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MONEY 20/20: NEW WAYS TO BUY, BORROW AND SELL

Tech’s makeover of money is well underway, and how we get loans, buy houses, or lend money is going to be dramatically different in the nearest time. This imminent future is what both financial services and tech companies discussed and represented at the fifth annual Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas in October this year. We have collected a few updates spotlighted at Money20/20 Las Vegas this year. 

Mastercard to unveil new AR experience and KAI chatbot
Mastercard unveiled an augmented reality shopping experience that for the first time
incorporates Masterpass and Identity Check Mobile with iris authentication for safe and seamless payments. Augmented reality has the potential to reshape the retail environment, making it more immersive and efficient. This new AR experience will let shoppers view digital representations of products and learn about what they are buying to get instant recommendations or other information relevant to their unique experience. When done shopping, users can pay for items using Masterpass.
“At Mastercard, we are seeing major shifts in how commerce is conducted, as people lead increasingly connected, digital lifestyles,” said Sherri Haymond, executive vice president, Digital Partnerships, Mastercard.
Mastercard also unveiled a new chatbot for banks and merchants to help them deliver better mobile experiences. The bot — which launches first in the U.S. next year — is
nicknamed “Mastercard KAI.” Banks can customise Mastercard’s bot — which will use
artificial intelligence to communicate with customers through text messaging and speech — or integrate it with their own bots.
Users connect their cards within the Messenger app and can then ask questions about accounts, check purchases and monitor spending. When customers make a purchase,
the bot will remind them of cardholder benefits, like purchase protection. It will also
send offers based on a user’s location and guide them to educational content to help
them make better financial decisions.

Blockchain technology will significantly reduce the cost of buying a home,
getting a mortgage or transferring currency
“The area is going to make a very big impact [on financial services],” said David Blumberg, founder and managing partner of Blumberg Capital at Money 20/20. Blockchain technology will significantly reduce the cost of buying a home, getting a mortgage or transferring currency, said Blumberg.
Major financial services firms — from American Express to Goldman Sachs — are playing an increasingly important role in financing blockchain and bitcoin start-ups, CB
Insights found.
Blockchain is the technology that underlies bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It’s a public ledger of all transactions through a distributed database which maintains a continuously growing list of records or “blocks.” Each block contains a time stamp and link to a previous block, securing the system from tampering and revision.

UBER INTRODUCES A CREDIT CARD
Uber is getting into the credit card business. Announced at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas, in partnership with Barclays and Visa, the new card gives Uber yet another point of access to incredibly valuable customer information and marks
another front in its campaign to assume a larger role in online and offline commerce.
Not content with just having a record of some of the comings and goings of
the at least 10 million people that use the company’s ride-hailing service every day,
Uber will now get a record of some of those folks’ daily purchases through the new card.
Applying for the card is easy. Starting November 2, Uber gives users the option to get the card right in its app, and will populate all of the information they have on file for their customers into the application.
After a few minutes, an applicant can get a verdict on their creditworthiness and
then the card is automatically available for use for Uber rides and UberEats purchases,
and a physical card will show up in the mail within a week or so.
The no-fee card offers a bonus of $100 after spending $500 on purchases within the first 90 days, and has other perks, like 4 percent back on restaurants, take-out and
bar purchases; 3 percent back on airfare, hotels and Airbnb or other short-stay rentals; 2 percent back on online purchases; and 1 percent back on everything else.

Zelle, a new P2P money transfer service, to compete with PayPal’s Venmo
Zelle, the PayPal rival backed by more than 30 U.S. banks, is preparing to launch its standalone mobile app. The move is meant to give the U.S. banking industry a foothold in the person-to-person payments business, where they’re losing ground to services like PayPal, Venmo, Square Cash and, very soon, Apple’s iMessage, powered by Apple Pay.
While banks have always offered the ability to do instant transfers, the process
to date has been more cumbersome. Users would need to have details like a friend’s
account number and routing information, for example. That led to the birth of
alternative means of sending money, like today’s payment apps where you only
need to know information like a username, phone number or email.
Similarly, Zelle’s new app will allow users to send and request money to and
from their contacts, using only their phone number or email. It will also work with U.S.
Visa and MasterCard bank debit cards, even if the user’s bank is not yet participating in
Zelle’s payment network. That network has been in the works since 2011, when Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase first teamed up to work on a digital payments solution that would allow their customers to send money to each other through a joint venture, then called clearXchange. The consortium dragged its feet, but last year picked up momentum and rebranded to the consumer-friendly “Zelle.”
In the new app, Zelle users will be able to send instant funds to one another for free,
provided both are signed up for Zelle.
If the recipient doesn’t have access to Zelle through their bank or credit union, however, transactions will take between 1 and 3 days to complete. But unlike PayPal
and Venmo, the transfers hit the other person’s bank account more immediately
— there’s no final “transfer to bank” step the recipient has to take to have access to
the funds.

 

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