Category: Uncategorized

[Dave Birch] Could SEPA challenge other payments methods used in the US, for global dominance? That’s what Javelin Strategy and Research ask in a piece called “SEPA payments: dismantling the tower of Babel”. They go on to say that it is “fascinating stuff”. If you need convincing, here are a couple of useful documents for you to download.

Technorati Tags: banking, payments, SEPA

Continue reading “SEPA across the water”

[Dave Birch] Our good friend Simon Leliveldt from the Dutch Bankers’ Association has kindly sent us the English version of the report on payment systems discussed earlier.

Technorati Tags: banking, costs, payments

Continue reading “Report from Dutch Bankers’ Association”

[Dave Birch] On his excellent blog, Jerry Fishenden (Microsoft’s National Technology Officer UK) mentions chip and PIN security and talks about the recent press over Shell service stations not accepting chip and PIN cards (I bought petrol at a Shell garage in Woking today and had to sign for it) after fraudsters installed devices underneath the keypads that cached details of card numbers and PINs.  Jerry correctly points out that this was about financial fraud, not identity fraud.  But there are clearly ramifications for identity cards and if we’re going to be responsible we need to tackle the public’s concerns.

Technorati Tags: credit cards, debit cards, fraud, ID cards, payments

Continue reading “Shell game”

[Dave Birch] Well, in the interests of research I got a copy of the new UK Monopoly Electronic Banking Edition discussed previously. A full review by Mr. A. Birch (aged 9) will follow…

Technorati Tags: games

Continue reading “Monopoly mania”

There’s a serious issue for debate right now.  Simon Davies of Privacy International is getting a hard time in various parts of the blogsphere because he told IT Week that “I’ve believed for some months that a ‘white knight’ consortium from industry is needed.  Companies that can see the benefits of the ID card idea should approach the government about effectively taking over the project.”

Technorati Tags: ID cards

Continue reading “Will industry rescue the identity card?”

[Dave Birch] The Sunday Telegraph magazine had a big feature on Entropia Universe (Project Entropia, as was), so clearly something is going on. The article interviews Jon Jacobs, an English guy now living in the US, who sold up to raise $100,000 to buy virtual real estate (a space station, in fact). He is quoted as saying “I nearly put the money into a house in Miami, but then along came Hurricane Katrina and I thought ‘where’s the security in that’?”.

Technorati Tags: games

Continue reading “Where’s the security in that?”

[Dave Birch] I was reading a report in Finextra concerning a detailed study of the Dutch banks ABN Amro, ING, Fortis, SNS Reaal and Rabobank which reported that gross profits of EUR3.996 billion on all payment instruments were more than offset by EUR4.019 billion in costs. While small differences between big numbers are not always an accurate snapshot, this net loss on payments transactions caught my eye. The loss wasn’t across the board: business payments generated net revenues of 700 million euros, consumer payments net losses of 640 million euros. The study was paid for by the Dutch central bank and the Dutch Association of Banks.

Technorati Tags: banking, costs, payments, SEPA

Continue reading “Payments and profits”

[Dave Birch] A couple of years ago, Steve Pannifer and I wrote a paper about two-factor ("token") authentication pointing out that token authentication wasn’t the solution to the general Internet authentication problem but just a first step on one potential roadmap to a solution.  One of the reasons we gave was that token authentication is vulnerable to a "man-in-the-middle" (MITM) attack.  Now this attack "in the wild" has been reported in the Washington Post.

Technorati Tags: authentication, banking, internet

Continue reading “Two-timing two-factor”

[Dave Birch] I went to Cambridge to hear a couple of talks on the state of payment card security. David Ware from RFI Global concentrated on contactless security. With the imminent start of contactless payment trials in the UK, this is important to us and our clients right now. Mike Bond from Cryptomathic gave a good overview of EMV security. This is a hot topic in the UK because of the media reports of the “Shell” breach and card cloning.

Technorati Tags: contactless, credit cards, debit cards, security

Continue reading “Taking a punt”

[Dave Birch] Chris Skinner says, in last month’s issue of The Banker that “The march of biometrics is under way. Bankers should take their fingers out of their ears and start using them as a method of identification and authentication.”

Continue reading “Pointing the finger at banks”