Market analyst advises patience with short-term turbulence
Oct 26, 2023, 1:47 pm EDT

Idex Biometrics has been selected by South Korean payment card-maker Kona I to provide the Pay platform for recycled PVC and metal cards for bank clients around the world. An initial order has already shipped to Kona I . The deal comes just as ABI Research Analyst Sam Gazeley writes for Spiceworks about the prospects of biometric payment cards to reshape the payment landscape. Kona I cards are certified by Visa, Mastercard, JCB and American Express, and the company has an annual production capacity of 60 million cards, according to the announcement. Idex says biometric metal cards are a growth area among challenger and traditional banks, as they prepare to offer them to affluent customers in 2024. “We are thrilled to bring true innovation to the high-net-worth customers banking segment, combing innovation and security with high performing biometric cards from Kona I,” says Catharina Eklof, Chief Commercial Officer at Idex Biometrics. “By partnering with Kona I, we are enabling banks and issuers with revolutionary card solutions giving the banks an opportunity to bolster brand loyalty, attract new customers and stickiness with existing ones.”
“Our collaboration with Idex Biometrics and the global introduction of biometric cards represent a compelling opportunity as we build out our industry-leading biometric card product line,” comments Chung-il Cho, CEO of Kona I. “This partnership is our response to the growing demand of banks and issuers for differentiated and innovative payments.”
Kona also partnered with Precise Biometrics to integrate the latter’s BioMatch technology into payment cards which received a Letter of Approval (LoA) from Mastercard in 2021. Meanwhile, an unnamed card manufacturer integrating Idex Pay has been granted an LoA by Mastercard, following on the heels of Idex’ full certification by the global payments giant. The approval sets the stage for rapid industrialization of biometric payment cards, the company says in a separate announcement. “Receiving their LoA so shortly after the IDEX Biometrics certification, demonstrates the efficacy and impact of the IDEX Biometrics fast-track industrial production of biometric payment cards, paired with Mastercard’s efficient certification process” says Eklof. The new normal is big enough for digital wallets and biometric cards
The increases in contactless payment limits introduced during the pandemic are expected to remain in place, Gazeley writes. This trend has run up against the spread of digital wallets for mobile payments and the coincident chip shortage, raising the question of whether issuers should bother attempting to innovate with biometric cards. Gazeley argues that as banks attempt to meet the Strong Customer Authentication requirement of Payment Services Directive 2 and mitigate rising payment fraud, biometric cards are well placed to play a significant role in issuers’ plans. The rise of payments on smartphones will also have the downstream effect of familiarizing consumers with biometric payments, and easing enrollment to biometric cards through NFC scanning. Perhaps most importantly, the average selling price for biometric cards has been a market inhibitor, but Gazeley says they have decreased , and are now more acceptable. Issuers have been seeking profit margins of close to 50 percent, he says, and a drop to 30 percent could result in the same total revenue, while driving prices down through economies of scale and more efficient production. In-house development of cards could also lower prices, compared to purchasing pre-existing third-party products. Biometric payment cards, because of their stage of development when the above market disruption struck, were particularly vulnerable. For vendors and issuers prepared to ride out short-term turbulence, Gazeley believes an opportunity awaits to make their biometric cards much more common.

