Latest news and insights on banking and finance in Australia and New Zealand, as delivered in the daily 7am Banking Day email news service (subscribe or take out a free trial).
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APRA, APCA payments statistics diverge
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17 December 2003 12:00amThe Australian Prudential Regulation Authority's annual survey of "points of presence" attempts to provide a snapshot of every single point of representation of each deposit taking institution. The purpose of the survey is to collect the data required by the House of Represenatives economics (or banking) committee, so the committee members can fret in an informed fashion about the decline or otherwise of banking services in the bush. » read more »
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Telcos tackle mobile payments blockage
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12 December 2003 12:00amAustralia's inefficient, and virtually non existent, market for mobile payments may be in for a burst of innovation, with a concerted effort by mobile phone companies to negotiate a mechanism for the recharge of pre-paid mobile phones using those phones. » read more »
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Eighty per cent recharge goal set
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12 December 2003 12:00amThe telcos' request for information, issued by Optus, Telstra and Vodafone in late November and which closed last week, specifies that any mobile recharge system must cater for: » read more »
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Central switch canvassed
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12 December 2003 12:00amThe most intriguing aspect of the telcos RFI on mobile phone recharge is the diagram that sketches how the payment mechanism would work. In the step to the left of box labelled "Eftpos network" is a box labelled "handset recharge switch". » read more »
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Reserve pulls ACCC strings on Eftpos
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12 December 2003 12:00amThere's not much doubt which regulator is puppeteer and which is puppet in the world of payments regulation, in light of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's decision yesterday to reverse its previous opposition, and to authorised the proposal from 12 banks to fix Eftpos interchange fees at zero. » read more »
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Retailers to appeal and play for time
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12 December 2003 12:00amThe large merchants, include Coles, Wooloworths and most of the oil companies, are certain to appeal the ACCC ruling to the Australian Competition Tribunal, and more likely than not the losing party in that case will appeal to a higher court. So, like the credit card interchange process, Eftpos interchange has a few more rounds to go. » read more »
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Zero Eftpos interchange increases barriers to entry
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12 December 2003 12:00amThe ACCC may have had a trouble reaching the view that the benefits of zero interchange outweigh the detriments. The pros and cons published in the ACCC determination runs like this: » read more »
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ATM transactions rocket for Bank of Queensland
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12 December 2003 12:00amA bit of bank branding seems to make a lot of difference to customer perceptions of an automatic teller machine, with the addition of Bank of Queensland labels on to most of ATM Solutions fleet of cash machines generating a sharp rise in transaction numbers. The bank bought Melbourne-based ATM Solutions in the middle of the year. » read more »
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Mortgage Choice returns capital
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10 December 2003 12:00amThe Higgins brothers and other shareholders in mortgage broking franchisor Mortgage Choice are not waiting for a proposed listing on the Australian Stock Exchange to realise their investment in the business, as they've already cleaned out a large chunk of capital. » read more »
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ASIC waives licences for mortgage brokers
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10 December 2003 12:00amThe Australian Securities and Investments Commission have let most of the mortgage broking industry off the hook, and exempted the sector from compliance with the licencing requirement imposed on other financial advisers under the Financial Services Reform legislation. » read more »
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GE reaches 300,000 milestone on Source card
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10 December 2003 12:00amThe Coles Myer Source MasterCard is said to have about 300,000 cards on issue, which isn't bad going after less than three months after drumming up publicity for the card and about two starting to take applications. » read more »
