plus 3, BECU Launches CashEdge's Popmoney(TM) Person-to-Person ... - Earthtimes

BECU Launches CashEdge's Popmoney(TM) Person-to-Person ... - Earthtimes

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 05:47 AM PDT

NEW YORK, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- CashEdge, Inc. (www.cashedge.com), the leading provider of Intelligent Money Movement? services, announced today that Boeing Employees' Credit Union (BECU), the largest credit union in Washington and one of the top five financial cooperatives in the United States, has launched CashEdge's person-to-person (P2P) payments service, Popmoney?, to its members. BECU, which has over 600,000 members, began offering Popmoney on March 20 through its website www.becu.org.
Popmoney is the first email and mobile person-to-person payments service that allows credit union members and bank customers to send money directly from their online or mobile banking service, simply using the recipient's email, mobile number or bank account information. Popmoney provides support for text messaging, WAP and downloadable mobile applications, enabling financial institutions to extend their P2P functionality to mobile phones.
"We are excited to be the first credit union in the country to offer this service. At BECU we strive to make banking as easy and convenient as possible for our members. That means offering services that allow them to bank wherever and whenever they want," said Howie Wu, Vice President of Virtual Banking, BECU. "Popmoney helps us meet that goal by extending the reach of our online and mobile banking capabilities to include person-to-person payments ? a simple, secure and convenient way for our members to send money directly from their BECU account to anyone for free."
"BECU is a great partner," said Neil Platt, Senior Vice President and General Manager, US Banking, CashEdge Inc. "They understand the importance of bringing innovation and service to their clients, and they've demonstrated that understanding by being industry leaders in delivering Popmoney. We expect that Popmoney will help drive acquisition and client engagement ? creating new revenue streams for them."
Popmoney leverages the proven reliability, security and strength of CashEdge's money movement platform, which in 2008 processed nearly $50 billion in funds transfers for bank customers. For current CashEdge clients, Popmoney is a simple upgrade of their existing TransferNow service.
To learn more about CashEdge's Intelligent Money Movement Services, visit www.cashedge.com.
About BECU
Governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, BECU is a not-for-profit credit union owned by the members. Profits are returned to the members in the form of better rates and fewer fees. With more than 600,000 members and more than $8.6 billion in assets, BECU is the largest credit union in Washington and one of the top five financial cooperatives in the country. BECU currently operates over 40 locations in the Puget Sound region. All Washington state residents and students attending Washington colleges and universities are eligible to join.
About CashEdge
CashEdge is a leading provider of Intelligent Money Movement? solutions for financial institutions, including mobile and online person-to-person (P2P) payments, account transfers, account opening and funding, small business applications and financial account aggregation. The Company's clients include hundreds of leading financial institutions, including seven of the ten largest banks in the country, for which they move more than $50B every year. CashEdge's newest offering, Popmoney?, is a bank-enabled P2P service that is live at leading banks in the U.S.
CashEdge's industry-leading products include Popmoney? for person-to-person payments; OpenNow®/FundNow® for new account opening and funding; TransferNow® for Consumers, which includes Me-to-Me and Third Party Transfers; and TransferNow® for Small Businesses, which includes Invoicing, Me-to-Me Transfers, Employee Payments and Vendor Payments. All CashEdge products are supported by industry-leading risk management capabilities that leverage proprietary technology to help financial institutions mitigate risk and decrease fraud exposure.
The Company is headquartered in New York with offices in Silicon Valley and India. For more information, visit www.cashedge.com.
The above contains statements that are based on subjective views, opinions or beliefs of the management. The data provided herein is based solely on CashEdge's solutions and does not relate to any specific financial institution or client or the industry.
SOURCE CashEdge, Inc.

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'Porting to Avea available via Garanti Bank's internet ... - TMCnet

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 06:37 AM PDT

(DMeurope Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Turkish mobile operator Avea has partnered local financial services provider Garanti Bank to enable its customers demanding to become Avea subscribers to switch to Avea using Garanti's internet banking service. To join Avea, individual or corporate Garanti Bank customers can do so by entering Garanti's internet banking channel and accessing the 'GSM number portability' option from the Applications Menu. After the required form is filled, Avea customer representatives visit the subscribers at the addresses they previously specified and inform them about Avea campaigns.

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Fixed Mobile Convergence - TMCnet

Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:41 AM PDT

BGL BNP Paribas launches mobile banking service

Mar 19, 2010 (Datamonitor via COMTEX) -- BGL BNP Paribas, a member of the BNP Paribas group, has launched a new mobile banking service in Luxembourg.
The new mobile banking service will reportedly allow clients to consult account balances and transactions, order transfers, track securities portfolios and even conduct simulations for personal loans from mobile phone.
The company has said that the launch of mobile phone banking solution, compatible with LuxTrust security systems, reflects its ambition to be a pioneer in Luxembourg for mobile banking services.
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Senate Dems Push Reform Through Banking Committee - Daily Finance