Idex reports new and advancing biometric payment cards partnerships

Share
Gazeley Stud near Newmarket (Image: Chris Rawlings)
A "prime" stud farm near Newmarket which comes with a large house is being offered up for sale with a guide price of £4.25m. Gazeley Stud on the edge of the village of Gazeley includes a substantial house with five-bedroom - all en suite, 74 acres of land, 60 stables and 19 paddocks. The site - which is described by agents Savills as "immaculate" - has been the home of racing stallions. It was originally part of the Phillips family’s Dalham Hall Stud and was snapped up in the 1970s by Pat McCalmont. It has been with its current owners since 2007 and they have "maintained it beautifully" while modernising and extending the house, according to Savills. Its paddocks feature "excellent" crops of grass, and have benefited from low stocking density, it added. The site also includes an American barn. The 6,500sq ft house has been built to a high specification, and is approached by a tree lined drive past the stud buildings and through double electric gates. It includes a two-bedroom annexe and four main reception rooms. Oliver Carr, associate director with the rural agency team for Savills in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, said: “This is a rare opportunity to acquire a prime stud and a fantastic house within close proximity to Newmarket – Britain’s largest racehorse training centre and the largest bloodstock breeding area in the country. "Originally part of the then Phillips family's Dalham Hall Stud, the property was purchased by Pat McCalmont in the 1970s and run as a stallion station, standing Tyrnavos, Hotfoot and Sizzling Melody. "The current owners bought Gazeley in 2007 and have maintained it beautifully, using it as a private stud for their own and clients' mares while also modernising and extending the house. "A key feature are the variety and quality of the additional buildings, as well as the well-managed post and railed paddocks that provide plenty of shelter with mature trees and hedgerows. Due to a light stocking regime, the quality of the grazing is also outstanding." The site also offers scope for potential alternative uses - subject to planning, he added. “As you would expect the equestrian facilities are well maintained and obviously well suited to their current use, however there is also potential for alternative uses, such as commercial storage or residential conversion for example," he said.

'Rare opportunity' as Suffolk stud farm hits market with a price tag of £4.25m

Coton Orchard can literally boast a partridge in a pear tree – but the idyll is threatened by a busway scheme, which campaigners say is totally unnecessary
Sun 19 Mar 2023 04.00 EDT
The Coton Orchard is the eighth largest traditional orchard left in the UK, its owner Anna Gazeley is proud to say. “Not because we’re huge but because 80% have gone since the 1900s,” she said. Commercial fruit trees are smaller and more productive, but this orchard is filled with wildlife, a legacy of Gazeley’s father, who bought the land three decades ago to save the trees from developers. That may have been a temporary reprieve. The fate of the the trees and farmland west of Cambridge will be decided on Tuesday, when Cambridgeshire county council votes on a £160m scheme to include a bus bypass that would tear through the orchard. “They’ll be voting to cut down 1,000 trees,” Gazeley said. The orchard, which is sustained financially by a garden centre, has 520 apple, pear and plum trees, and another 500 poplars, ash and oaks. “We have three pairs of foxes, four pairs of badgers, woodcock, three sorts of woodpeckers. There’s literally a partridge in a pear tree. It would be devastating to lose this.”
Gazeley is part of the Coton Busway Action Group and a coalition of campaigners hoping that the threatened destruction of the orchard, designated a habitat of principal importance in England, will provoke a similar public response to the fate of thousands of street trees in Sheffield , and 100 more that were felled in central Plymouth last week. “We’re telling people: ‘you can’t save those, but these ones you can’.”
At least 6,000 new homes are being built which would be served by the proposed busway, a bus-only road running from Cambridge over the M11, through Coton village to Cambourne. It’s part of the Cambridge City Deal, a major expansion of the city and its surrounds announced in 2014 that is being implemented by the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) involving three local authorities and the University of Cambridge. Free daily newsletter
Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion
Badgers at the orchard. The farm is also home to woodcock, woodpeckers and foxes. Photograph: PR Handout
Building more homes creates a need for better transport, so the GCP is proposing four busways around the city – Coton is the first – cycling and walking routes and a congestion charge zone to deter drivers from the city centre. There is agreement of a need for better bus routes, but campaigners say that instead of a separate busway, the GCP could widen the existing road. James Littlewood, chief executive of Cambridge Past, Present and Future, a local conservation charity, said: “If you built a bus lane adjacent to the road, that would have the same benefit at a fraction of the cost and environmental damage. Our frustration is that all we really want them to do is compare the scheme we’ve come up with. And they’ve never done that. Our charity purchased farmland around there in the 1930s to protect that side of Cambridge from urban sprawl.”
Peter Blake, GCP transport director, said it had examined expanding the road. “There’s not the space,” he said. “On that section of road you have the American Cemetery and Madingley Wood, which is a site of special scientific interest and has the highest environmental designation in this area. The scheme needs to balance the environmental harms.” The GCP had conducted four consultations and its plans have been independently audited twice. The GCP’s process was found to be robust, he said. Blake said about 1.6 hectares of the orchard would be affected. “And we’ll try to work with the landowners to reduce that further if we can.”
Tuesday’s vote will be finely balanced – the 60-seat county council is controlled by the Liberal Democrats with Labour support. with 30 councillors between them. The opposition is mostly Conservative with some independents.. “We think Labour and the Lib Dems are being whipped to vote for it,” Gazeley said. “We need every free vote we can get.”
Topics

