AnaCap Financial Partners, a private equity firm based in the UK, has acquired non-performing loans (NPLs) of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and GE Capital Real Estate in Italy. It is also understood to be crystallising a strategy to launch a new digital bank in the UK. The acquisitive PE firm has gained over €2 […]
German digital bank Number26 and TransferWise, a UK-based international money transfer platform, have teamed up to provide Number26 customers with direct “in-app” access to TransferWise’s service. Number26 co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf says the company wants banking products to be “accessible to customers with one tap, creating a fintech hub inside the Number26 app”. The […]
Crealogix’s subsidiary Elaxy Financial Software & Solutions will roll out a hybrid consulting platform at Bankhaus August Lenz in Germany. The solution, developed in nine months, is ready for MiFID II (markets in financial instruments directive) and PRIIP (packaged retail and insurance-based investment products) regulations. It is also integrated into the bank’s online banking system […]
Kevin Mountford, CEO of PBF Solutions, examines the key steps that new entrants to the UK banking sector need to take to attract customers and drive deposits. Challenging is one thing, but gaining a firm foothold in the UK banking sector is another, especially as the number of new entrants grows. From 2013 to mid-2015, the […]
British Arab Commercial Bank (BACB) is looking to modernise its core software. It is believed the bank has settled for a new platform – Temenos’ T24. BACB is a London-based wholesale bank that specialises in trade finance and treasury services to Africa and the Middle East. The bank has been in the system selection mode […]
PayPal is teaming up with Mexican telecommunications giant América Móvil as it looks to expand in Latin America. The alliance’s focus will be on a new mobile wallet platform, which lets users pay for items by smartphone scans. With América Móvil on board, PayPal can target 140 million users in Brazil and Mexico. Dan Schulman, […]
In 2016, retail banks are facing up to their biggest challenge. A combination of new market disrupters, increased regulation and the continuing pace of technology change is set to transform the industry, shifting power firmly to the consumer. Natalie McLellan, director of financial services at consultancy firm Egremont, offers her insight. Many commentators argue that […]
Bank Leumi (UK), based in London and part of the Bank Leumi Group, is replacing its existing corporate online banking system with Infosys’ Finacle e-banking solution. It will be interfaced to the bank’s long-standing core banking system, Misys’ Midas. The bank wants a system to “offer new products, provide additional functionality, and future-proof capabilities as well […]
EQ Bank, a new pure-play digital bank in Canada, has opened its virtual doors. It is underpinned by the front-to-back office software from Temenos. The bank is using Temenos’ T24 core banking system at the back-end and Temenos Connect for digital channels at the front-end. It is also using Insight BI for business intelligence and […]
AsiaHawala, Iraq’s “first” mobile money service, has chosen Mahindra Comviva’s Mobiquity Money solution as it looks to expand its reach across the country. The Iraqi company offers consumers a mobile account for a range of financial transactions – such as P2P transfer, bill payments, merchant payments, salary payments and a recharge service. With Mobiquity Money […]
Nationwide Building Society has chosen Tech Mahindra, an Indian IT services company, to provide network and infrastructure services in a five-year partnership agreement. The building society’s ambition is to connect its UK retail operations, comprising around 700 branches to more than 15 million customers. It also plans new services in its branches, such as Nationwide […]
Florida-based Net Element has launched its mobile payments platform, Digital Provider, in Azerbaijan. The venture is done via the company’s Russian subsidiary, OOO Digital Provider. The company says the new integration allows content providers and aggregators access to all “major” mobile operators in the country. It has also signed a contract with a national television […]
Swift’s Innotribe Start-up Challenge is to be unveiled in Latin America. The best fintech start-ups will be able to showcase their products at the Swift’s Latin American Regional Conference (LARC) this summer. Get your applications in! This is the first time the Swift innovation arm – Innotribe – has partnered with LARC, which will take […]
Veridian Credit Union, a $2.95 billion credit union in Iowa, is implementing Alkami Technology’s ORB platform for digital channels. The new solution will replace a legacy set-up, which includes a mobile banking offering from another US provider, Clairmail (now part of Monitise). Clairmail was selected by Veridian back in 2009. In 2012, the vendor was […]
Natixis Payment Solutions has teamed up with French start-up CopSonic to create SwipeSonic, an ultrasound payment solution for online shopping transactions. CopSonic’s technology uses ultrasound to encrypt information within music and voice, or transmit data “entirely inaudibly to the human ear”. Emmanuel Ruiz, CEO of CopSonic, says: “Sound is the easiest and most effective technology […]
Barclays and BlackBerry are bringing BBM, the mobile instant messaging service, to Pingit money transfers in the UK. BBM users can now make mobile payments to each other using Barclays’ mobile payment app Pingit. Matthew Talbot, SVP, BBM at BlackBerry, says to “exchange money was a logical extension” of BBM’s functions. Once a user has […]
India’s ICICI Bank has launched an ‘ICICI Appathon’ as it looks for innovations in mobile banking apps. The bank wants participants in India to create new APIs in five different categories – retail banking, corporate banking, treasury, ‘ICICI Group’ (such as insurance and securities), and ‘Partner APIs’. The latter comprises Visa and National Payments Corporation […]
Dallas Capital Bank, a local, independent bank is adding mobile banking, digital banking and electronic payments to its customer service functions. The firm has begun integrating its bank’s new digital services with its existing FIS backend core and payments systems. It is also adding a suite of digital banking systems, from digital account origination to […]
Fifth Third Bank is introducing Touch ID biometric capabilities to its mobile banking app for the iPhone. Touch ID allows fingerprint authentication for enabled devices, letting customers log into their Fifth Third app with their fingers or thumbs instead of a password. The Bank’s fast mobile app allows people to check balances, transfer funds and […]
NAB has launched its new mobile payment service NAB Pay, designed to enable customers to use their mobile phone to make purchases, without the need for a physical card. Customers with a compatible Android mobile device and a NAB Visa Debit Card have been able to start using NAB Pay from 25 January, available as […]
A survey of more than 3,700 IT security practitioners from more than a dozen major industry sectors found 54% of those firms surveyed had a security or data breach involving payment data, on average four times in past two years. The research, independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of digital security firm Gemalto, also […]
CaixaBank is launching imaginBank, Spain’s first mobile-only bank providing banking services exclusively through mobile apps and social networks.
