Monitise/Visa Announcement – P2P transfers?

http://corporate.visa.com/media-center/press-releases/press1176.jsp

From PR:

… [The Visa] mobile services that allow financial institutions in the US to offer their account holders the ability to monitor account history and balances, transfer funds between accounts

Oh the joys of allowing Visa to push credit transactions on the debit network… if only banks would allow it.  As I outlined in previous blogs below, Visa has no traction with the OCT transaction set in the US. Internationally, the opposite is true as emerging market banks have taken on to OCT (receiving funds via Visa debit network), but will not SEND. .  Visa’s VMT service is thus stuck.. it can’t serve as a remittance service because sending country banks (US/EU) do not participate.  Note from this week’s MA earnings call that Mastercard has partnered with Western Union to address this issue.. a much better approach for cash in.

If you ask Visa for a VMT test account, you are likely to get Bank of the West or some other small bank, with Visa’s promise “it is mandatory and all banks will comply”. It won’t happen.. there are problems with this mandate.. it is after all a debit network (see VMT blog).

What is this announcement.. really??  Visa has put a notification event service on their DPS switch where registered issuers and consumers can receive alerts.. nice of Visa to throw Monitise a bone after they completely messed up their corporate strategy by promising them to make them the “go to market” solution for mobile payments. Monitise is now the “go to” solution for issuers looking for a 3rd party service to check your balance.. or get an alert.

Also… if there were 2 banks that supported VMT I’m sure I could transfer funds with the service as well. Visa… please give us the list of banks that support it.. a demo.. we are all dying to see your progress.

6 thoughts on “Monitise/Visa Announcement – P2P transfers?

  1. Swedish MNO’s is setting this up now via the new JV company 4T and will cover 97% of the contry’s population. Besides a full mobile payment service (POS, online, vending, in-mobile) you will also be able todo person-to-person money transfer in real time. Going live before this summer. (http://waroncash.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/swedish-carriers-to-use-same-mobile-wallet-service/)

    Also rumoured is that the 6 largest Swedish banks are setting up a national mobile service for real-time person-to-person money transfer, also to be launched this summer. First step to a full mobile payment service from banks and besides their card business?

  2. All due respect, but you have a number of facts wrong when it comes to Visa Personal Payments / Money Transfer. Full disclosure: until recently I ran product for Visa Personal Payments / Money Transfer globally; I’m no longer with Visa.

    Specifically:

    * EU participation is mandated, and US participation is coming up to speed
    * The delay in mandate compliance is largely because Visa has built in many controls to facilitate AML / KYC – marrying this to the current processing interfaces across all US processors and banks isn’t an easy undertaking. Think about how long international ACH changes took; Visa is providing even better controls / data vs. international ACH thus the delay. Plus the banks are in no place to prioritize the investment to accept the txn given the need to revamp their card infrastructure in the face of Dodd-Frank/Durbin – another reason for delay.
    * Despite this the receipt footprint is better than you imply, particularly for debit which is where most people want true money transfers anyway. I’ve got friends at a number of institutions receiving txns – including a big credit issuer based out of NC 🙂
    * If you’re looking for a send program in the US – http://www.usbank.com/splash/visa/visa-money-transfer.html – I’d say they are a sizable client 🙂
    * Visa has also worked on cash in solutions via their partnership with MoneyGram, which has been in market for a couple of years.
    * Finally remember that pushing money to a Visa card doesn’t just have to be for money transfers but can feed a number of other use cases which banks are very interested in since even post-Durbin cards make banks more money than ACH. Yet another reason banks WANT to participate in VMT.

    You’re overstating banks strategic objections to VMT/OCT. Volumes aren’t big enough for them to be a concern, and Visa is putting a lot of effort into ensuring there are wins for all participants in the value chain via interchange and other mechanisms.

    • Thanks for taking the time to right such a thoughtful reply. Within the US.. I’ve personally spoken to the payment heads at the top 5 US banks. Perhaps Visa underestimates the degree to which the Banks will say no.. or there is very little dialog of substance beyond “we have a mandate”.

      Please tell me again what facts I have wrong.
      1) There is a “Mandate” in the EU.. but all banks are NOT participating. They have in fact gotten waivers, my point is that Visa mandates many things.. but the big guys tell them to bug off. USBank… great for Visa, of course USB is somewhat upset by being left out of ClearXChange.. so this makes sense. My guess on volume here? less than $100k/mo outbound.
      2) your Comment Hints at BAC participation. Given their ClearXchange investment you can safely assume that it is a pilot that will not go forward.

      Why on earth would any banker want Visa expanding into money transfer? Just imagine the customer experience nightmare.. Options to pay someone else
      – Online transfer service (ie Cashedge or equiv)
      – Bill Pay to an individual
      – Wire in the branch (or online at a few majors)
      – ClearxChange (which will be integrated into online banking)
      – VMT.. which is not integrated online.. and has yet another integration service and a directory that is not integrated with any banks.

      Consumers will not be willing to Pay $0.50 for an instant transfer… Paypal has given this away free for years…the service is a complete failure and will take much marketing to get consumers convinced that Some customers (Visa), with certain BANKS, by certain senders (Visa), in certain countries will allow you to send money directly to you via a debit card registered with Visa.

      Visa will find that there are very few senders in the US and EU are willing to accept a sender pays model.

      In the global remittance space the service will may effectively compete in a few very very narrow segments. Beneficiary must have a bank account, a visa debit, a bank that supports OCT, and the product must be competitively priced (Visa managed FX rate). India seems to be a sweet spot today, but will change dramatically once RUPAY takes hold..

      There are tremendous business issues with the service, this is why Visa won’t discuss volumes. I gave the example of Citi and HSBC each of whom have a global transfer service already. Take out the inbound volume to India and I would love to know the GDV through the service.. I will shut up and eat my shoe when is passes $20B (ex India).

  3. Great back and forth.

    Service must be able to reach all…not just visa card-carrying individuals, and to Tom’s point be integrated, not a separate URL from the secure banking website or mobile app.

  4. I am aware of efforts of an integrated solution that uses both Visa Money Transfer and MasterCard MoneySend for use in P2P situations with, let’s say many financial institutions that will use the bank’s current IB and Mobile Banking channels. Not to mention I have spoken with people at both CashEdge and Obopay that they are working to integrate VMT and MoneySend as options.

    Think account to account transfers when internal and account to card when external to the bank.

    • Lots of “solutions”.. no uptake.. There are solutions riding on NYCE, STAR, Obopay, VMT, … Take a look at my previous blogs and you will see that many variants have been around for years. http://tomnoyes.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/rttransfers/

      From my previous blog. . Star’s Expedited Transfer, NYCE’s A2A Money Transfer , Visa’s VMT all attempt to EXTEND their respective PIN Debit networks to handle credit transactions. In EVERY CASE, the networks must sell their members banks and get them to extend a PIN based network (which processed only debits in a simplified authorization process), into a funds transfer service. Who owns fraud? Compliance? Reg E burdens? Consumer Support? Returns? Reporting? Integration into online banking? Statements? .. yep the banks.. Oh and by the way.. the other “benefit” to a bank is that once you implement it you can forget about those expensive wire fees. The result of their efforts is what you would expect… VERY poor adoption.

      Visa is paying CashEdge and others to connect to VMT in hopes of enabling cash in from the bank’s online money movement. Think of it as an attempt to bundle into alliance partner “products”.. but important to remember it is each individual bank that decides whether to turn it on (or NOT).

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