Paradise (almost) lost: bypass threatens to destroy Cambridge farmland rich in wildlife

Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and other banks are joining forces to create a digital wallet to compete with the likes of Apple Pay and Google Pay. But they have an uphill battle ahead. Thinkstock
A group of leading banks is partnering with payment service Zelle’s parent company to create their own “digital wallet” connected to consumer credit and debit cards to enable online or retail store payments. The new payment service, however, must compete with entrenched digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay that are embedded on mobile devices and already well established. It’s also not the first attempt for some in the consortium to create a digital wallet payment service. The consortium includes Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and four other financial services companies,  according to The Wall Street Journal . The digital wallet, which does not yet have a name, is expected to launch in the second half of this year. The system will be managed by Zelle’s parent company, Early Warning Services LLC (EWS). It will have about 150 million Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards connected at launch, with plans to add other card networks later,  according to an EWS blog . "Early Warning is working closely with financial institutions to build a wallet that provides consumers a secure and easy way to pay,” James Anderson, EWS’ managing director of Wallet, said in the blog. “The wallet will also aim to deliver better business outcomes for merchants — including higher transaction approval rates and more completed sales." The consortium’s digital wallet will be a standalone service, not something under Zelle’s service, according to reports. It’s expected to compete with other digital wallet payment services such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Neo. And it will be up against other digital wallets run by banks, such as Revolut, Monzo and Curve and payment organizations that offer PayPal and Venmo. An uphill fight
The new digital wallet project is not a first for some in the consortium; JPMorgan Chase, for example,  shuttered Chase Pay in 2021  — after only a year in operation. Along with consumer advertising to entice uptake, the bank consortium will also have to spend heavily on marketing to convince retail stores to embed the software into their point-of-sale and online systems, according to Alyson Clarke, a principal analyst with Forrester Research. That, Clarke said, was JPMorgan’s Achilles heel with Chase Pay. “Chase Pay fell over because of a failure to get enough merchants on board; that will likely be a challenge here, too,” Clarke said. “Kudos for continuing to try, but I question what the incentive will be for consumers to use the app: Additional rewards? Otherwise, why not just keep using your credit card through Apple Pay? “There are lots of unanswered questions about this. There’s a whole bunch of elements to the experience that I can’t see how a bank consortium’s digital wallet app can overcome,” Clarke said. “They’re not even embedded on the [mobile] device. Are they going to use this to move to virtual CCVs [card verification values]? Probably not.”
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank Of America are among the banks that had to refund customers and each other for Zelle users who were scammed out of money during the pandemic. The scammers tricked Zelle users into sending money by posing as customer support representatives. Greater security via a digital wallet is expected be a key feature touted by the consortium. According to The Washington Post, EWS’ owners last year considered allowing consumers to use Zelle for online purchases, but concerns about fraud helped kill the idea. In terms of online banking, the consortium is still working out the details, The Washington Post reported. An EWS spokesperson offered little more: "The wallet is intended for e-commerce. We will share more at a later date." How digital wallets work
