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Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Verified by Visa is easy target for scammers

Bank of America customers are the targets of a new phishing scam which uses the Verified by Visa anti-fraud programme as the bait to lure victims. “Your Bank of America card has been automatically enrolled in the Verified by Visa program,” one version of the email says. “To ensure your Visa card's security, it is important that you protect your ...

/security Trends in Financial Services

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Like MasterCard meets PayPal without the charges

That's the opinion of Ted Leonsis, chairman of RevolutionMoney, describing the new RevolutionCard, which was released in the US today. The PIN-protected card offers a line of credit, $15,000 top-up capacity, ID-theft protection and interest rates pegged to the card holder's credit rating. It also promises to significantly undercut the hated inter...

/payments /retail Trends in Financial Services

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Could IP disputes derail Sepa?

An interesting working paper from the Federal Reserve Board of Philadelphia which suggests that disputes over Intellectual Property rights pose a risk to the development of the Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa) and subsequent innovations in banking and retail payment media in Europe. The authors argue that the lack of a proper intellectual prop...

/payments /retail Finextra@Sibos

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

P2P lenders see silver lining in credit crunch cloud

The credit crunch may be bad news for traditional banks, but the new breed of peer-to-peer lending operators are viewing the current liquidity crisis as a clear opportunity to take on more business. With traditional lenders tightening their loan criteria and dispensing with special introductory credit card rate offers and home equity loan options,...

/retail Trends in Financial Services

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

A hedge fund manager speaks...

"The big lesson of the subprime crisis: that it's a mistake to lend money to poor people." "Rich people know how to invest extra money. Poor people just squander it on necessities. That's why capitalism works so well: it keeps money out of the hands of people who don't know how to use it and directs it to people who know how to make ...

/regulation /wholesale Whatever...

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Is Tibco the canary in the coalmine?

Tibco's decision to downgrade its earnings forceasts for the year after experiencing a sudden fall out in contracts at the end of the quarter has spurred some analysts to suggest that that the ongoing credit crunch may be hitting bank IT spending budgets. Katherine Egbert, an analyst with Jefferies and Co. notes: "Although Tibco is a relativel...

/wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Financial Objects joins Sibos PR binge

Shares in core banking vendor Financial Objects slipped four per cent after the company reported a 21% decline in revenues from its banking division. The group has appointed a new head of banking in an effort to revive sales, but warns that it now expects to record a full year decline in revenues in the division. Financial Objects is resisting call...

/payments /wholesale Finextra@Sibos

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

BeX failure bodes ill for Turquoise

The decision of the Boston Stock Exchange to shutter its new electronic equities trading venture BeX within nine months of its live launch in December last year is bad news for other up-and-coming competitors to established market venues. BeX was set up with the backing of five of Wall Street’s most powerful investment banks. It was designed to tak...

/wholesale MiFID

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Web 2.0 buzzword watch

Investors Business Daily via CNNMoney comments on the use of Web collaboration tools such as RSS, Wikis and blogs in the business sector under the guise of a new business buzzword: Enterprise 2.0. It's the first time I've heard the term in general use, but it seems that I'm well behind the curve. The phrase was first coined by Andrew McAfee from H...

/retail /wholesale Trends in Financial Services

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

RIP STP, long live ICMA

STP (the industry trade mag) may be dead, but co-founder and MD Graeme Austin has conjured an unlikely resurrection as director of product management for the market services business of the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA). Officially, STP Information Services went into voluntary liquidation a few months back after HM Revenue &...

/wholesale Where are they now?

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