As Edgar, Dunn & Company looks back on 2020, the EDC newsletter team has revisited the top 10 most read articles it published the past year:

‍#1. Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) Impact Assessment Study Report

‍EDC undertook a study analysing the impact of the Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR). The study found that, although IFR led to lower interchange fees, consumers had to pay more for their cards, that large merchants benefited more from the lower interchange fees than smaller businesses and where merchants received a lower MSC as a result of capped interchange rates, there was no available evidence of whether merchant to consumer pass-through took place. Click here to download the report

‍#2. The Impact of COVID-19 on Consumer and Merchant Behaviour

‍Davide Villa (Business Analyst, London) looks into the impact of coronavirus on consumers and merchants. The socio-economic impact of COVID-19 is forcing consumers and merchants to adapt and change their habits. Merchants are reducing acceptance of cash in fear of virus-contaminated banknotes, whilst quarantines are increasing the proportion of e-commerce sales. Read more

‍#3. How will Covid-19 affect the customer experience for inbound contact centres?

‍Mark Beresford (Director, London) has recently appreciated the impact that the Covid-19 global pandemic has had, not just on his waiting time to talk with a bank representative, but on the whole inbound contact centre industry. Ironically, Mark needed to call his card issuer because he could not access his credit card account via the smartphone app.  Read more

‍#4. Why is Request to Pay (RtP) so great?

‍In Europe and around the rest of the world a relatively new overlay service, Request to Pay (RtP), which is built on top of real-time bank to bank transfer networks, has the potential to be a great payment experience for the many stakeholders involved. Mark Beresford (Director, London) asks the question whether the RtP service will be a success or just another underutilised payment method with a negative return on investment. Read more

‍#5. Update On Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) Enforcement Dates

‍Read the latest SCA article by Martin Koderisch (Principal, London) in which he discusses the contrasting decisions made by the UK and European Commission regarding extending their SCA enforcement dates. With 6 months to prepare, he reminds European merchants that EU issuers will be legally required to decline all non-compliant payment requests after 31 December 2020, but concludes that forward-thinking merchants actually view SCA as a commercial opportunity to gain a competitive advantage with best in class customer experiences. Read more

‍#6. Are we heading for a new consumer debt crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic?

‍Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) has a working hypothesis that there will be a larger increase in total consumer debt following the pandemic. In order to test this hypothesis and assess whether we are actually heading for a consumer debt crisis, EDC and integrated communications agency Four Communications (Four) have joined forces to leverage Four’s proprietary insights methodology - Mapper360®. Read more

‍#7. The Impact of Confirmation of Payee (CoP) on Consumers and Businesses

‍Oscar Perez (Consultant, London) analyses the introduction of Confirmation of Payee (CoP) in the UK. CoP is designed to prevent misdirected payments, including the several types of Authorised Push Payment fraud. There is an expectation that CoP will reduce the chance of misdirected payments and some fraudulent activities – where a victim is tricked into sending a payment to a fraudster. Read more

‍#8. Conversion killers in the new era of eCommerce Payment Security

‍Read Martin Koderisch's (Principal, London) article about how a new era of eCommerce payment security is likely to shift attention from failed payments and false decline to checkout abandonment, where customer ‘drop off’ will rapidly be crowned the new conversion killer. He goes on to point out that forward-looking merchants are boosting sales conversions by analysing payment data to better control the likelihood of a ‘step up’ challenge. Read more

‍#9. The hasty unravelling of one of Europe’s leading FinTech companies, Wirecard, has huge consequences for cardholders and merchants

‍Wirecard, the payments group, filed for insolvency on 22 June after it admitted that €1.9bn in cash probably did “not exist”. The ramifications of this huge fraud, estimated to be the largest in the last 75 years of German history, will be wide-reaching. The implications for millions of Visa and Mastercard cardholders and thousands of merchants using Wirecard’s acquiring services are only starting to be realised. Read more

‍#10. M&A deal of the month: After Sabre-Farelogix, the Accelya-Farelogix saga

‍Shanta Paratian (Manager, London) analyses the recent and unexpected announcement of Accelya stating it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Farelogix. This took place two months after the UK regulators blocked Sabre’s purchase of Farelogix on grounds it was anticompetitive. The synergies between Accelya’s robust payments and Farelogix’ advanced ‘NDC-proof’ technology capabilities, might enable the new firm to offer innovative solutions to airlines, especially during this recovery phase. Read more