The digital wallet will likely involve consumers’ typing their email on a merchant’s checkout page, according to The Wall Street Journal. “The merchant would ping EWS, which would use its back-end connections to banks to identify which of the consumer’s cards can be loaded onto the wallet. Consumers would then choose which card to use or could opt out." The idea behind digital wallets is to store a user’s payment information in one easy-to-access place on a digital device. That means a user doesn’t need to wait for a credit card to be mailed to them, and it can be instantaneously approved for use on a mobile device. Other useful features include tracking a user’s spending patterns so they can manage finances better. “For example, Google Pay provides its users insight into where they spend the most money, which enables users to better budget their finances,” said Sam Gazeley, a cyber and digital security analyst with ABI Research. In Asia, a number of digital wallet providers are looking to provide “super-apps," where services such as in-app hotel booking and food delivery, among others things, are possible. “This is also now expanding into the cryptocurrency market, with some US  payment companies such as PayPal offering the option to purchase crypto,” Gazeley said. In addition to credit and debit card connections on the digital wallet, there is also the option of storing other assets, including plane tickets, concert tickets, hotel reservations, public transit cards, gift cards and coupons, according to Gazeley. “Digital wallets also require a form of identification to make a payment, like a separate PIN, facial biometrics or fingerprint in order to facilitate a transaction, which is more secure,” Gazeley said in an email response to Computerworld. Like the digital payment services with which it hopes to compete, the banking consortium’s wallet aims to provide a simpler, more secure way for consumers to pay online, without the need to type in credit card numbers. Current digital wallet payment systems, such as Apple Pay, provide a brick-and-mortar or online merchant tokenized or virtual number. Tokenized numbers can change from transaction to transaction, or be changed by a card holder, making accounts far more difficult to be hacked by cyber criminals. “Everyone’s trying to copy what Apple is doing with virtual card numbers and virtual CCVs,” Clarke said. The banking consortium will also have to spend significantly on advertising to gain access to a market that’s highly fragmented. Among consumers who make digital payments, 70% use more than one tool, and 49% use three or more, according to Cornerstone Advisors. The use of digital payments also varies among generations with 62% of Gen Z and Millennials, 50% of Gen X, and 32% of Baby Boomers making digital payments (or transfers). Nearly three-quarters of Gen Zers and Millennials (consumers between 21 and 42 years old) use PayPal, about half use Square CashApp, and roughly four in 10 use Venmo, according Ron Shevlin, chief research officer for Cornerstone Advisors. Cornerstone Advisors
Gazeley agreed that the banks will struggle to achieve uptake. “I think that the significant capital that these incumbent banks can bring to bear for digitized solutions will go some way to narrowing the gap," he said, "however, the current issue facing the market is that of fragmentation. ...As more and more wallet solutions are launched, it will become more and more difficult for each solutions provider to differentiate themselves to new customer bases." The reason banks want in on the digital wallet space is simple. Companies such as  Apple and Google are eating into their profit margins by moving consumers onto their platforms. The growth of mobile apps providers like PayPal and Square’s Cash App has created additional competition for traditional financial institutions, according to a study done last year by Cornerstone Research . Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, PayPal has added 126 million new customers. Cash App, meanwhile, has grown from 24 million users in 2019 to 44 million in 2022; its revenue increased from $1.1 billion in 2019 to $5.1 billion in just the first half of last year. According to Cornerstone, three-quarters of smartphone owners have at least one merchant’s mobile app on their device. In total, roughly $3.2 billion moves in and out of the 10 leading merchants’ mobile apps every week. Banks are growing increasingly concerned about the broader intentions of various digital wallet providers such as Apple. As these wallet providers own more of consumers’ payment experiences, banks fear their customer relationships becoming disrupted, according to Jordan McKee, a principal fintech research analyst with 451 Research. Wallet providers are also cross-selling financial services to their users, such as credit cards and savings accounts, which pose a threat to banking interchange revenue and deposits. “While the concerns of the banks behind this initiative are warranted, they are most certainly late to the game with a wallet,” McKee said. “Banks should not underestimate the challenge they will face in growing merchant acceptance to the point where a wallet will become useful to a meaningful number of consumers.”
Related:

