.svg)
Spain: Rise In Online Payments Continues In 2021
Like most countries around the well, Spain has had a dramatic rise in e-commerce payments over the last couple of years as restrictions on movement and the dangers of face-to-face contact encouraged shoppers to buy from the safety of their screens.
According to data from Spanish payment processor Redsys, online shopping rose sharply during the pandemic and continued to accelerate in 2021. In 2020, 45 percent of Spainards were using e-commerce, rising to 61 percent by the end of 2021.
A significant proportion of online trade occurs through digital marketplaces, which according to Redsys accounted for 39 percent of all online purchases.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of this increased trade is likely to be Amazon. According to data from Statista, the digital marketplace accounted for 53 percent of online marketplace website traffic in 2020.
This growth in digital payments has also helped a number of new digital payments services to prosper in Spain. Bizum, which was launched in 2016 by Spain’s banks, is a mobile-based payments solution utilising the country’s instant payments infrastructure operated by Iberpay.
According to Bizum, more than 800m transactions were made across the mobile payments service in 2021 and it has more than 19m users.
Although Bizum was initially developed to support immediate P2P payments, allowing Spanish users to pay one another using just their mobile phone number, the service has recently expanded its remit to target the lucrative e-commerce market.
It is still only attracting a very small share of overall e-commerce; however, the service could potentially offer an attractive alternative payment solution for many merchants in the country.
According to the company, the number of merchants accepting the payment solution has tripled over the past year to 26,700. These merchants accepted 5.3m purchases worth €320m using Bizum in 2021.
According to Ángel Nigorra, CEO of Bizum: "Our main objective for 2021 was to boost and consolidate e-commerce payment with Bizum. The figures show that both our online commerce users, who are already 15.4 million, and businesses, have been able to appreciate our value proposition of paying only with your mobile phone number. And this is thanks, to a large extent, to the effort of the Bizum entities to make it easier for businesses to adhere to our solution."
United States: FinCEN Considering Suspicious Activity Report Sharing Pilot Program
The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has proposed a rule that would allow financial institutions to share suspicious activity reports (SARs) with their foreign branches, subsidiaries, and affiliates to fight money laundering and terrorism financing.
Under current rules, financial institutions, such as money service businesses (MSBs), may share SARs with foreign head offices, foreign and domestic controlling companies, and domestic affiliates.
If finalized, the proposed rule would establish a limited-duration pilot program to allow SAR sharing with foreign affiliates.
This would provide FinCEN with “valuable feedback about the value of such SAR sharing for participating financial institutions and for FinCEN and law enforcement,” the agency said.
The consultation on the pilot program has been launched in accordance with the Anti-Money Laundering Act 2020.
U.S.: Anti-Bigtech Bill Advances In Senate
The Senate Judiciary Committee has passed the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which prohibits dominant platforms from abusing their gatekeeper power by discriminatorily favoring their own products against rivals’ products.
The bill aims to impose a set of rules against bigtechs, like Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Apple and Google, preventing them from abusing their market power to the detriment of consumers and businesses.
E-commerce giant Amazon spoke out against the bill, arguing it would cause “collateral damage” to small businesses.
“This bill is being rushed through the legislative process without any acknowledgment by its authors of its unintended consequences," the bigtech company said.
The bill was introduced last October by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, and co-sponsored by senior senators such as Dick Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Committee passage means that the bill can now move ahead to the Senate floor to be voted on.
Hong Kong: HKMA Releases Regtech Practice Guidance
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has released the fifth issue of the Regtech Adoption Practice Guide, formulated to help banks manage their cyber risks with guidance on implementing regtech solutions. These include risks concerning container security — a standard unit of software that packages up code for cloud native applications — and remote working arrangements.
This follows the release of the white paper "Transforming Risk Management and Compliance: Harnessing the Power of Regtech" in November 2020, which featured a two-year roadmap, as well as 16 recommendations to accelerate the further adoption of regtech in Hong Kong.
These publications show the importance that the HKMA put on the use of regtech. In particular, as a way for security arrangements to catch up with the pace of innovation in financial services such as mobile banking and payments, cloud hosting, internet of things, and the increased cyber risks that emerge from that.
Asia: Malaysia And Indonesia Announce QR Payment Linkage
Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and Bank Indonesia (BI) have launched a cross-border QR payment linkage, which the central banks say will enable instant, secure and efficient cross-border payments between the two South-East Asian states.
Consumers will now be able to make retail payments by scanning the DuitNow or QRIS (Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard) QR codes displayed by offline and online merchants. Although currently in trial phase, the countries plan to fully rollout by the third quarter of 2022.
The sizeable traveller flows between the two countries recorded an average of 5.6m arrivals yearly before the pandemic, according to the central banks. Moreover, both countries are key remittance corridors for their nationals working abroad who will benefit from faster, cheaper, and more transparent cross-border remittances.
Participants involved in the trial include payment operators Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet), the Indonesian Payment System Association (ASPI) and RAJA (Rintis, Artajasa, Jalin, and Alto), alongside settlement banks CIMB Bank Berhad, Bank Mandiri and Bank Negara Indonesia.