French telecoms firm Orange is to create a new bank called Orange Bank together with French insurer Groupama, in a move the two firms say will help to break open the banking market using mobile phone technology.
Millennials – those highly sophisticated, tech-savvy men and women born between 1980 and 2000 – present enormous opportunities for banks and other financial institutions. Yet to be successful, these businesses must understand and meet the needs of a generation that grew up having it all, seeing it all, and being exposed to it all since early childhood – and that is no easy task.
The sensors built into mobile devices offer a whole new way of identifying their users though biometric techniques, according to security expert Uri Rivner.
Retail banks often claim that customer service is their primary focus, but 75% of banks believe they haven’t concentrated efforts on improving it. Instead, annual reports focus on the financial results. Whether these two stories can become one remains to be seen, according to a new whitepaper by bank technology vendor Misys.
Italian payments company SIA is expanding its P2P service Jiffy into Germany, together with IT firm GFT Technologies. The move is part of SIA’s plan to roll out real time money transfer via mobile phone to 400 million European current account holders.
Mastercard and Cardlytics have formed a new partnership that will streamline the process for banks implementing Cardlytics’ card-linked marketing offers, and ensure that consumers can access offers online and via mobile devices.
One in three retail banking customers feel their mobile banking app is not as good as online banking through a browser, according to a new study by ecommerce company First Data in the UK. The figures also revealed that more than half still have yet to use a mobile banking app – suggesting that there may be both an unmet demand for more functionality in mobile apps, and a need to convince the remaining consumers of their value.
Technology has infiltrated every facet of our lives, fundamentally changing our behaviour patterns and our expectations of what constitutes a good customer experience. The banking sector has not been immune to these changes; the industry has been forced to drastically transform its business processes and services in order to keep up with customers’ expectations. Today, customer satisfaction is judged not by the smile on the face of a cashier, but on the speed with which one can gain mobile access
Mobile transactions continue to increase their share of the market, accounting for up to half of online transactions, according to a new report by global payments technology company Adyen.
Target2-Securities, the European Central Bank project to harmonise Europe’s post trade infrastructure, has finally gone live in Italy – three months after Italy’s last-minute decision to drop out of the first wave earlier this summer.
Mobile phones will take an increasingly leading role in the payments space over the next five years as a result of technologies that allow safe storage of payment details in smartphones, according to a report prepared by the Consult Hyperion on behalf of Payments UK.
There has been hype around wearable technology for some time now but only now is it reaching market maturity with the introduction and subsequent adoption by consumers of smart watches and wristbands. Just as we saw with smart phones and tablets, consumer technology, in this case wearables, has the potential to have a huge impact on the business world. The implications for the financial services industry are significant
Swiss exchange group SIX and Swiss telecoms company Swisscom are planning to create a Switzerland-wide, universal mobile payment solution in collaboration with banks. The plan encompasses shopping as well as peer-to-peer payments.
Samsung is set to launch its upcoming payments service Samsung Pay in Europe within months, following a deal with MasterCard which will see Samsung Pay rolled out across the region through MasterCard’s Digital Enablement Service.
Apple Pay has launched in the UK without the participation of HSBC and Barclays, two of the UK’s largest retail banks.
iPhone devices account for more than one in three mobile transactions, and are used for 10% of all global online transactions, according to new figures published by payment specialist Adyen.
Visa Europe says that uptake of contactless payments in Europe continues to climb with more than one billion transactions made in the last year. Visa cardholders spent €1.6 billion in March 2015 alone – a three-fold increase over the same period in 2014.
Challenger UK retail bank Atom has received its licence from the Bank of England, meaning it will now be able to go ahead with plans to launch later this year. The bank will add competition to the UK retail banking sector, which until 2010 had not seen a single new entrant for 150 years.