Big banks' proposed digital wallet payment system likely to fail

Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and other banks are joining forces to create a digital wallet to compete with the likes of Apple Pay and Google Pay. But they have an uphill battle ahead. Thinkstock
A group of leading banks is partnering with payment service Zelle’s parent company to create their own “digital wallet” connected to consumer credit and debit cards to enable online or retail store payments. The new payment service, however, must compete with entrenched digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay that are embedded on mobile devices. It’s also not the first attempt for some in the consortium to create a digital wallet payment service. The consortium includes Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and four other financial services companies,  according to The Wall Street Journal  (WSJ). The digital wallet, which does not yet have a name, is expected to launch in the second half of this year. The system will be managed by Zelle’s parent company, Early Warning Services LLC (EWS). It will have about 150 million Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards connected at launch, with plans to add other card networks later,  according to an EWS blog . "Early Warning is working closely with financial institutions to build a wallet that provides consumers a secure and easy way to pay,” James Anderson, EWS’ managing director of Wallet, said in the blog. “The wallet will also aim to deliver better business outcomes for merchants — including higher transaction approval rates and more completed sales." The consortium’s digital wallet will be a standalone service, not something under Zelle’s service, according to reports. It’s expected to compete with other digital wallet payment services such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Neo. And it will be up against other digital wallets run by banks, such as Revolut, Monzo and Curve and payment organizations that offer PayPal and Venmo. An uphill fight
The new digital wallet project is not a first for some in the consortium; JPMorgan Chase, for example,  shuttered Chase Pay in 2021  — after only a year in operation. Along with consumer advertising to entice uptake, the bank consortium will have to spend heavily on marketing to convince retail stores to embed the software into their point-of-sale and online systems. That was JPMorgan’s Achilles heel with Chase Pay, according to Alyson Clarke, a principal analyst with Forrester Research. “Chase Pay fell over because of a failure to get enough merchants on board; that will likely be a challenge here, too,” Clarke said. “Kudos for continuing to try, but I question what the incentive will be for consumers to use the app: Additional rewards? Otherwise, why not just keep using your credit card through Apple Pay? “There are lots of unanswered questions about this. There’s a whole bunch of elements to the experience that I can’t see how a bank consortium’s digital wallet app can overcome,” Clarke said. “They’re not even embedded on the [mobile] device. Are they going to use this to move to virtual CCVs [card verification values]? Probably not.”
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank Of America are among the banks that had to refund customers and each other for Zelle users who were scammed out of money during the pandemic. The scammers tricked Zelle users into sending money by posing as customer support representatives. Greater security via a digital wallet is expected be a key feature touted by the consortium. According to the WSJ, EWS’ owners last year considered allowing consumers to use Zelle for online purchases, but concerns about fraud helped kill the idea. In terms of online banking, the consortium is still working out the details. An EWS spokesperson offered little insight: "The wallet is intended for e-commerce. We will share more at a later date." How digital wallets work
The digital wallet will likely involve consumers’ typing their email on a merchant’s checkout page, according to the WSJ. “The merchant would ping EWS, which would use its back-end connections to banks to identify which of the consumer’s cards can be loaded onto the wallet. Consumers would then choose which card to use or could opt out." The idea behind digital wallets is to store a user’s payment information in one easy-to-access place on a digital device. That means a user doesn’t need to wait for a credit card to be mailed to them, and it can be instantaneously approved for use on a mobile device. Other useful features include tracking a user’s spending patterns so they can manage finances better. “For example, Google Pay provides its users insight into where they spend the most money, which enables users to better budget their finances,” said Sam Gazeley, a cyber and digital security analyst with ABI Research. In Asia, a number of digital wallet providers are looking to provide “super-apps," where services such as in-app hotel booking and food delivery, among others things, are possible. “This is also now expanding into the cryptocurrency market, with some US  payment companies such as PayPal offering the option to purchase crypto,” Gazeley said. In