Japanese banks seek to cash in on growth of e-money

The Daily Yomiuri On-Line reports that Japanse banks seek to introduce multifunctional cards that also work as electronic money.

Before throwing the idea away from the US or European perspective we should recognize that the Japanese society is very cash oriented. Thus, e-money might very well work in Japan as a replacement of cash.

After Sony Corp. and its partners launched Edy e-money in November 2001, the number of such cards had reached 9.2 million as of March, double the figure a year earlier. The number of stores where Edy e-money can be used increased fivefold in the same 12 months.

Of the 11 million Suica cards issued by East Japan Railway Co. as of the end of February, about 5.7 million have the e-money function.

Using special machines or the Internet, users can deposit money on cards with integrated circuit chips and cell phones that have an e-money function. They can then pay for purchases simply by having the cards or cell phones scanned by reading devices in stores.

Unlicensed Money Transmitter Charged in Michigan

A case decided on April 11, (United States v. Uddin), held that a person may be prosecuted for operating an illegal money transmitting business under 18 U.S.C. 1960 where the government shows that the person operated a money transmitting business knew the business was not registered with FinCEN.

According to FinCEN:
The judge rejected the defense argument that the government also must show that the person operating the money transmitting business knew that the business had to be registered, thereby following the general rule that ignorance of the law is no defense. This case illustrates that money services businesses are responsible for knowing their registration obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act and implementing rules.

See: http://www.fincen.gov/rosenopinion1960.pdf for a copy of the Opinion.

Ideal payment system launched in August

Dutch Internet payment system Ideal, developed by banks will be launched in August this year. Which is on schedule .... ;-)

EMV: the end of credit-card as we know it

Belgium shows the first signs that introduction of EMV for credit-cards (which includes use of another PIN) leads to a reduced use of the credit-card. The situation is similar to that in the Netherlands where purse-scheme Chipper demanded a different second pin-code.

The Belgium rollout of PIN-based EMV credit cards has now fuelled an unexpected increase in debit card use, as consumers prefer to use the PIN for their debit cards. Issuers in the UK had expressed concerns that UK consumers would reduce their credit card use when PINs were introduced, but so far a significant drop has not been documented.

Belgium’s e-purse cards are predicted to benefit from the country’s EMV migration as debit cards will carry an EMV chip that can support e-purse and check guarantee functions. Until EMV cards were issued, Proton was the only financial smart card in Belgium, but the gains it achieved in the post-euro currency environment have caused speculation that Proton will be used for more small-value purchases once it is bundled on chip-based debit cards. Ultimately, Proton is predicted to take market share from debit cards, given the recent increases in the average amount per transaction on its cards.

Operator's fee stall m-commerce and m-payments

This article discusses the e-money directive and it's application in the UK. It outlines that fees of operators for payment via premium SMS are considerable.

E-money and payments law - in Bulgaria

OPERATORS of payment systems will be licensed by the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), Parliament resolved on March 18, approving the second reading of provisions of the Money Transfers, Electronic Payment Instruments and Payment Systems Bill. Read more in
this article.

Retail banking shifts to business growth through relationship building

The World Banking Report presents an annual index of prices of basic banking services across national markets. Read the press-release at ING and download the full report here.

The average price of basic banking services in the 2005 report is €78, with prices between countries ranging from €25 in the Netherlands to €137 in Switzerland, which is a 1:5.5 range. Prices differ in terms of cost for consumers depending on the level of maturity of the banking environment and the banking environment pricing model.

Visa Brand changes look and feel

It's a new age, a new dawn and they're feeling good.
Check also the brand history.

GSM Europe calls for simpler telecoms regulation in Europe

See this article. Clearly the position of GSM Europe is to ask for less regulation in exchange for which they promise more jobs in Europe.

An advanced mobile telecommunications infrastructure is a key catalyst to stimulating growth and creating jobs in Europe, yet the required investments are both long term and not without risk. Ever increasing regulation becomes a disincentive to investment. GSM Europe welcomes the Commission's commitment to clamp down on over-regulation, and will actively contribute to impact assessments in order to deliver less regulation, common-sense regulation and better regulation.

Duh !

My mobile phone fees are staggering and off-the scale and I'm pretty sure that that's not leading to more jobs in EU but to more profit for share-holders...

Bill, your banking buddy and Billeo, the other banking buddy

Dutch SNS Bank will introduce Bill, your Dutch banking buddy while Billeo tries to do the same in US-environment....

Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets

Informative paper about Botnets with the title: Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets.
In this paper we look at a special kind of threat: the individuals and organizations who run botnets. A botnet is a network of compromised machines that can be remotely controlled by an attacker.

TSYS signs deal with ABN AMRO

Electronic payment processor TSYS said Thursday it has signed a seven-year deal with the largest bank in the Netherlands, making it the company's first major banking client on continental Europe.
See this article.

Paypal-phish-net gone: Sorry we can't find that page...

Just woke up to find the phish net is gone.
The link now says: "Sorry, We Can't Find That Page".
So that's half a day of fish perhaps...

Paypal in the meantime has sent me a thank-you note (which my provider automatically put in my SPAM-box by the way.....):
Thank you for contacting PayPal. We appreciate you bringing this suspicious email to our attention. We can confirm that the email you received was not sent to you by PayPal. The website linked to this email is not a registered URL authorized or used by PayPal. We are currently investigating this incident fully. Please do not enter any personal or financial information into this website.

