquare to lower fees for some

Het Financieele Dagblad (paid access) reports that Payquare is countering the B+S bid for credit-card fees in the restaurant sector by lowering its merchant service charge with 0,5 %. The lower fee is applicable to enterprises that are members of the Koninklijke Horeca Nederland.

Bibit to merge operations with Worldpay

Worldpay, focusing on small and medium sized enterprises, will merge its operations with those of Bibit, focusing on the large European players. Read the Dutch Emerce - article.

Electronic Payments Interoperability (RFI)

See this OMG Document.

European Commission sees bank kartel in France deter entry for newcomers

Het Financieele Dagblad (paid access) and the IHT report that the European Commission has issued a statement of objection to nine French banks and their collective organisation: Groupement des Cartes Bancaire (GCB) of forming a cartel to prevent market entry in the market for payment cards.



Good news is that the Commission's press release also reads:

The Commission’s statement of objections in no way challenges the legitimacy of GCB as the joint and effective operator of the CB card payment system in France.

So it's not a call for a different structural or institutional arrangement of the card industry.

T-mobile allows Wap-billing: 3 merchants signed up

To add to the continuing debate on e-money payments via mobile phones, Planet Multimedia reports that T-mobile has payment via WAP-billing operational. So where Vodafone needs to further develop its system, T-mobile has it up and running (with only 3 merchants though...).



Wap billing allows for payment of greater amounts than with SMS and has a business model where T-mobile shares revenue with the content provider.

Norwegian central bank study on (e-)payments and fees

The Annual report on payment systems is an important part of Norges Bank's oversight of the payment system. The report provides an annual update of developments and prices in the payment system. The report for 2003 also provides an overview of important events in the area and a review of various issues related to international payment systems. The report, including a statistical annex, is now available in English on Norges Bank's website.

Rabo and Privver cooperate

A long time it was silent around Privver, the digital post and e-billing company on the web. But E-merce reports the cooperation with Rabobank in the domain of e-billing. Rabobank will present the digital bills in their e-banking application, avoiding the type-errors now made by customers that pay via e-banking (and need to type in a 16 digit payment reference number).

Rounding cash payments

Yesterday the Dutch central bank announced that a trial with rounding cash payments has succeeded. As of September this year, merchants and retailers will choose to round cash payments to the nearest 5 cents (as we did before when we still had the single guilder-cent). The cost-savings will amount to approximately 30 million euro. And the Society Platform for Payments Issues may take the credit.



Also on the central bank website: a free CD-Rom to learn yourself the safety features of euro bank notes. Given that the CD-rom is free for the public, my guess is that the central bank will soon run out of CD-roms. And they will also experience the above average demand that occurs if you provide something for free.....