Candy has been handed out to costumed children, the jack-o-lanterns have been thrown away, and Halloween is over for another year. The next holiday, here in the U.S. at least, is Thanksgiving … which doesn’t seem to get much attention in popular culture. Then again, the core of Thanksgiving is a turkey dinner, so there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of thematic celebration going on—unless you count the Black Friday shopping holiday that comes the day after.
Much of the business press this past week focused around the end of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program, but otherwise it seems to have been a slow news week in the accounts payable and expense management world. I did manage to find some gems for your consumption, however, for the inaugural Payables News Weekly roundup. So, without further ado, here’s what happened last week in the payables world:
IT Business Canada: Concur partners with Air Canada to account for ‘rogue travellers’
Oh those pesky rogue travelers—employees who refuse to book travel through the company portal and instead go directly to the airline website, thus causing the company to miss out on some program benefits. Concur’s trying to do something about that, recently inking a deal with Air Canada to link the airline’s booking system with Concur TripLink on the backend, ITbusiness.ca reports. This allows enterprises to capture travel data that previously wouldn’t be seen until later when the rogue traveler applied for a reimbursement. The change to Concur’s TripLink will come down the pipe in 2015. Read the full article at http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/concur-partners-with-air-canada-to-account-for-rogue-travellers/51864.
Card Vault: How Chip-based Payment Cards Are Expected to Guard Against Fraud
The team at Card Vault has a good explanation of the security benefits of chip-based payment cards, published on October 28, for the last week of National Cyber Security Awareness Month. The short version is that chip-based cards protect against card-present fraud at the point of sale terminal, which is good news for those transactions, but it actually may increase “card-not-present” fraud where the terminal can’t read the security data on the chip. For that matter, issuers may give out chip-based cards with magnetic strips as a first stage, which presents other problems. Read the full article at http://cardvault.com/how-chip-based-payment-cards-are-expected-to-guard-against-fraud/.
Reuters: Visa, Mastercard welcome Beijing’s plans to free bank cards market
The Chinese government announced plans on October 29 to open up its market for clearing domestic bank card transactions. According to Reuters, the State Council, China’s cabinet, said that foreign firms that meet certain criteria could set up their own clearing companies. Visa and Mastercard both welcomed the move, which would open up a market worth more than $1 trillion a year. The move comes following a critical report from the World Trade Organization that UnionPay had an unfair monopoly on the Chinese payments market, which came after the United States complained to the world trade body. Read the full article at http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/30/china-banks-clearing-idUSL4N0SO8PM20141030.
Earnings Roundup: Bottomline Nets Double-Digit Revenues, Kofax and PRGX Edge Higher
Several public companies in the Payables Place wheelhouse announced earnings last week. Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ: EPAY) notched revenue gains of 21% in their first-quarter results, with their subscription and transaction reviews growing 30% to $40.9 million. Kofax (NASDAQ: KFX) meanwhile also had a positive performance, announcing a 4.4% revenue gain in their first quarter. PRGX Global (NASDAQ: PRGX) announced their third-quarter results last week as well; the accounts payable recovery provider notched revenue gains of 2.4% quarter-over-quarter. Payments giants Visa (NYSE: V) and MasterCard (NYSE: MA) also announced earnings last week; Visa beat its fourth-quarter revenue goals by $40 million, while MasterCard trounced its third-quarter revenue guidance by $50 million.
Thus ends our weekly wrap-up of the news-goings on around the accounts payable, payments, and treasury world. Join us again next week for more!
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