Mobile Payments, Mobile Banks And Mother Russia

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 that you avoid being part of What’s Out!

Emirates NBD “Bank On Wheels” Hit The Road

What’s In: Emirates NBD bank customers spotting the new “Bank On Wheels” trucks and pulling over to deposit their checks. Picture an ice cream truck, but with ATM-esque services.

What’s Out: Going to the local Emirates retail branch in downtown Dubai, and waiting in long lines just to withdraw cash.

What Happened: Emirates NBD announced the roll out of its new “Bank on Wheels,” a vehicle that will provide customers with banking services at big events. The bank reported that they will park the Emirates NBD vehicle at different customer touch points throughout Dubai, and a customer service representative will conduct the same services as a Cash and Check Deposit Machine.

Emirates NBD said they introduced the “Bank on Wheels” to serve customers who are not able to get to physical branches and ATMs. The bank also said it hopes the vehicles will help decrease traffic in popular retail branches if they park in nearby areas.

Apple Stocks payleven For European Chip & PIN

What’s In: Making a quick trip to the Apple store on Bond Street to pick up the newly featured payleven MPOS device to conduct your businesses’ EMV smart card payments. Pick it up off the shelf, pay within minutes and you’re out the door.

What’s Out: Having to resort to traditional card processing companies to buy an MPOS device, signing lengthy contracts and committing to non-transparent monthly fees.

What Happened: The German MPOS provider, payleven, announced a partnership with Apple to sell its Chip & PIN reader in European Apple stores and online. Payleven is hoping to become the Square of Europe, and the deal represents the first Chip & Pin solution to be sold in Apple stores Europe’s market.

British Online Shopping Spikes As Cash Sales Drop

What’s In: Buying all of your summer clothes at Topshop.com and entering your NUS card number for a 20 percent discount. Ordering weekly groceries from Sainsbury’s online and using Nectar card points for weekly offers. And buying group sailing lessons in Cornwall from LivingSocial.com and racking up Tesco points. Basically, buying everything and anything online while simultaneously redeeming loyalty points and discounts. It’s the new-age British way.

What’s Out: Interrupting a relaxing weekend to relentlessly circle the car, park and fight high street crowds just to shop bank holiday sales.

What’s Happened: All kinds of research about UK consumers circulated this week in payments news. A new eCommerce study reported that British online shoppers were spending double what they did 10 years ago per month on retail websites. What’s more, it seems customers are becoming savvier as they are keen on using loyalty memberships and collecting vouchers.

An M&S bank study suggested cash transactions were quickly dropping across Britain because shoppers are swapping notes for plastic. Meanwhile, a British consumer survey revealed that less money is being spent at high-street retails. With online shopping appealing to more Brits each year, it was predicted that physical stores would slowly start to disappear by 2018.

Payments Booming In Russia

What’s In: Invading the Russian market.

What’s Out: Not entering into the Russian market.

What Happened: What didn’t happen in Russia this week? What’s in and what’s out is no secret in payments this week, with new services, license approvals and entrances into this promising market.

The Russians may have had a slow start with payments technology, but with the monetary funding and ambitious stakeholders, they are quickly rising to the top.

Just last week, SumUp announced a new office in Moscow to support new operations. Global payments giant, PayPal, announced they finally received its NCBI license, which gives them the green light to begin the launch of its operations in Russia.

And if that wasn’t enough, Gemalto even revealed they are supplying Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems with SIM cards to facilitate the city of Novosibirsk’s new transport ticketing system.

Word of advice to anyone remotely working within the payments industry: Russia is a good place to be.

SumUp Talks New Market, New Funding And New App

What’s In: Walking into your favorite coffee shop or retail store, talking to the merchant about your weekend holiday plans, and leaving without even having to remove your mobile phone or wallet from your pocket. Talk about frictionless transactions!

What’s Out: Walking into your favorite coffee shop and fumbling to grab the credit card from the wallet because you’re rushing to work. What’s worse is that you’ve been going to the same coffee shop for three years, and you still don’t know the owner’s name.

What Happened: PYMNTS.com caught up with SumUp’s managing director Stefan Jeschonnek this week after they received a double-digit million euro funding from AmEx and Groupon. When we asked what SumUp planned to do with the generous funding, Jeschonnek explained they had plans to conquer more global grounds, build technological infrastructure, and even teased with details about an upcoming consumer mobile application.

The app is called “SumUp Pay” and it aims to make the consumer-merchant transaction more authentic and personal. Jeschonnek emphasized SumUp envisions payment transactions to be in the background, while customer relationships should be given a more centric approach.