FinTech Futures: Top five news stories of the week – 14 June 2024
Here’s our pick of five of the top news stories from the world of finance and tech this week, featuring Starling Bank, Bink, Mastercard and more.
Barclays and Lloyds-backed loyalty app Bink enters administration
UK-based loyalty app Bink enters administration
UK-based loyalty app Bink is shutting up shop, with FRP Advisory appointed as joint liquidators of parent company Loyalty Angels on 29 May.
Founded in 2015, Bink was known for its Payment Linked Loyalty (PLL) technology, which linked the payment cards of its customers with the loyalty programmes of its partner brands.
British bank Barclays has maintained a “significant” minority stake investment in the company since 2019 and was accompanied by Lloyds Banking Group three years later.
Despite its backing, FRP Advisory told FinTech Futures this week that Bink had “suffered significant losses for a number of years and recent efforts to secure additional funding had proved unsuccessful”.
“The business had therefore ceased trading prior to the appointment of liquidators, with all 46 members of staff made redundant.”
Al Etihad Payments prepares to launch new domestic card scheme in UAE this month
The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) is preparing to launch a domestic card scheme – dubbed Jaywan – through its subsidiary, Al Etihad Payments, later this month.
Developed in partnership with India’s NPCI International, Jaywan intends to increase the availability of payment options with a specific focus on e-commerce, digital transactions and financial inclusion.
The roll-out of Jaywan will be actioned “in phases”, with acquirer acceptance currently being prioritised over customer issuance, and with e-commerce acceptance due to follow “later in the year”, according to comments Jan Pilbauer, CEO of Al Etihad Payments, gave to The National this week.
Among the first acquirers to activate the scheme ahead of its roll-out later this month is the Dubai-based digital commerce company, Network International, which is set to introduce Jaywan to the 60,000 merchants it claims to serve across the UAE.
Mastercard commits to phasing out manual card entry in e-commerce by 2030
Mastercard seeks to tokenise e-commerce
Mastercard has affirmed its “global commitment” to phasing out the requirement for manual card entry during online purchases as part of its renewed effort to make e-commerce “safer and more accessible for everyone”.
To achieve this, the payment network claims to currently be leveraging “tokenisation, streamlined guest checkout and payment passkeys”, with the overarching aim of facilitating “a consistent experience across devices, browsers, and operating systems”.
In practice, this effort will see Mastercard replace traditional card numbers with a “secure token” through its tokenisation service introduced in 2014, improve the integration experience of its online checkout solution, Click to Pay, among merchants and bank partners, and eliminate the need for passwords by introducing biometric-powered payment passkeys for online transactions.
Starling Bank reports 50% revenue rise in third year of profitability
UK challenger Starling Bank has reported its third year of profitability in the year ending 31 March, with pre-tax profits jumping 54.7% to £301.1 million.
At the same time, the bank claims to have recorded a 50.6% revenue increase to £682.2 million, alongside a 4% rise in total deposits to £11 billion.
First tipping into the green in October 2020, Starling attributes its latest financial performance to “strong growth in revenue, deposits, active customers and customer transactions”.
“The percentage of active accounts now stands at nearly 80%, while total transactions rose by 21% to £174.1 billion during the year,” comments Starling group chair, David Sproul.
Pennsylvania’s Vertex purchases AI tax capabilities from Ryan
Vertex acquires AI tax features from Ryan
Tax technology solutions provider Vertex announced this week its acquisition of “tax-specific AI capabilities” from Ryan, LLC, a tax services and software company based in Dallas, Texas.
Vertex claims that the deal, the financial terms of which have not been disclosed, will enhance its “AI innovation strategy”, which seeks to assist global enterprises in managing “tax complexity with greater speed and scale”.
The taxtech company anticipates that its new AI features will increase the accuracy of tax compliance by integrating proprietary and private large language models (LLM) to provide generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) capabilities, complemented by “human in the loop” tax expertise.
