The global payment systems and services revolution ebbs and flows with:

• SWIFT’s RMB Tracker reveals a mixed year for the Chinese currency’s growth in 2017 despite the growing importance of China in the global economy and the various strategic measures put in place to support its currency: 
  • RMB usage only accounted for 1.61% of domestic and cross-border payments in December 2017
  • Hong Kong remains the largest RMB clearing centre with 76% activity share, while London remains the largest clearing centre outside of Greater China. However, its share of global RMB clearing activity decreased from 6.51% in 2016 to 5.59% in 2017
  • 97.0% of RMB trading by value is against the USD and there is no substantial liquidity in any other RMB pair
  • SWIFT believe that the large number of banks joining their GPI initiative will encourage the use of RMB in 2018, see special report here
• Adyen dominance of multi-channel delivery platforms grows:
  • EBay have dumped PayPal for Adyen
  • Adyen now dominate the global providers with contracts with Uber, Netflix, and Facebook
  • If you are thinking of using multi-channel providers Adyen has to be your starting point?
• PayPal. who have 227 milion accounts, are having a mixed 2018:
  • eBay are dropping PayPal (which they used to own) as its main partner for processing payments in favour of Adyen
  • Bank of America Merrill Lynch have announce a collaboration with PayPal that will allow the bank’s U.S.-based commercial clients to make payments in local currencies to payees who hold PayPal accounts. The payments, which are initiated through BofA Merrill’s Global Digital Disbursements product, can be made from the U.S. to PayPal account holders in Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., and the Philippines.
• Local currencies are not dead, in UK there 10+. According to the BBC, “The idea behind them (local currencies) is that if you spend your money with a locally based company instead of a big chain, more of that money will continue to circulate locally. It won't be sucked out of your community into a company's foreign headquarters, or be paid out to shareholders.” New local curencies include:
  • HullCoin: The social experiment that's rewarding good deeds locally
  • Colu and Local Pound Liverpool run by an Isreali company Colu. It is a digital currency and has 17,000 users and some 100 shops particpating. The Liverpool pound is worth the same as UK pounds. Colu makes money when anyone converts Colu back to normal UK pounds - cashing out, as it is known - they pay 1.5% commission.
  • The problem is that these currencies rarely attract enough users to have a real economic impact. Will they ever have a major impact?
• Battle of e-wallets going global: e-wallet services such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay have a relatively free run but this is going to change. Huawei Technologies, the phone maker:
  • are targetting the international markets as Chinese consumers are increasingly using smartphones to settle in-store payments (these represented nearly half of annual GDP)
  • teamed up with UnionPay, the world’s biggest payment card scheme to work together on the e-wallet service
  • just launched their e-wallet service in Russia (and UnionPay)
  • Companies are going to have to accept Huwaei Pay at POS as well as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, but the technology is different: Huawei Pay uses biometrics and NFC technology.   

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CTMfile take: It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide which payment systems to use. Which are essential?