Banking


HSBC and Barclays pilot banking without borders

A consortium of European private and public sector organisations are testing out the use of a citizen’s national digital identity from France to open a bank account in the UK. The group comprises HSBC, Barclays, the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), Orange, OT-Morpho and the Open Identity Exchange (OIX UK). The project is co-financed by […]

Bank of England fintech accelerator goes into third gear

The Bank of England’s (BoE) fintech accelerator has kept good speed and completed the third round of various proofs of concept (PoCs). As reported last year, BoE launched its own accelerator to harness innovation for central banking. The latest PoCs covered four areas of the bank’s work: analysing large-scale supervisory data sets; executing high-value payments […]

Oman Arab Bank upgrades core banking system with Finastra

Oman Arab Bank (OAB), a long-standing customer of Finastra (formerly Misys), is implementing the Fusionbanking Essence core banking system. It will replace Misys’ Equation platform, in operation at the bank for over three decades.

Puzzle no more with BNI Europa’s prompt consumer credit platform

Challenger Banco BNI Europa (BNI) has unveiled “Puzzle”, a digital and real-time credit approval process for the Portuguese market. Don’t be confused by the name, the bank says Puzzle is “simple, and non-bureaucratic”; and it even cites the Lending Club in the US, or Zopa in the UK by way of comparison. Puzzle offers credit […]

Nordea looks to Feelingstream AI for quick customer service

Nordea has chosen Estonian start-up Feelingstream’s artificial intelligence (AI) software to speed up response times for customers. Feelingstream’s AI solution analyses and categorises messages sent by customers so they can be forwarded automatically to the right person or unit in Nordea for further processing. The software can analyse hundreds of messages per second. The solution […]

Azerbaijan adopts Bloomberg auction platform for FX

The Central Bank of Azerbaijan has chosen to conduct its auctions for foreign exchange (FX) instruments and deposits through Bloomberg’s auction platform. The platform manages primary market operations, and has been recently extended to include FX instruments (spot and outright) and deposits, in addition to its pre-existing suite of fixed income and repo products. Ali […]

Analysis: outsourcing to the cloud – EBA’s recommendations

The European Banking Authority (EBA) recently opened a consultation on its draft recommendations for financial institutions outsourcing to cloud service providers across all cloud-related domains including infrastructure, platform and software as a service.

UK watchdog reveals rules to fuel open banking

Open Banking, the implementation entity set up by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has released its accounts and transaction information and payments initiation API specifications. The payments initiation API will enable third parties to set up secure payments on behalf of customers and, once authorised by the customer, submit the payment for processing. […]

Just in case you need a reason: why participate in Banking Technology Awards?

This year’s Banking Technology Awards are taking place on 13 December in London and there are plenty of reasons why you and your team should be a part of this prestigious event. Besides having a good chance at winning, entering the Awards also allows you to: Make global headlines in the industry if your entry […]

Nordea flies higher with open banking pilots

Nordea Bank has pressed the accelerator on its open banking ambitions with the launch of pilots. As reported in March, the bank released the first version of its open banking portal targeted towards external developers, as it gets ready for the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) requirements. At the time, it invited developers to sign […]

Danske Bank launches open banking beta

Copenhagen-based Danske Bank has unveiled its beta open banking service as it joins the fray for API-powered innovation. The bank says open banking is set to be the “most seismic shift in financial services since online banking” and it wants to tap into this market. Danske is looking to push on from its own banking […]

Commerzbank turns to blockchain for digital trade finance

Commerzbank and the Fraunhofer-Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) in Dortmund have teamed up to research and develop the digitisation of trade finance using blockchain. The bank says by using blockchain or distributed ledger technologies (DLT), it will build a decentralised database for internet of things (ioT) applications and smart contracts. This will offer […]

Regtech: features that make data work harder and smarter

There is far more to regtech than regulatory technology, or at least there can and should be. Regtech, as it is coming to be understood, must be something qualitatively different from what it’s replacing and not just a faster and better version of the same thing.

UK watchdog pushes hard on open banking plan

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is ramping up its efforts for open banking within the nation’s retail banking scene. As reported in February, the CMA published its 766-page final report on the retail banking market and its open banking goals. At that time, it said it will offer overdraft users the opportunity to […]

Barclays online and mobile banking down again

Barclays Bank has been hit yet again by online and mobile banking glitches. Today (3 July), the bank reported the problem on Twitter saying it’s “aware of an issue with our online banking”. Hi Mark, we’re aware of an issue with our online banking and we’re working as fast as we can to put a […]

Alfa-Bank buys Misys Equation source code

Alfa-Bank, a top ten bank in Russia by assets and profit, has purchased the source code of its core banking system, Misys Equation. The solution is provided by Finastra (formerly Misys).

CRS: the end of tax evasion?

Tax evasion and tax fraud have been affecting governments finances all over the world over the decades. It occurs within a country and across countries. Thus, a single country cannot solve the problem on its own. Countries need to work more together and internationally to combat the problem home and abroad.