Payment systems are developing in many different directions, and new technologies offer all sorts of opportunities and problems. Important recent developments include:

• Walmart’s store-to-store money transfer service to be launched in April which will cut cost of sending money to friends and family. [Western Union will loose business to this new service.]
• TransCentra, a leading provider of billing and payment software and services, recently opened a new lockbox site in the greater Pittsburgh area. The company now operates nine lockbox sites across the U.S. [Lockboxes are still needed in the US, even for multi-channel payment service providers like Transcentra.]
• PayEase, a Chinese payment services provider, has been granted a cross-border license that covers five categories of services including physical goods trading, education, hotel and hospitality, airline tickets, and digital content and software (exclusive to PayEase). [Don’t forget the Chinese systems in your omni-channel payment systems strategies.]  
• Facebook is waiting for Irish regulatory approval for providing financial services in the form of remittances and electronic money, Irishtimes.com reports. The approval from the Central Bank would enable the social network to offer consumers the possibility to store money on Facebook and use it to pay and exchange money with others, according to several people involved in the process, cited by the same source. By becoming an “e-money” institution, Facebook would issue units of stored monetary value that represent a claim against the company. This e-money would be valid throughout Europe via a process known as “passporting”. [Major new player could be entering the market.]
• Paym in the UK’s national mobile payment system will begin operations from 29 April when ‘you can pay your friends and family using just their mobile number’. Paym will be available to customers of Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Cumberland Building Society, Danske Bank, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Santander and TSB. [Paym could revolutionise person-to-person payments in UK and mobile person-to-business payments.]

Each of these developments could have a major impact on a group’s payments and collections. For corporate treasurers some of the key questions that need to be addressed, include:

• can non-standard payment systems like Walmart’s store-to-store system and PayEase be used to cut processing costs?
• how will your company make and/or collect Facebook payments (Facebook’s 1.06 bn users have incredible purchasing power)?
• in the UK, how can you cut payment and collection costs by expanding the use of mobile payments (7 out of 10 of UK adults now have smartphones)?