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 03:52 AM PDT

In less than 30 minutes, the Senate Banking Committee this afternoon approved major financial service reform legislation by a party-line 13-10 vote.
The panel took the action after committee Republicans withdrew hundreds of amendments they had filed, electing to save their fight on the bill when the full Senate takes up the more than 1,300-page legislation after the Easter recess.
Instead, the brief "mark-up," which was held at 5:00 p.m. Monday, consisted primarily of Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Ranking Member Richard Shelby, R-Ala., making opening statements about the need for financial services regulatory reform.
Since 2007, when the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression began, "Some of the most prominent financial institutions in our nation have been destroyed or seriously weakened," Dodd said. In March 2008, Bear Stearns collapsed and was sold in a fire sale to JPMorgan Chase. Lehman Brothers' collapse followed in September 2008, becoming the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, with over $600 billion in assets.
Yet, "The far worse damage has been done to millions of our fellow citizens, ordinary families across the nation, who did nothing wrong but are paying a terrible price for this terrible crisis," Dodd said, citing the loss of 8.4 million jobs and almost 7 million foreclosures, along with huge losses to retirement funds.
"Americans are frustrated; they're angry about what's happened and they want answers," Dodd said. "How could this have happened, and what are we going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?"
Shut Down Failing Firms
Dodd claimed that the bill, which he authored, would end bailouts, ensuring that failing firms would be shut down without taxpayer funding or threatening economic stability. To do that, financial firms would be discouraged from growing too large through strict rules for capital, leverage, liquidity and risk management. Proprietary trading that only profits a financial services firm could not be conducted by banks that take federally backed deposits.
The Financial Stability Oversight Council also would be tasked with serving as an early warning system to spot unsafe financial institutions, products or practices before they threaten the stability of the economy.
A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be created within the Federal Reserve Board with an independent head and an independent budget, to protect consumers from unsafe products such as subprime mortgages that helped lead to the financial crisis.
Exotic financial instruments such as hedge funds and derivatives would face more regulation and open disclosure requirements.
Dodd pledged that the bill would "restore our financial security, so that our economy can create jobs and offer middle-class families the chance to build wealth."
While there will be a "spirited debate" in the weeks ahead on the bill, "We are moving forward on this issue," Dodd said. He predicted that financial services reforms would be adopted this year.
Bipartisan Agreement?
Shelby was conciliatory, predicting that Democrats and Republicans will try to come to an agreement, as they had unsuccessfully attempted to do until recent weeks, when Dodd moved to go ahead with a Democratic-backed measure. He pledged to continue to work with Democrats as the bill goes to the floor "in hopes or reaching a broad consensus."
Shelby outlined areas of common agreement between Democrats and Republicans, including a desire to end the concept of "too-big-to-fail" financial institutions that the markets assume the government will back financially if necessary. Although the bill approved today takes some steps in the right direction, it still falls short of getting away from bailouts, he said.
Shelby commended the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which he said would strengthen the financial system and improve financial regulation.
The regulatory structure needs to be modernized and streamlined, and the scope of the Federal Reserve's authority should be closely examined, consumer protections need to be strengthened, and derivatives trading needs to be made more transparent, standardized and competitive, Shelby said.
"These broad areas were, and I believe remain, the foundation of bipartisan legislation," Shelby said, adding that a bipartisan agreement is still not out of reach. "I do not view today's markup as the end of the road, but rather just another step in the process."

Regulatory Structure Imbalance
Noting that the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has received the most public attention, Shelby said that there is an "imbalance in our regulatory structure between consumer protection and safety-and-soundness regulation." But he said consumer protection should be elevated to the same level of importance that banking regulators give to the safety and soundness oversight of banks.
"While I continue to believe that a safe and sound banking system is the best consumer protection, there are steps that need to be taken to strengthen the role of consumer protection," he said.
Market expectations regarding bailouts need to be changed, private sector due diligence must improve, and regulators must be given realistic objectives and the tools to achieve them, Shelby said.
He was most critical of regulations in the bill that would subject derivatives transactions to reporting, clearing and execution requirements. Companies that use derivatives to hedge legitimate business risks would be subject to the new requirements, unless they qualify for narrow exemptions under the bill.
Jumping Through Hoops
Companies should able to use swaps to hedge business risks without being required to "jump through unnecessary regulatory hoops, or have to set aside resources that could otherwise be used to create jobs and develop new products," Shelby said.
"Forcing clearing to essentially all derivatives ignores the risk of central clearing," Shelby said, warning that that could expose taxpayers to the risk of future bailouts of clearinghouses. "We need to carefully weigh the risk of mandating the clearing of products that are complex, illiquid, and hard to price," he said.
Regulators need access to all information about the full range of activities in the derivatives markets, but the bill allows some types of swaps to continue to be transacted without full transparency, Shelby charged.
Corporate governance provisions in the bill, such as giving shareholders more say on executive pay and allowing shareholder votes on corporate directors, are unrelated to the crisis and would "impose costs on shareholders and empower special interests," Shelby said.
Shelby also said that more needs to be done to address problems with credit rating agencies, securitization and funding of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bill would allow the SEC to keep the transaction and filing fees it now collects, which would increase its funding significantly and provide it with a budget that Congress wouldn't have to approve through the annual appropriations process.

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