addition to credit and debit card connections on the digital wallet, there is also the option of storing other assets, including plane tickets, concert tickets, hotel reservations, public transit cards, gift cards and coupons, according to Gazeley. “Digital wallets also require a form of identification to make a payment, like a separate PIN, facial biometrics or fingerprint in order to facilitate a transaction, which is more secure,” Gazeley said in an email response to Computerworld. Like the digital payment services with which it hopes to compete, the banking consortium’s wallet aims to provide a simpler, more secure way for consumers to pay online, without the need to type in credit card numbers. Current digital wallet payment systems, such as Apple Pay, provide a brick-and-mortar or online merchant a tokenized card number. Tokenization creates a randomized data string that links back to sensitive card information but cannot be accessed by unauthorized entities; the tokens themselves contain no credit card information. The tokens can change from transaction to transaction, or be changed by a card holder, making accounts far more difficult to be hacked by cyber criminals. “Everyone’s trying to copy what Apple is doing with virtual card numbers and virtual CCVs,” Clarke said. The banking consortium will also have to spend significantly on advertising to gain access to a market that’s highly fragmented. Among consumers who make digital payments, 70% use more than one tool, and 49% use three or more, according to Cornerstone Advisors. The use of digital payments also varies among generations with 62% of Gen Z and Millennials, 50% of Gen X, and 32% of Baby Boomers making digital payments (or transfers). Nearly three-quarters of Gen Zers and Millennials (consumers between 21 and 42 years old) use PayPal, about half use Square CashApp, and roughly four in 10 use Venmo, according Ron Shevlin, chief research officer for Cornerstone Advisors. Cornerstone Advisors
Gazeley agreed that the banks will struggle to achieve uptake. “I think that the significant capital that these incumbent banks can bring to bear for digitized solutions will go some way to narrowing the gap," he said, "however, the current issue facing the market is that of fragmentation. ...As more and more wallet solutions are launched, it will become more and more difficult for each solutions provider to differentiate themselves to new customer bases." The reason banks want in on the digital wallet space is simple. Companies such as  Apple and Google are eating into their profit margins by moving consumers onto their platforms. The growth of mobile apps providers like PayPal and Square’s Cash App has created additional competition for traditional financial institutions, according to a study done last year by Cornerstone Research . Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, PayPal has added 126 million new customers. Cash App, meanwhile, has grown from 24 million users in 2019 to 44 million in 2022; its revenue increased from $1.1 billion in 2019 to $5.1 billion in just the first half of last year. According to Cornerstone, three-quarters of smartphone owners have at least one merchant’s mobile app on their device. In total, roughly $3.2 billion moves in and out of the 10 leading merchants’ mobile apps every week. Banks are growing increasingly concerned about the broader intentions of various digital wallet providers such as Apple. As these wallet providers own more of consumers’ payment experiences, banks fear their customer relationships becoming disrupted, according to Jordan McKee, a principal fintech research analyst with 451 Research. Wallet providers are also cross-selling financial services to their users, such as credit cards and savings accounts, which pose a threat to banking interchange revenue and deposits. “While the concerns of the banks behind this initiative are warranted, they are most certainly late to the game with a wallet,” McKee said. “Banks should not underestimate the challenge they will face in growing merchant acceptance to the point where a wallet will become useful to a meaningful number of consumers.”
Related:

Economic Zones World

Knight Frank

Funding Date

Pre-Money Valuation

Post-Money Valuation

Amount Raised

Shares Authorized

Issuance Price

Dividend Rate

Liquidation Preferences

Liquidation Price

Participation

Conversion Price

Anti Dilution

General Voting

Board Voting

Par Value

Acquired

Gazeley is a developer, investor and manager of European logistics warehouses and distribution parks with a 17 million square foot portfolio concentrated in the strategic logistics markets of the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Gazeley

Global Logistic Properties

Name	Work History	Title	Status
Nick Cook	Economic Zones World, and Knight Frank	Senior Vice President	Former
Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more

Name	Nick Cook	Subscribe to see more
Work History	Economic Zones World, and Knight Frank	Subscribe to see more
Title	Senior Vice President	Subscribe to see more
Status	Former	Subscribe to see more

Wells Fargo Success Story

Professional Services

Platform Overview

Gazeley

Executives

Gazeley Management Team

2 Team Members