Financial Services/Finserv


Sibos 2017: the future of money

What’s more valuable today, data or money? Today’s “The Future of Money” discussion at Sibos had “the new oil” – data – firmly in its sights.

Sibos 2017: embrace the change or get out of the way!

At today’s (18 October) panel discussion at Sibos, user experience (UX) and organisational culture were put to the fore. What does it take to create a simple yet meaningful UX? And what role does an organisational culture play in it?

JP Morgan’s Quorum blockchain powers new correspondent banking network

JP Morgan, and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), have launched the Interbank Information Network (IIN) – using blockchain for the payments process. According to JP Morgan, processing global payments is very complex. Multiple layers of communication occur amongst payment participants to verify and process transactions. By using […]

Interview: Martin Grunewald, BankservAfrica – the African payments dream

In an exclusive interview with Daily News at Sibos, Martin Grunewald, chief payments officer at BankservAfrica, discusses its vision for a modern payments system in Africa and why replication is a good thing. “If we don’t start, we won’t get to the finish line”. There is a lot of planning and talking now, but South […]

Open banking: nothing personal

Financial authorities globally are promoting open banking. While it represents a shift in the mindset of traditional banks, Heather McKenzie, editor of Daily News at Sibos, finds they may be up to the challenge.

Low cost correspondent Swift access

Swift has launched Correspondent Banking Suite, a solution targeting small to medium sized correspondent banks that are seeking cost-effective access to the Swift network.

Compliance: back to basics

Ensuring security on Swift’s network doesn’t have to be rocket science. Getting the basics right will help individual institutions and Swift’s community.

Deutsche Bank unveils first paperless import payment solution in India

Deutsche Bank has launched the “first” paperless import payment solution in India with its TradePay system. TradePay uses the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Import Data Processing and Monitoring System (IDPMS) to verify import payments by checking them against details made available by the client on the system, “eliminating the need for clients to share […]

Alastria blockchain consortium springs up in Spain

A variety of Spanish banking, energy and telecommunications companies have established Alastria, the “world’s first regulated national network based on blockchain”. The non-profit consortium will develop distributed ledger technology (DLT), which it believes is “set to become the new data exchange ecosystem”. As reported in May, the group created Red Lyra, the “first multisector technology […]

Standard Chartered gets personalised for investment ideas in Asia

This time it’s personal. Standard Chartered has launched a digital wealth management tool that can customise investment ideas in a lively and rapid manner. Called Personalised Investment Ideas (PII), the idea is to help “priority banking” clients respond faster to market opportunities with automated investment ideas based on considerations such as their risk profile and […]

Sibos 2017: APIs – a holistic approach

In today’s (17 October) session at Sibos, API in financial services: the key to the future?, the discussion panel participants were in agreement on the following: if your want your API strategy to work, you’ve got to have a holistic approach to it across the organisation.

De-risking in trade finance: time to act

As financial authorities express concern about de-risking in correspondent banking, a similar phenomenon is emerging in trade finance, driven by the high costs of KYC compliance.

BNP Paribas and EY explore private blockchain for treasury operations

BNP Paribas ALM Treasury and EY have completed a pilot demonstrating the use of blockchain to improve global internal treasury operations for the bank. The ALM Treasury department, which manages the bank’s internal ops, at the service of all three operating divisions of the group, carried out the pilot, tested internally this summer. According to […]

Regtech to the rescue

Regulatory technology (regtech) is often cited as the answer to the rising cost of compliance, risk and reporting duties at banks. Will it help financial institutions escape IT silos and enhance control over data?

The race to meaningfully engage with customers is on

The disruptive threats that banks face today are well documented: fintechs, decentralised cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology and now the tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Apple, to name a few. These players are all now placing themselves between retail banks and their customers, meaning that banks are not just competing with other banks anymore.

FIS and Citi team up for real-time payments for corporate treasury

FIS and Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions are working together to enable real-time payments and cash management for their corporate treasury customers. Using the CitiConnect application programming interfaces (APIs), FIS has connected its Trax corporate payments factory to the suite of Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions – enabling integration with Citi’s core treasury management functionality, […]

Cybersecurity: into the data breach

Cybersecurity has become a significant issue as attacks are increasing. In the new payments ecosystem, where third-party developers can directly interact with banks’ customers, data privacy and security become paramount, according to the World Payments Report 2017.

IBM, KlickEx Group and Stellar unveil cross-border payments solution

IBM, KlickEx Group, a regional financial services company, and Stellar, a non-profit organisation that supports an open source blockchain network, have unveiled a new regional cross-border payments solution using IBM’s blockchain technology to provide clearing and settlement of trades on a single network in real time.

Microsoft and AWS buddy up to democratise machine learning

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have teamed up to launch an open-source, deep learning library called Gluon which will make machine learning (ML) more accessible to a wider range of developers, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology’s sister publication). That will be the key to winning the machine learning race. Not making the most complex and […]

Infographic: demystifying the cross-border remittances ecosystem

With a large chunk of the global workforce migrating to foreign countries in search of lucrative career opportunities or better living, the World Bank estimates that migrants will send up to $636 billion home in 2017, with three-quarters of that being remitted to developing countries. In 2015, $440 billion in remittances was sent back to […]

Mauritius looks to blockchain for financial inclusion boost

The State Bank of Mauritius, SBM Group and SALT, creator of a blockchain-backed loan platform, have entered into an exploratory relationship to use blockchain assets as collateral for lending services. SALT, which stands for Secured Automated Lending Technology, says it offers risk mitigation software which allows financial entities, like SBM, to participate in this new […]

Doxo surpasses 30,000 payable billers on its platform

Seattle-based consumer bill pay service Doxo now has more than 30,000 billers on its platform, allowing users the ability to pay even more companies from a single website, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (Banking Technology’s sister company). This achievement also gives Doxo a new status – the company now has more billers on its platform […]

Taiwan fines Qualcomm $773m for antitrust violations

US mobile chip giant Qualcomm has been the recipient of yet another fine for claimed anti-competitive business practices, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology‘s sister publication). This time it’s Taiwan, where its Fair Trade Commission (TFTC) has concluded that Qualcomm abused its dominant position in the mobile chip market for at least seven years by refusing to […]

Blockchain and Bitcoin round-up: 12 October 2017

Whether it’s prepaid card time or financial crime, the world of blockchain and Bitcoin is a lively one. This latest round-up features BitFlyer, Visa, Accuity, R3 and SIA. Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange BitFlyer has unveiled a Visa prepaid card that can be charged with Bitcoin in yen and used throughout Japan. It can be charged via […]

Venture into Accenture’s fintech innovation adventure centre

Fintech start-ups are being invited to apply to Accenture’s sixth FinTech Innovation Lab London, a three-month programme offering mentoring and the chance to accelerate business development. Accenture says this year’s lab has introduced a new stream to help regtech start-ups, because banks are “being compelled to open up their customer data and ensure this data […]

Deutsche Bank jumps on IBM Watson for Germanic AI ambitions

Wunderbar! Deutsche Bank has completed internal proofs of concepts (PoCs) with IBM for the deployment of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered Watson cognitive system in the German language. The system will be used in the bank’s Artificial Intelligence Client Communication Centre (AI-C³), and Deutsche Bank says it will use Watson for the development of a […]

Cloud security start-up ShiftLeft de-stealths

Eyes right. US start-up ShiftLeft has emerged from stealth and wants to shift enterprise cloud security strategy from reactive to preventative. Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology‘s sister publication) reports that ShiftLeft is an alternative to finding vulnerabilities and attacks as they crop up and defending against them. Instead, ShiftLeft’s service scans application and microservices source […]