The fintech revolution is now firmly established, and disruptive technologies are blooming all across the sector. From securities to payments, everyone in the sector is watching to see how the next innovation will affect their business.
The distributed ledger is one of the hottest topics in financial services. Born out of the crypto-currency bitcoin, the blockchain concept has gone mainstream and the first area to feel the impact is likely to be payments.
Nine major global investment banks have formed a partnership to explore the potential of distributed ledger technology in financial markets. The project, led by financial technology company R3, aims to create early standards for the emerging technology that will make it easier and more efficient as it grows.
Swift has named the 20 finalists for the 2015 Innotribe Startup Challenge finale, which will take place at Sibos in Singapore this October. The finalists include companies focused on personal finance, foreign exchange, data protection, mobile banking and e-commerce as well as social media, big data, payments and many other areas.
Barclays and startup accelerator company Techstars have opened the application process for the third cohort of their Accelerator programme in London, which will give ten businesses a chance to “shape the future” of financial services, the bank has said.
Ten financial services startups have been chosen by startup accelerator Startupbootcamp FinTech to participate in its annual London program, which seeks to find the best new companies in financial services and bring them to market. Notable themes among the finalists include Bitcoin and the blockchain, big data, algorithms, cloud computing and social networking.
The Innotribe Start-up Challenge attendees selected the five finalists from the African leg of the Start-up Challenge to compete at Sibos Singapore in October. The showcase was held yesterday alongside Swift’s African Regional Conference.
Citi has opened the doors to entrants for its Citi Mobile Challenge in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, an annual competition that invites developers from around the world to build innovative financial services based on Citi’s digital platform.
Capital markets firms are losing their intellectual property too easily to competitors, business partners and third parties. Most companies could benefit from a tougher approach to IP, including licencing agreements and more use of patents, according to a new report by analyst firm Aite.
Banks have been struggling to work out the balance between the potential of new technologies, and the propensity (or otherwise) of customers to use them. After years of standardisation between platforms, the answer may actually be to carefully analyse and categorise customers based on their digital propensity and level of financial engagement – and to make sure that each kind of customer is handled differently, according to a new report by analyst firm Celent.
One of the trends of 2014 was its delivery of technology that we had been promised for years but had fallen short until now. Siri, Cortana and Google Now all make good on the sci-fi staple of the voice-activated computer. Virtual reality has been attempted many times, but it seems that the Oculus Rift may have finally cracked it. And biometric authentication, while often included in devices but rarely used, is now commonly used by owners of new iPhones to unlock their devices thanks to Touch ID.
Banks will be judged on how well they provide mobile services and social media interaction in the coming years. Instead of being just another channel, these forms will be the first point of contact for customers, according to a new report by analyst firm Celent.
Biometric identity verification mechanisms were prominent among the raft of new product announcements at the Money20/20 event in Las Vegas, which opened this week.
Yantra Financial Technologies, an electronic payment systems developer, has integrated its latest system for risk scoring of payments with the Ripple real-time settlement protocol. The integration means that institutions using the Ripple protocol can analyse transactions in seconds, including what other payments the customer recently made and potential concerns regarding a specific transaction. Risk levels can be assigned to certain transactions based on pre-determined criteria.
Swift’s Innotribe Startup Challenge has named the five European finalists for its annual competition, which seeks to find the best new companies in financial services and bring them to compete in the final at Sibos Boston in October.
Bitcoin is the poster child of the cryptocurrency world, but it’s not alone. Michael Mainelli and Bob McDowell take a look at the real-world implications of the rise of AltCoins
Swift’s Innotribe innovation spin-out has named the European semi-finalists for its 2014 Startup Challenge, which seeks to find the most innovative start-up companies in financial services.
In this supplement we share our experiences of implementing real-time payments systems and take an in-depth look at the success of Faster Payments in the UK. We also examine the challenges and benefits that real-time payments can deliver to banks and consumers as well as the advantages real-time technology can bring to government and businesses to support the wider economy and society as a whole.
Tech City is the name given to the hub of high growth technology companies in East London and is lauded as the engine room of British innovation. In November 2010, Prime minister David Cameron launched his Tech City Initiative, saying “We’ve also asked some of the world’s biggest businesses and banks to help provide the […]
The chaos of the crisis did not spark renewed interest in innovation: no ideas of note were created within banks and surprisingly few people left their jobs to launch start-ups – the innovation gap in the financial sector has been largely filled by the growth of the fintech start-up sector.
The average bank now typically views web portals such as Google as the biggest threat to its business, according to a new report by French retail banking association Efma and business IT firm Infosys. Yet banks also report rising levels of innovation within their firms.
A round-up of shorter news items from Sibos 2013 in Dubai
Spanish business to business payment platform Licuos has been named as the winner of Innotribe Startup Disrupt, a competition to find the most innovative financial services startups in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world.
Next Bank Madrid has chosen the finalists for a competition that seeks to find the best financial services startup companies from the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world.
Innotribe, the Swift-backed initiative to enable collaborative innovation in financial services, has announced the names of the five contenders from the US leg of its annual Startup Challenge to compete at Sibos 2013 in Dubai in September.
A new joint project between Spanish financial services project Next Bank Madrid and Swift’s Innotribe innovation wing aims to unleash the potential of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American start-up companies in financial services.
Innovation in financial services is currently at a seven-year low, reflecting a period of cost-cutting and scaling back in the face of new financial regulation – but innovative new technologies such as mobile may provide a solution, according to law firm RPC.
Swift’s Innotribe innovation project has chosen the 15 US semi-finalists for its start-up challenge, which aims to bring together innovative ideas in financial services and turn them into functioning businesses.
Swift’s innovation-focused spin-off Innotribe has announced the five Singapore finalists for its global startup challenge, which aims to help innovative new companies in financial services to develop their ideas and transform them into working businesses.
Java virtualisation specialist Waratek, one of the finalists in the Swift-backed Innotribe Challenge at this year’s Sibos in Dubai, has formed a partnership with Asia market access specialist Intralink to expand into Asia Pacific. As well as the Innotribe final, the Waratek CloudVM for Java offering has been selected for the Fintech Innovation Lab, based […]
Five finalists have been chosen by Swift’s Innotribe for its Startup Challenge in London, ahead of an international face-off for innovative financial services firms from around the world in Dubai in September.
Swift’s Innotribe project has announced the fifteen semi-finalists for its startup challenge, which aims to help innovative new companies in financial services to get started.
Major global banks have praised the FinTech Innovation Lab London, a project which partners senior bank executives with startup companies, for helping to energise the development of innovative new products in financial services, at an investor day presentation in London City Hall this morning.
As one of the world’s leading financial centres, geographically well-positioned between America and the Far East, London is very much a global city. It is perhaps unsurprising then that it also attracts businesses looking to provide financial services worldwide.
Seven innovative start-up companies have been chosen to take part in a major new London-based project that aims to bolster advanced technologies in financial services. The seven firms will participate in a twelve-week programme in which they will gain support from the major banks and gather interest from venture capitalists and investors.
Swift has opened its Innotribe Startup Challenge 2013 for entries. The year-round competition is intended to introduce financial industry decision makers and early-stage investors to the “innovations and emerging companies that are poised to transform the industry”.
