Financial Services/Finserv


AWS and VMware vs Cisco and Google: a cloud fight worth watching

At one time in the not-so-distant past, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco, Google and VMware all competed against each other in the cloud market space. While AWS and Google succeeded with their cloud ambitions, Cisco, with its Intercloud platform, and VMware, with vCloud Air, failed to gain much traction Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister […]

European Association for Biometrics conference: easing the digital journey

Customers are impatient and friction leads to lost sales – a key takeaway from last week’s seminar on the use of “Biometrics in Banking and Payments” organised by the European Association for Biometrics. Researched flagged by Michael Sass, VP market product management, security solutions Europe at Mastercard, highlighted the potential impact on revenue; abandonment rates […]

RBS unleashes robo-advice service via NatWest brand

Wealthtech is coming to the UK high street as Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has launched a robo-advice service for around five million customers under its NatWest brand. The service will be available for clients with a minimum of £500 to invest. The total cost of advice, investment and platform fees will be at 0.95%. […]

Coinbase goes into Custody to let investors store digital assets

Who knows how much more appreciation in the price of Bitcoin will be required to encourage notorious cryptocurrency skeptic and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to endorse investing in digital assets. But when he does, a new company launched by Coinbase called Coinbase Custody will be there to make sure he does it the right […]

Faure to fintech – what music can teach us about communicating the benefits of tech

On the surface Handel or Shostakovich seem a world away from the world of finance. Yet, strange as it may seem, the similarities are there. This is because both the mechanics behind music and the technology underpinning the digital transformation are – unless you’ve had first-hand experience of either – pretty abstract concepts to understand.

Dell makes case for cloud “core”

Make another space on your buzzword bingo card, as Dell is talking about the cloud “core”, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). “We decided instead of the edge and the cloud we need one more point – the core,” Jason Shepherd, Dell director of IoT strategy and partnerships tells Enterprise Cloud News. The […]

Multicloud can lead to management nightmare – survey

As enterprises move to a multicloud universe that combines different public and private clouds, the question now becomes how to manage all these competing platforms as the complexity builds? Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication) reports that’s the question at the heart of a study released this week by research firm opinion.life and sponsored […]

PoC-ketful of fintech pinnacles for Kickstart Accelerator

Fintech is running like clockwork in Switzerland as over 30 proof of concepts (PoCs) and partnerships have been secured at Zurich-based Kickstart Accelerator’s tech programme. The accelerator – an initiative of digitalswitzerland and operated by Impact Hub Zurich – saw 29 start-ups as well as an intrapreneur team from AXA Winterthur and Swisscom working in […]

Veridium and Wala bring blockchain power to Africa’s unbanked

Biometrics firm Veridium has teamed with Wala, a blockchain-powered financial services platform, as they target the unbanked and underbanked population in Africa. The duo will collaborate on a pilot programme in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate their digital model offering “zero-fee banking”. This pilot is funded by a grant awarded to Veridium from the Digital Financial […]

Facebook data privacy lawsuit is worth keeping an eye on

Large companies getting sued is nothing particularly new, but a lawsuit over whether Facebook has violated the data privacy rights of European citizens might make quite a splash, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology‘s sister publication). As reported back in September, Facebook was slapped with a fine from the Spanish data protection watchdog for inappropriately collecting and […]

Actiance acquired by K1 Capital Management

Communications compliance and analytics company Actiance has made its exit this week. The California-based company has been acquired by K1 Investment Management, an investment firm focused on acquisition-based growth opportunities, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (Banking Technology’s sister company). K1 will join Actiance with its rival, Smarsh, which specialises on archiving compliance. The combined company will reach […]

InvestCloud goes Neon and Gray for wealthtech way

US-based InvestCloud has released two new lines of financial apps – Gray and Neon – to run on its digital platform. InvestCloud Gray digitises client interactions, providing a platform for wealth managers. While InvestCloud Neon enables wealth managers and financial institutions to automate trading, accounting and middle-office workflows. It also supports the real-time processing of […]

All aboard the Amex blockchain payments express

American Express has launched blockchain-enabled, business-to-business cross-border payments with Santander using Ripple’s network. The Amex FX International Payments (FXIP) business is working with Ripple to make blockchain payments commercially available, “reducing the time and cost of settlement”. Santander UK is the selected partner to initiate this new transaction channel. Marc Gordon, EVP and CIO at […]

Microsoft doubles down on open source and analytics for developers

Microsoft’s embrace of open source software is about to get a lot bigger as the company is rolling out several new tools and services designed to help developers create applications designed for the cloud, as well as highly specialised apps for artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT), reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking […]

Rainmaking Colab kicks up a storm for fintech innovation

Rainmaking Colab is looking to make its new model of innovation reign via a theme-based fintech programme that taps into mature markets. Created by the founders of Rainmaking and Startupbootcamp FinTech, they say “mature fintech markets like New York and London are starting to experience ‘accelerator fatigue’ and require a new way of thinking to […]

Give donations better with Betterment

Robo advisory platform Betterment says it is not only making it easier to give to charities, it is also giving consumers more reasons to do so, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (Banking Technology’s sister company). Starting 28 November, on “Giving Tuesday”, Betterment investors will be able to donate shares of long-term investments from their taxable accounts directly to […]

TransferTo and Fern Software get UN funding for payments push

Cross-border mobile payments network TransferTo and banking software provider Fern Software have both been awarded a grant as a part of the United Nations Capital Development’s Shaping Inclusive Finance Transformation (Shift) Challenge Fund, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (Banking Technology’s sister company). The goal of the fund is to use remittances to improve the economic power of women […]

