I travel a lot. Not so much by plane these days as by car, SUV and even RV. And this is by choice — I simply have lost patience with the process involved in catching a plane.  Four to five hours of my time spent so that airport and homeland security can be satisfied. And me, a businessman consistently proving to be of little interest to all those charged with ensuring that we all arrive safely at our final destination. These processes have driven away any pleasure there once was in...

The central and eastern European (CEE) ATM market continued its recent trend of strong, but steady growth, last year, increasing by another 10% in 2011. 18,000 new machines were installed, bringing the total to 208,000. The global recession and the continuing maturation of the CEE market mean that growth rates seen in the mid- 2000s – often 30% or more – have fallen in recent years. This level of growth is still impressive, however, and seven times higher than in western Europe. These...

The social gaming phenomenon is (still) hip, hot, and hype. It’s not a stretch to say that there are millions of social gamers across the globe. An industry report projected social gaming to reach $11.3 billion by 2016. But what is the current state of social gaming? Let’s look at the figures of monthly active users worldwide  from Facebook , which is the world’s most populated social gaming platform : Dec 31, 2009 – 360 m; Dec 31, 2010 – 608 m; Dec 31,...

The global near-field communications (NFC) retail payments market will reach $180bn (£116bn) by 2017, with one in four shoppers paying in store using the technology, according to a report from Juniper Research. North America, western Europe and the Asia Pacific region will contribute 90% of this market value as smartphones with NFC payment technology become standard, said the research. NFC will see a more than a seven-fold increase over...

Ukrainian financial institutions have not fully recovered after the previous wave of the global credit crunch. This year the Ukrainian banking system started showing feeble signs of recovery. The reported earnings of Ukrainian banks in January – May was US $236 mn (over the first five months in 2011 they posted a loss of US $125 mn), according to the NBU. It would seem like the peak of building up of bad loans is also a thing in the past, as the total amount of overdue debt for the five...

Globally, 66% of airline merchants are seeing fraud levels stay the same or increase as they lose 1.5% of booking revenue to fraudulent transactions, according to the global Perfect Passenger Payment insights report, commissioned by WorldPay. Worryingly, this could be set to increase, with 29% of airlines reporting that incidents of fraud have risen in the past year. The good news for airlines is that customers are happy...

Payments industry stakeholders now have a website dedicated entirely to helping with the United States' upcoming move to EMV chip technology -- EMV Connection at http://www.emv-connection.com/ . The site, launched by the Smart Card Alliance, provides up-to-date information on the status of EMV migration, along with tutorials and educational resources that will assist with migration. "Now that the payment brands have announced their roadmaps to accelerate EMV adoption in the United...

Visa, MasterCard and major banks agreed to pay retailers at least $6 billion to settle a long-running lawsuit that alleged the card issuers conspired to fix the fees that stores pay to accept credit cards. As part of the settlement, announced on July 13th, stores from Rite Aid to Kroger will be allowed to charge customers more if they pay using a credit card. At a time when shoppers increasingly are using credit...