And the bottom of their mail says:
PayPal and its representatives will NEVER ask you to reveal your password. There are NO EXCEPTIONS to this policy. If anyone claiming to work for PayPal asks for your password under any circumstances, by emailor by phone, please refuse and immediately contact us via webform at https://www.paypal.com/wf/f=sa_pass.

Another scam; now Paypal

This link to http://members.aol.com/paypalsite/login.html is still live, but Ive just sent a mail to webmaster@aol.com. So let's see how fast they take it off line.

By the way; similar set-up as before.
Now the e-mail client is:
http://www.vidalsassoon.co.uk/formmail.php
and the e-mail address at yahoo:
internalfun@yahoo.com

E-money: yes, but how will it happen?

Last few days the very famous Digital Money Conference of Consult Hyperion took place. Bits and pieces of the discussions are now scattered over the web:
Silicon for example reports:

Speaking at the Consult Hyperion Digital Money Forum in London today, Monika Hartmann of the European Central Bank's e-money observatory said that 0.1 per cent of cash in circulation in January 2005 is electronic. "It cannot be called such a big success," she said. According Hartmann, e-cash can't take off until providers crack the issue of how an individual could repay the fiver he borrowed from a friend without having cash: "We have observed at European level that e-purses proved more successful in some countries than others - Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg.... There's a lot of person to person schemes coming up. If we had more peer-to-peer capability, it would be thrilling."

And the EPSO-news bulletin in turn quotes David Birch:

Banks gave the electronic purse a try back in the 1990s, but largely abandoned their efforts when the products failed to gain any real traction in the marketplace. But new technology means that the e-purse is back again with more potential for success, and it isn't only banks that are playing with it, says David Birch, a director at Consult Hyperion. Gift cards and prefunded brand cards issued by Starbucks and 7-Eleven are, he says, proving very successful in the United States (gift cards are reported to account for more than 8% of retail transaction value in the United States already), with hybrid cards (i.e. prepaid debit and credit cards) in the United States forecasted to have more than a third of the e-purse market by 2007, according to TowerGroup. Contactless payment and electronic ticketing systems (such as Oyster in London and Octopus in Hong Kong) are proving particularly effective on transport networks. More and more organisers of concert, sporting and other events around the world are also opting for these systems. Contactless payment services offer, among other things, speed and convenience and, according to David Birch, the next few years may well see prepaid and pre-authorised contactless (i.e., e-purse) volumes surpass debit card volumes.

and refers to this Finextra article.

ABN AMRO is the first bank in the Netherlands to introduce a credit card with chip and PIN

See this link. The card is actually a rounded card.
.

East Japan Railway, NTT DoCoMo, and Sony to Launch Mobile Suica Service

See: http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=9501
Tokyo (JCNN) - East Japan Railway (JR East) will join forces with NTT DoCoMo and Sony to launch a new mobile Suica smartcard service in January 2006. The partners will conduct a trial service beginning in March using pilot service-compatible handsets.

The new service will combine JR East's Suica smartcard functions with DoCoMo i-mode cellphones enabled by Sony's FeliCa smartcard platform. IC chips for the service and service applications will be developed by FeliCa Networks, a joint venture established by the three companies. The service will allow users to check the fare balance, recharge e-money fares, and buy a commuter pass whenever and wherever from their handsets, as well as enjoying the basic Suica smartcard functions.

JR East plans on service expansion by making the service available for online shopping (by the second half of 2006) and for purchasing Shinkansen bullet train tickets (in fiscal 2007).

MasterCard™ and mBlox Launch First Global Mobile Fraud Detection Solution

http://www.mblox.com/mblox-europe/news/current/2005.02.09.shtml:
MasterCard, the leading global payments solutions company, and mBlox, the world’s mobile messaging transmission and billing specialist, have announced a worldwide cooperation agreement to integrate mBlox’s mobile messaging service with Aristion®, MasterCard’s cutting edge fraud prevention tool. This new solution will become the first global fraud detection and alerting system, offering any bank a high quality, ready to use Short Message Service (SMS)-enabled solution. Existing Aristion users can install it in under an hour.

Phishing part VI: Qn.com took action: account disabled

The phisher has been caught. Qn.com apparently intervened.
Its website now reads:
Disabled - This accont violated our terms of service.

Still, the AOL-link is still alive.... let's see for how long.
http://members.aol.com/mbrserviceebay/ebay.html

Anyhow, how many phish will be in the net now...?

Phishing part V - Apparently related Domains and IP addresses group #170

Qn.com shows Yakov Yukhananov as the owner. Qn.com offers free subdomains just before the qn. and apparently does not check what the domain-names are used for. As a result the qn.com service may have been mis-used more often. Consequently Mr Yukhananov's name also appears on this page with domain names and IP addresses that have appeared at one time or another to be related by the owner, URLs advertised in unsolicited bulk mail (spam), service providers, or other characteristics:
Apparently related Domains and IP addresses group #170.

Phishing part IV: Security threats of form-mail

To be found here:
http://www.monkeys.com/anti-spam/formmail-advisory.pdf.

Phishing in action part III - Matt's Script Archive: FormMail

Of course I was wondering how this Form-mail in Canada would work. Well this page on Matt's Script Archive: FormMail tells you.