Cisco’s Q1 beats Wall Street expectations

After several quarters of less-than-stellar results, Cisco managed to beat analysts’ expectations with a better-than-expected report for its first quarter of fiscal 2018, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). For the quarter ended 28 October 2017, Cisco reported GAAP revenue of $12.1 billion, a 2% year-over-year decline. However, GAAP net income increased 3% […]

Microsoft warns of multicloud risk

Some enterprises worry about giving all their public cloud business to one provider and getting locked in. But multicloud has its own risks, says Microsoft Azure chief technology officer Mark Russinovich. Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication) reports that enterprises pursue a multicloud strategy to help negotiate a better pricing, among other reasons. But […]

Investec Bank to use iMeta for client data management

Investec Bank has selected iMeta’s client lifecycle management (CLM) platform to help with the automation and streamlining of data management processes. The platform consists of know your customer (KYC) support; credit and legal help (such as with MiFID II); and standing settlement instruction (SSI) for data management processes to provide a centralised hub of reference […]

TrueAccord lands $22m to humanise debt collection

Online debt collection service TrueAccord has received $22 million in funding – bringing its total amount to almost $34.5 million, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (Banking Technology’s sister company). Leading the round was Arbor Ventures. A mix of existing and new investors, including Arbor, Nyca Investment Partnership, Assurant Growth Investing, Caffeinated Capital Fund, Felicis Venture, TenOneTen and Crystal […]

Amazon selling part of China cloud business for $300m

Amazon is selling off a portion of its cloud computing business in China to a local partner, but the company still plans to compete in what is a growing market for cloud-based services and infrastructure, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). Beijing Sinnet Technology will buy a portion of Amazon’s cloud business for […]

Ex-Googlers have LightStep for hybrid app performance

LightStep, founded by ex-Googlers, has come out of stealth to introduce its first product, for application performance management in environments combining microservices with legacy apps, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). Called LightStep [x]PM, it provides application performance management that operates across all application components, including web and mobile clients, monolithic applications and […]

The Clearing House makes history with new US payments system

The Clearing House (TCH) has launched its 24×7 real-time payments (RTP) system, the first new core payments infrastructure in the US in more than 40 years. RTP was designed and built through the “collaborative effort” of TCH’s 25 owner banks and meets the objectives of the Federal Reserve Faster Payments Task Force. RTP is open […]

When are we going to look at the human cost of AI?

Another week has passed, and another piece of research has emerged about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), but the human cost is starting to become a very big elephant, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology‘s sister publication). The research itself is from SAS and highlights businesses are becoming normalised to the idea of AI. The concept […]

Cisco creates $1bn financing programme for smart cities

Cisco is looking to expand its presence in the smart city and internet of things (IoT) markets with a $1 billion financing program that will allow communities to make investments in their infrastructure with the vendor’s financial backing, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). The City Infrastructure Financing Acceleration Programme also has backing […]

Standard Chartered unveils chatty banking chatbot

Standard Chartered plans to deploy a chatbot on its online and mobile banking platforms powered by Kasisto’s conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform, KAI Banking. The chatbot will act as a virtual personal assistant to help clients manage money, make payments and analyse their spending, via conversations in English and other unnamed languages. The service will […]

China overtakes US in latest top 500 supercomputer list

The release of the semiannual Top 500 Supercomputer List is a chance to gauge the who’s who of countries that are pushing the boundaries of high performance computing (HPC). The most recent list shows that China is now in a class by itself, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). China now claims 202 […]

Dell makes machine learning road-ready

While Oracle, IBM and others are pushing machine learning in the cloud, many enterprises see advantages to keeping IT infrastructure in-house. Dell is looking to fill that desire with a line of hardware servers and services for machine learning for the enterprise, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). Dell Machine and Deep Learning […]

Blockchain and Bitcoin round-up: 14 November 2017

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s (13 November) action, here’s our latest blockchain and Bitcoin round-up. Featuring Bitcoin Gold, OTC Exchange Network, Deloitte and Github. Bitcoin Gold (BTG), the newest fork of the Bitcoin blockchain, has officially gone live. It’s not the first to breakaway from Bitcoin, as previously in August, Bitcoin Cash (BCC) launched. […]

Rackspace and HPE offering OpenStack as private cloud service

With most of the chatter in the cloud computing market focused on the big public cloud providers, it’s easy to forget that private cloud is a viable option for many larger enterprises. Now, Rackspace and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) are looking to change that, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology’s sister publication). The two companies […]

Orange Bank goes live with Backbase banking platform

France’s latest mobile-only bank, Orange Bank, has gone live on Backbase’s Omnichannel Banking Platform. Backbase says Orange is the only French bank to offer for free a service that provides real-time balances, mobile payments and a virtual adviser that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Orange Bank was finally launched on […]

Barclays in Flux for instant digital receipts

Barclays is trialling itemised digital receipts to its customers via a partnership with start-up Flux, a rewards and receipt platform. The upcoming trial will take place with around 10,000 users of the Barclays Launchpad app, its platform for testing new features with “real customers to learn more about how best to meet their needs”. Matty […]

Fintech funding round-up: 10 November 2017

Just when you thought there couldn’t be more following yesterday’s (9 November), Wednesday’s (8 November) and Tuesday’s (7 November) fintech funding round-ups, here’s more news action. Featuring Crux, Accern and Blume Ventures.

A CIO ‘Renaissance’ needs the cloud

For several years, it appeared the role of the CIO had been eclipsed by others – CMO, CFO, chief digital officer – who looked to claim a greater role and say over what information technologies their enterprises would invest in, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology‘s sister publication). It’s not so much over what specific […]