Not a day seems to go by without another innovation of fintech announcement from a bank. While most have now dabbled in an incubator, accelerator or a lab here, and a fintech investment there, they all have one thing in common, argues Leda Glyptis, director at Sapient Global Markets. And that is a lack of tangible […]
Standard Chartered has launched its “Bank on an iPad” sales and service tool in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Called Retail Workbench, it is a digital tablet-based sales-and-service tool that “brings the bank” to clients. It is integrated with the bank’s back-end infrastructure, and will allow sales staff to open an account for a […]
Ulster Bank and KPMG have launched the “world’s largest free business accelerator” for entrepreneurs – Entrepreneurial Spark – in Belfast in Northern Ireland. The new hub, or “Hatchery”, can host up to 80 businesses and early stage entrepreneurs. Also involved in the launch were Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest (all three are part […]
Lloyds Banking Group has created an in-house digital analytics team in the UK. This was in “partnership” with ASI (Advanced Skills Institute) and Google. However, the Lloyds’ team does not include any staff from Google. The bank tested Google’s big data platform technologies and analytics on non-personal behavioural data using a “secure” Lloyds account on […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! D+H Corporation bullish on payments software business Do you hear it? That’s the sound of optimistic noises. ICE pours cold water on Deutsche Börse and LSE merger bid ICE ICE maybe, ICE ICE maybe. Out of Africa for […]
Long considered an impenetrable space dominated by a few, the financial services industry is currently riding a giant wave of entrepreneurial disruption, disintermediation, and digital innovation. Recent industry developments such as the regulatory pressure as well as the criticality of business intelligence (BI) and customer experience are impacting banks more than ever before. Financial institutions […]
Google has built a pilot app, allowing payments in stores “completely hands-free”. The app, wait for it, is called Hands Free. Pali Bhat, senior director, product management at Google, says in a blog post: “Imagine if you could rush through a drive-thru without reaching for your wallet, or pick up a hot dog at the […]
Mizuho Bank plans to use a new robotics platform developed by IBM Research-Tokyo for the bank’s customer service-oriented robots. IBM says its researchers are developing new technologies that will “benefit” Mizuho’s Robotics platform by tapping into Watson’s (IBM’s cognitive technology) language and other capabilities to provide a “smoother human/robot interaction and to enable collaboration between […]
As established banks migrate to a digital era, new entrants in the German market are threatening to seize the moment. “We see a change in society; in the way that smart phone adoption feeds back into the way we run our business,” says Andreas Vollmer, chief IT architect of Commerzbank. “It is not just about […]
Distributed ledgers have a role to play in identity verifications, but there are potential pitfalls, state Professor Michael Mainelli and Vinay Gupta. They are increasingly touted as the answer to the identity problems plaguing finance and government. They may well be part of the answer, but more important is recognising they are only tools to help […]
Spanish bank BBVA has signed a strategic alliance with Cisco, allowing it to become its “priority” technology partner. BBVA says it wants to “foster connectivity and collaboration” between clients and employees, and speed up innovation and digitisation. This is the first of a series of alliances and BBVA says it is aiming to create more […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Fiserv’s CUnify core processing system bags 25 US credit unions More good news for the US software vendor. IBM delivers blockchain-as-a-service for developers Code to joy… nearly 44,000 lines made available. Potential “merger of equals” between Deutsche Börse […]
Deutsche Börse has launched a fintech initiative for new companies and start-ups in Frankfurt. From April onwards, it will make “fully equipped rooms available as a suitable environment to further develop new ideas and entrepreneurial concepts”. The start-ups will also receive on-site support from employees of the Deutsche Börse Venture Network. These will use their […]
Four firms have joined forces to introduce the “first” end-to-end security architecture for biometric fingerprint authentication at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona. Gemalto, Fingerprint Cards, Precise Biometrics and STMicroelectronics say they are offering original equipment manufacturers (OEM) the opportunity to deploy this feature in the latest generation of wearable and consumer electronics devices. The […]
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 […]
Blockchain gets another boost as IBM has made nearly 44,000 lines of code available to the Linux Foundation’s open source Hyperledger Project to help developers build secure distributed ledgers. IBM has also made a range of announcements spanning technology and business consulting to “rapidly advance the use of distributed ledger technology across multiple industries”. These […]
HSBC is launching voice recognition and touch security services in the UK, which will be available to 15 million banking customers. Customers of First Direct, a division of HSBC, will be offered the biometric recognition system over the next few weeks, followed by HSBC’s in the summer. HSBC is not the first to do this […]
New York-based Digital Asset Holdings, a developer of distributed ledger technology (aka blockchain), has teamed up with Accenture, Broadridge and PwC. Digital Asset says it has entered into non-exclusive strategic business relationships with the companies, and Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset, says the alliances will “accelerate innovation” and “drive growth”. The Accenture relationship will […]
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 […]
