According to this, the Third Party Payment Processors Association (TPPPA), the newly formed not-for-profit industry association representing and promoting the interests of payment processors, their banks and merchants, has revealed plans to launch the inaugural version of its Compliance Management System (CMS).

"The CMS' policies are designed to meet the specific needs and responsibilities of both processors and their financial institutions to support overall compliance. Furthermore, via CMS, TPPPA provides its processor and financial institution members the tools to navigate the sheer number of rules, regulations and guidance set by regulatory agencies and rule-making bodies, such as NACHA."

"The processor module contains over 15 policies specifically written for payment and payroll processors that incorporate guidance for due diligence and enhanced due diligence. These policies include ACH, Red Flags, BSA/AML/OFAC, Privacy, Consumer Complaints, UDAAP, Compliance with Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Compliance with Fair Debt Collections Act, Compliance with Fair Credit Reporting Act."

"The CMS processor module gives each processor the ability to customize their procedures to fit their unique processing environment while remaining in alignment with the association's standards."

"The FI module is geared toward financial institutions that have third-party payment processors as their clients, and helps incorporate their existing policies into a cohesive program for third-party payment processing. This module highlights issues that a financial institution needs to address to ensure proper due diligence and ongoing monitoring and management of their processor relationships."

"All policies have been created to address the oversight of relevant regulatory agencies, including FDIC, OCC, FRB and FinCEN."

"Content included in both CMS modules focuses on broader categories, such as risk assessment (due diligence and underwriting), agreements, merchant training, ongoing monitoring, periodic review, and reporting suspicious activity and termination of merchant."

According to this, online retail in India has witnessed a considerable increase, accounting for almost 1 million online retailers, according to a recent report.

"Findings from Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) indicate that online retail reached almost USD 10.5 billion registering a year-on-year Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34% since 2009. The same source mentions that the figure is expected to increase further as policy and FDI issues are addressed and delivery logistics come of age."

"This growth in the online retail space in India is the result of a global trajectory, with agglomeration and consolidation in the online retail business being strong indicators of the business model fundamentals, according to industry experts. These online retailers represent a very wide range of categories including electronics, books, apparel, accessories, footwear and jewellery."

According to this, since December 2010, US smartphone engagement has increased three-fold from 131 bln total minutes spent on the device per month to 442 bln by December 2013. Tablets increased over the same period, a 10-fold growth to 124 bln minutes per month. Smartphones alone have surpassed desktop usage in 2013, with 429 bln minutes now spent on the previously dominant screen.

"As of December 2013, 56% of US consumers are considered multi-platform users. This is the first time that consumers who use both desktop and mobile devices in their daily lives form the majority in the total population of digital users. In fact the shift to multiplatform as a majority occurred over the space of only one month between March and April 2013."

"Although in the UK, more than 60% of online adults use at least two devices every day and nearly 25% use three devices. 40% of all online adults start an activity on one device and finish it on another."

"Desktop usage has stayed relatively constant over the last few years, with a slight rise in 2013. Mobile devices haven’t eaten into this desktop time as you may expect. Instead mobile devices have given consumers the opportunity to be online throughout the entire day."

According to this, m-commerce is on the rise worldwide. Mobile shopping is transforming the retail industry worldwide, as mobile traffic to retail sites surges and the variety of products purchased on mobile grows.

"M-commerce sales worldwide were estimated to top EUR 100 billion in 2013 as the increasing penetration of smartphones and tablet computers fuels the spread of mobile shopping. Smartphones and tablets differ in their impact on consumer behaviour and preferences when shopping on mobile. Thus, smartphones currently have higher penetration on global population than tablets, but tablet use is rapidly growing. Mobile retail applications are more popular on smartphones, while in access via tablets mobile browsing is prevalent. Tablets are a more suitable device for making large purchases on mobile. Smartphones, on the other hand are perfect for making on the go and quick purchases. There are other peculiarities in mobile shopping, for example, app vs browser. Neither had a distinct advantage over the other in terms of frequency for mobile shopping in 2013."

"In North America, the US market generates several tens of billion EUR of mobile retail sales, with its share on total online retail reaching over 15%. M-commerce sales are sensitive to seasonal variation, with Q4 being especially lucrative on Cyber Monday and Black Friday, when the share of m-commerce is even higher than throughout the year. In Latin America, consumers are starting to embrace mobile shopping, as mobile penetration grows and retailers launch mobile apps. The population most engaged in mobile shopping in Latin America is Mexico which also has the highest smartphone penetration on total population. Brazil, the region’s largest market ranks next by mobile shopper penetration. In Argentina, the share of m-commerce on total online retail sales does not exceed several percentage points, which is, however, more than in many other Latin American countries."

"As to the Central Europe, Germany leads in penetration of smartphone/tablet owners who shop on mobile at least once a week. M-commerce sales in Germany have reached over 10% of the total online retail sales in 2013. In Western Europe, UK leads by share of mobile retail on total B2C e-commerce sales, with sales from tablets growing faster than sales from smartphones. In France, over a quarter of online shoppers planned to purchase from mobile in 2014, while in the Netherlands over 2 million people already engage in mobile shopping. In Eastern Europe, mobile shopping is developing in Russia as a growing share of the 143 million population obtains access to the mobile internet. According to the study, around a third of mobile internet users in Russia purchase products from online shops via their devices. In Turkey, where mobile internet already accounts for the largest share of internet subscriptions, a significant double-digit share of smartphone owners shops via mobile."

"In Asia-Pacific, South Korea sets the newest trends for global m-commerce, such as integration of mobile shopping into messaging platforms. In Japan, a high double-digit share of mobile users shops via their devices. The number of mobile internet users in China have topped half a billion in 2013, with over a hundred million of them engaging in m-commerce."

"In the Middle East & Africa, m-commerce has a high potential, as most of the internet users access the web through their mobile phones. Both in South Africa and in the UAE the share of internet users shopping though mobile phones already reached a high one-digit number."

Having just conducted a straw poll amongst a wide range of our UK partners (most of which are small and micro companies and organisations) it seems to be clear that not many of them are preparing to make submissions to Erasmus plus in this first round of funding.

Also there is a lot of e-mails coming from all across the EU with organisations proposing themselves as perfect for any applications that other people are making but not many making proposals themselves.  Perhaps as in the UK this is an indication that lots of smaller organisations are not feeling comfortable with making applications in the first round.

In both cases it would be interesting to know the reasons for this apparent inability or un-willingness to lead on new proposals under Erasmus +

Perhaps this is a wrong conclusion but it does not take a massive leap of the mind to assume that the work involved for smaller organisations in adapting from the old LLP programmes to Erasmus + is not a simple one.

Clearly the creating of new Erasmus + proposals requires a lot of research and additional work and this is difficult for small and micro companies to build into their existing work-loads. Yes we still have the partnership programmes but will there be a reduction in the number of smaller organisations leading on programmes in Erasmus?

It would be interesting to see the statistics in relation to the size of the organisations/companies who applied in the last year of the LLP programme and in the new Erasmus + programme. I wonder if these will be available?