Aite Group

The latest prognosis made by the consulting firm Aite Group says that online US discount brokerages are expected to attract more of their customers and assets in the years ahead. While the largest brokerages in America owned by banks declined during the financial crisis and suffered resignations of qualified brokers as well as departures of customers, online brokers were succeeding in their business. They have managed to increase online brokerage share of the $12.4 trillion in total U.S. client assets by 0.8 percentage points to 12 percent.

Card fraud costs the U.S. card payments industry an estimated $8.6 billion per year, according to a report released today by Aite Group. Though this sum is small compared with the $2.1 trillion in total yearly U.S. card volume, this area remains troubling for the industry. Fighting card fraud effectively involves triage and telepathy — picking appropriate battles to fight while anticipating fraudsters' next steps based on the rapidly evolving technological landscape, Aite's analysts say.

Aite Group study shows that prepaid debit cards are gaining favor among the underbanked, yet only a minority of this consumer segment uses them.
The firm conducted a study of 400 check-cashing store users and examined the characteristics of those underbanked consumers who use prepaid debit and possible opportunities for growing adoption of this payment instrument among this demographic.

 MoneyGram International agreed to cooperate with CUNA Strategic Services , owned jointly by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the state leagues, in a move to supply 7,900 credit unions with simplified access to MoneyGram’s global money transfer and bill payment services.

 This agreement extends a relationship that started more than 35 years ago when CSS started offering MoneyGram money order services to credit unions.