Estonia’s e-Residency platform will use a blockchain-based e-voting service to allow shareholders of companies listed on Nasdaq’s Tallinn Stock Exchange, to vote in shareholder meetings. The country’s e-Residency platform is an electronic identity system used by both Estonian residents and those with business interests in the country to access government services through e-Residency digital authentication. The program […]
Central securities depositary Euroclear and consultancy Oliver Wyman have issued a report on the use of blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins Bitcoin transactions, in capital markets. The firms arguing that major existing players will have to work with newcomers to create a framework that operates between firms and under regulatory obligations. Blockchain and […]
Distributed ledger technology provider Ripple and Japanese financial services firm SBI Holdings have announced the creation of a joint partnership, which will expand Ripple into the Asian market. Ripple, which focuses on the using blockchain-like technology for payments, is based predominantly in San Francisco with presences in New York, London and Sydney. SBI is a US$28 […]
BNP Paribas Corporate and Institutional Banking (CIB) has announced that it has appointed Rudi Collin as Head of Digital Transformation for CIB. Previously Collin was head of Electronic Business and Markets for the Global Markets business and prior to this, was chief operating officer for the fixed income division of the bank. In his new role, […]
In a new whitepaper, the US post-trade infrastructure provider Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), has voiced its belief that the financial services industry “has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine and modernise its infrastructure” by employing blockchain in a coordinated manner. Blockchain is the transaction model used to transfer ownership of crypto-currency bitcoin. It was developed […]
Cross-border payments and ACH operator Earthport has launched a distributed ledger hub, which it says will help banks to make cross-border payments cheaper and more efficient.
The distributed ledger – the central nervous system of the Bitcoin system – is the most sweeping departure from the long-standing financial bookkeeping practices followed since the codification of the Medici’s double entry accounting system.
A range of financial services and technology firms are backing efforts by The Linux Foundation to develop “an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework”.
Technology is transforming trust to the point that people find themselves trusting others with whom they’ve had no experience, on eBay or Facebook, more than banks they’ve dealt with their whole lives.
R3, the bank-led consortium developing the use of distributed ledger technology in financial services, has added 12 new banks as it looks at how to extend its activities to work with buy-side and non-bank institutions in the New Year.
Swift is planning to launch a global payment innovation initiative, which it says will dramatically improve the customer experience in correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments. The platform is due to launch early next year.
2015 has been a year of extensive discussion about what role blockchain can play in making processes in the financial services industry more efficient. It has also been a year where both banks and start-ups have been testing whether distributed ledger technology can adequately replace costly legacy systems and improve securities processing, writes Brian Collings. […]
Swift’s Innotribe initiative is to expand its programme to support innovation in emerging fintech ecosystems, including Africa and Latin America. It has also announced a new Industry Challenge programme under which the Innotribe team will work with Swift members to identify business areas that could benefit from collaborative solutions.
The sensors built into mobile devices offer a whole new way of identifying their users though biometric techniques, according to security expert Uri Rivner.
If the global payments industry were to be designed from scratch, nobody would design the system which we have today. Yet distributed ledger technology has the potential to bring about dramatic change– if it can overcome the unanswered questions over to what extent the industry should collaborate or compete and whether there will be one model or many different ones, according to speakers and delegates at the European Payments Regulation conference in London on Wednesday.
Post-trade technology company Kynetix has launched a blockchain consortium, focused on using distributed ledger technology in commodities markets. The move comes as financial institutions increasingly explore ways to integrate the blockchain concept into mainstream financial services.
Either the distributed ledger is the greatest revolution in financial services for a generation, or it will make little difference to anything, according to the strongly divided opinions expressed by speakers at the Mondo Visione Exchange Forum in London last week.
Trust – or more often, the lack of it – has become a recurring theme in financial services over the last few years. But if financial institutions really wanted to rebuild trust, they might start by looking at some of the safety improvements made by other industries such as the aviation industry, many of which rely on data, according to speakers at the Mondo Visione exchange forum in London.
Santander has launched a competition to support startups using distributed ledger technology in financial services. Through its subsidiary InnoVentures, the bank hopes to promote distributed ledger tools that could improve banking processes.
Nasdaq’s first fruits from its enterprise-wide blockchain technology plan,the Linq share ownership platform, has attracted an initial group of users it was announced at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas this week.
Banks should not kid themselves that they can simply appoint a ‘chief innovation officer’ and that will be enough to combat the threat posed by new technologies and the non-bank companies that are using them to steal business, warned panellists at the BBA conference in London on Thursday.
