Cash Reigns, London Celebrates And Tesco Slips Up

The payments industry is a compelling space, but it’s a time consuming one as well. You might not have time to keep track of every major story and trend or every funny and fascinating tidbit that we cover on everyone’s favorite payments site.

With that in mind, we bring you What’s In And What’s Out: a weekly look at the best stories from the PYMNTS.com EMEA newsletter, and a bit of light reading before you take off for the weekend.

Make sure to understand What’s In so you avoid being part of What’s Out!

Dutch Central Bank Keeps Cash Alive

What’s In: Dutch merchants and banks refusing to move towards a cashless future and maintaining the country’s reputation as Europe’s outlier.

What’s Out: Dutch financial intuitions and merchants launching high-scale initiatives to eliminate the cash circulation in the country.

What Happened: The Netherlands is a country that has never sought to confine the distribution of green products, and this incudes its cash.

This week the Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), announced

it will be stopping any large scale efforts from financial institutions and retailers that attempt to replace bank notes and coins with card and electronic payments. 

DNB went on to clarify that it does not discourage the recent pilots with cashless shops, but would condemn any large-scale refusal or pricing of cash payments. 

It’s good to see that the EU countries are all on the same page with their payments system.

Tesco Bank Doesn’t Play For Keeps

What’s In: Bringing the British consumers’ hopes up with a new card deal, and mysteriously withdrawing it from the market three weeks later.

What’s Out: Paying for your four other maxed-out credit cards with your new Tesco Bank balance transfer credit card.

What Happened: Three weeks ago, Tesco Bank launched a credit card designed for account transfers. Tesco hooked customers by flaunting the card’s zero percent interest fee on bank transfers. However, the service was short-lived, and Tesco abruptly withdrew the card from the market.

The sudden drop of the Tesco credit card alludes to the overwhelmingly high consumer demand for credit transfers and their urgent need to obtain debt support. Credit card transfer accounts have not been common since 2007, and for good reason. Tesco Bank made the attempt to revitalize the market, but was scared out of the deal due to a large consumer demand.

Who would have thought offering an interest-free credit card to pay off other credit card debt would have been a bad business choice?

Saudi Arabia, So Close Yet So Far Away

What’s In: Middle Eastern eCommerce sales continuing to rise.

What’s Out: The Arab community continuing to live in the 20th century, and not embrace the online marketplace.

What Happened: Saudi Arabia may be the leading economy in the Middle East, but its eCommerce sector needs some serious refinement if stakeholders wish to follow in the same footsteps.

A new study from the Qatar Foundation and Northwestern University revealed that Saudi Arabia showed great potential for eCommerce startups. ERetailers in the country face several challenges such as a lack of public trust for eCommerce, non-existent frameworks for online businesses and a poor public awareness about the online market in general.

However, the growing market does have a sophisticated online payments infrastructure on its side and can offer consumers with an impressive range of payment options that include PayPal, Skrill, CashU and others. Another important factor is that Saudi consumers have the highest rate of credit card usage in the Middle East.

If only eCommerce startups in Saudi were able to sell the country’s abundant stock of oil—online sales would surely sky rocket.

London Reminds Us: The World Is Our Oyster

What’s In: Brits celebrating ten years of the country’s contactless Oyster Cards for the Greater London Transportation services, and the impact they have had on the payments industry.

What’s Out: Brits being expected to celebrate every move the monarchy makes, even when Her Majesty sneezes.

What Happened: This week Brits pay homage to an anniversary worth celebrating: The Oyster Card’s tenth birthday on Greater London’s transportation system.

The London Oyster card was first established on June 30, 2003 to make inter-city travel easier. 

Its installation forever changed the country’s transportation and payment system, and represents one of the world’s most popular travel smartcard. Since its launch, there have been 60 million Oyster cards adopted by commuters and tourists visiting London.

The Oyster card has helped to eliminate the paper receipts and tickets that Londoners often collected in their pocketbooks. The pay-as-you-go cards have significantly shortened lines, and bus boarding is three times faster.

Oysters were commonly associated with the city of London and its landmark the River Thames. In the end, it was the new name’s resonation with the infamous idiom, “The world is your oyster,” that sealed the deal. Members were keen to associate the travel card’s new name with infinite accessibility.

Leave it to the British to make even public transportation cards seem charming.