The Wirecard Group has entered into a partnership with Frankfurt-based FinTech company savedroid. The eponymous app is aimed at helping users save money as they go about their everyday activities. To make this possible, Wirecard is implementing a virtual MasterCard in the savedroid app as well as processing payments via an e-money account – thereby providing the necessary licence and technical platform. By launching the app, the two companies are bringing an innovative solution to the market, which demonstrates how the digitisation of banking can also provide value added for consumers.

The results of the latest ECB stress tests on European banks, due on 29 July, will determine whether the banks have sufficient capital buffers to withstand theoretical adverse swings in asset prices, interest rates and other macro-economic variables.

By Xavier Giandominici, Vice President, Americas and Financial Services at FIME

For issuers and merchants alike, fraud is an unwelcomed part of the payments industry. To take counterfeit card fraud out of the system, the U.S. is migrating to EMV chip technology.But for this to work, both issuers and merchants need to make the switch.

Whether it is EMV, NFC, HCE or TSP, there is certainly no shortage of acronyms within the payments ecosystem. And this is one trend that is here to stay.

The recent release of EMVCo’s updated payment tokenization specification has added yet another into the mix – Payment Account Reference (PAR). But what is PAR, why has it been introduced and what does it mean for the payments industry?

What is PAR?