11.29.17 Your morning briefing

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Not stressed enough? U.K. banks are prepared to weather myriad economic risks, including a “hard Brexit,” but may be overestimating their ability to limit losses due to payment startups and open banking, reports The Express on the Bank of England’s 2017 stress test of HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, RBS, Santander UK, Standard Chartered and Nationwide. Open banking is expected to follow the Payment Service Directive (PSD2) standards, which go into effect in 2018 and require banks to share data more freely with technology companies that offer financial services such as payments. The BofE reports the impact could result in the loss of a portion of the £3.4 billion banks earn from overdraft charges and payments fees as consumers turn to other options for transactions and budgeting apps. This could result in a loss of £1.1 billion in bank profits in the next six years, though that may be an underestimate, reports the BofE. The BofE is also concerned banks are overestimating reductions in costs from their own adoption of technology as the cost of acquiring consumers against fintechs increases.

Bloomberg News

Split the trip: Expanding on the classic “split the check” use case for P-to-P apps, Airbnb has launched a service that allows groups to divide the cost of a vacation through a single portal. The app’s “split payments” feature allows a trip’s organizer to put a reservation in an “awaiting payment” state, with the organizer’s part of the booking charged to his or her credit card while the host’s calendar is blocked. The organizer can hold the reservation for up to 72 hours, during which the other travelers in the group log onto Airbnb and pay their portion. The feature is designed to make it easier for trip organizers by removing a large upfront payment for an entire group while waiting for contributions. Airbnb cites commissioned research from DKC Analytics that found 80% of American travelers have been on multiple group trips in the past five years, with 52% of travelers having fronted $500 more, as evidence for demand.

All that you can’t leave behind: Amazon Echo has shown itself to be a beneficial lure for Amazon’s broader payments business, making Echo’s marketing campaigns an important way to bring consumers and transaction volume into the e-commerce company’s umbrella. That makes its latest tie-in with U2 interesting, given the rock band’s promotion with Apple in 2015 ended with Bono apologizing because iPhone users had the album forcibly gifted without an obvious way to erase it. TechCrunch reports U2’s new marketing deal with Amazon is less “forceful” and is more of a one-time broadcast. Called the U2 Experience, it’s a radio show that’s designed to draw consumers to Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices through music and interviews with U2 members. The broadcast is scheduled for Nov 30 in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Austria.

Upper chamber digs DLT: Distributed ledger technology (DLT) can have a substantial impact on the U.K.’s payments industry, among other markets, reports the U.K.’s House of Lords in a report detailing the challenges and opportunities for the technology. DLTs such as blockchain support cryptocurrencies, and have grown in use over the past couple of years to facilitate cross-border transactions, security and stock trades. While The Bank of England has been softening its initial position that DLT was not ready to support nationwide payment settlement, the House of Lords reports DLT can bring “beneficial change” to tax and benefit payments, insurance transactions, payment traceability and fraud prevention. The technology can also benefit food and drug safety, criminal investigations, border control, customs and immigration, according to the House of Lords.

From the Web

Uber inks its first mobile wallet deal in Southeast Asia
TechCrunch | Tue Nov 28, 2017 – Seeking to rise to increased competition, Uber has inked its first payments deal in Southeast Asia after it announced a partnership with Vietnam-based mobile wallet service Momo. Momo, which raised $28 million led by Standard Chartered last year, will become a payment option inside the Uber app in Vietnam, alongside cash and credit cards. The app is the country’s top mobile payment service. It is used by five million people to pay bills, transport tickets and more so an alignment with Uber makes sense.

Square dipping a toe into bitcoin is a big deal
Yahoo! News | Wed Nov 29, 2017 – At some point in November, mobile-payments company Square quietly rolled out a new feature to a small number of users on its Square Cash app: the ability to buy and hold bitcoin. Square Cash users soon started noticing the feature and tweeting about it, and the business press first reported it on Nov. 14, and Square’s stock popped 16% in the week that followed. Bitcoin, already on a bull run, rose 12% in the next 24 hours, with many attributing the day’s gains to the Square news. Clearly, Square offering bitcoin-buying, even if just as a small test pilot, was good for both Square and bitcoin.

In India, digital payments are changing the game for women entrepreneurs
Huffington Post | Tue Nov 28, 2017 – This week the world’s preeminent business leaders, innovators, investors, and entrepreneurs are gathered in India for the eighth annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES). GES2017 is focusing on the role women entrepreneurs play in advancing inclusive growth, with one key area of discussion being the digital economy. The location of this year’s summit is no coincidence. Over the last several years, India has emerged as a driving force in the digital revolution. Host city Hyderabad is home to T-Hub, the country’s largest startup incubator, a partnership between the government of Telangana, three of India’s premier academic institutes (IIIT-H, ISB, & NALSAR), and private sector leaders.

More from PaymentsSource

Digitizing the chaotic world of school payments
As any stressed-out parent knows, kids can be quite bad at communicating what they need for school.

The card networks’ embrace is a welcome boost for ‘PIN on glass’
With the widescale adoption of mobile phones, and the use of NFC and QR codes for payments, the card brands most likely see a threat to their business model and, in a defensive move against potential disruptors, are wisely embracing the spirit of mobile, writes Jeremy Gumbley, CTO at Creditcall.`

Kiwibank launches QuickPay mobile card reader
Kiwibank says it is providing its small business customers in New Zealand with a mobile payments app and card reader.

Why Japan’s bitFlyer is attracting investment despite punting on payments
One of the world’s largest bitcoin exchanges, bitFlyer, has landed in the U.S. with a focus on institutional investors — a move that suggests bitcoin’s days as a payments instrument are still a long way off.