BankingTech


Europe a pushover for machine takeover

In another example of glacial bureaucracy, a committee from the European Parliament has written a report which recommends a meeting about robots and artificial intelligence (AI).

Blockchain incubator Adel unveils P2P retail banking network

Blockchain incubator Adel has unveiled its project framework for people to create a peer-to-peer (P2P) network in retail banking. The firm says it will work in the “same way as Airbnb and Uber revolutionised the hospitality and taxi industries”. “Anyone with a car can be a taxi. Anyone with accommodations can be a hotel. Anyone […]

Airtel Payments Bank launches in India

Airtel Payments Bank, India’s “first” payments bank, has started national operations with services now live across the country. As Banking Technology reported in July 2016, telecoms giant Airtel was planning its own bank. It says it is a “fully digital and paperless” bank, and from today (12 January), over 250,000 neighbourhood Airtel retail stores across […]

Can you marry an app Monzo?

Mobile-only challenger bank Monzo has revealed some witty conversations between its banking customer support team and customers. In an amusing blog post, the bank says its customer support team of around 17 people manage hundreds of queries on a daily basis in as “close to real-time as possible”. Some of these conversations struck a chord […]

Commerzbank unveils first digital platform for German SMEs

Commerzbank has developed the first digitalisation platform for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Called “#openspace”, and located in Berlin-Schöneberg, it offers long-term co-operation between SMEs, “innovation partners”, and start-ups with the objective of “tackling the challenges posed by the digital future together”. Holger Werner, CEO and founder of #openspace, says “digitalisation dominates the media, sciences, […]

PSD2: Who wins?

I was recently asked who the biggest winner would be to emerge post-PSD2, the banks or the fintech firms. If we ignore for a moment that the biggest winners are clearly you and I, the end consumer of these services, it did reveal an interesting thought process and dynamic at play.

D+H unveils simulated tests for real-time payments

DH Corporation (D+H) is now offering banks a cloud-based testing environment to simulate connectivity to The Clearing House’s (TCH) real-time payments system. D+H says it is the first payments hub vendor to provide banks in the US “easy and low-risk” access and with “minimal investment”. It offers an optional open API layer, where banks can […]

Capital One joins forces with fintechs Gusto and Bill.com

Capital One Spark Business has announced “strategic partnerships” with two fintech companies, Bill.com and Gusto. The aim is “to build and deliver better financial management, HR and cash flow tools designed for small businesses”, Capital One says.

New app aims to provide ‘Clarity’ to personal finances

Data analytics and artificial intelligence are on nearly everyone’s 2017 trend-watch lists, but US-based Clarity Money wants to put those same tools directly into consumers hands with an app it says will improve financial well-being and increase users’ financial literacy, reports Paybefore. “Clarity fills in the role of an advocate with a personal finance management […]

Mystery surrounds Postfinance online banking outage

Postfinance, the fifth largest retail financial institution in Switzerland, has suffered a 24-hour outage on its online banking service – and doesn’t know the exact cause. About 1.7 million customers were affected by a total loss of electronic banking on Sunday and Monday morning (8/9 January). On Monday afternoon, things were back to normal as […]

MIT’s trade finance platform debuts in Luxembourg

Bank GPB International, a member of the Gazprombank group, has selected MIT’s (Micro-Informatique & Technologies) trade finance platform to support its business from Luxembourg. The MIT platform chosen by the bank comprises Credoc, the Swiss firm’s flagship back-end trade finance solution, and TRAC, its middle/front collateral management system, which provide support for transactional commodity finance […]

DTCC selects IBM, Axoni and R3 to develop blockchain for derivatives

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has chosen IBM, in partnership with Axoni and R3, to provide a blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT) framework to drive improvements in derivatives post-trade lifecycle events. The firms will work on DTCC’s Trade Information Warehouse (TIW), building a derivatives distributed ledger solution for post-trade processing. The TIW service currently […]

Izola Bank selects Finex Solutions for digital banking revamp

Malta’s Izola Bank has chosen Munich-based Finex Solutions to overhaul its digital banking services for retail and corporate customers. The bank will use the Finex Excellence Digital Banking solution, which supports internet, tablet and mobile banking. Andrew Mifsud, CEO of Izola Bank, says it has already “successfully implemented a mobile token solution provided by Finex” […]

ME Bank outsources core banking to Capgemini

Australia’s ME Bank has signed a five-year deal with tech consultancy firm Capgemini to manage its core banking functions. ME Bank says it will still look after the design and security elements of the Temenos’ T24 core banking system, while Capgemini will provide a managed service for its infrastructure. In an interview with the Australian […]

Virgin Money to launch digital bank, looks for customer experience leadership

Virgin Money plans to launch a digital bank – VMDB – and is now recruiting for a head of customer experience. As Banking Technology reported in November, 10x Future Technologies, the start-up founded by former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins, is building a digital core banking platform for Virgin Money. The latter also signed a long-term […]

Digital officers of India, unite!

A group of senior executives in India’s digital sector are looking to create a group of chief digital officers (CDOs) or equivalent in the country.

Putting trust in chatbots

Artificial intelligence (AI) interfaces and chatbots could be revolutionary for financial institutions – but only if they strike the right balance between human and machine interaction.

Country spotlight: Lithuania – the young ones

Banking Technology explores a less known – but a noteworthy – destination for fintech in Europe, Lithuania, and its capital Vilnius. Whilst it is realistic that it cannot compete with the European Goliaths such as London or Paris, it wants to carve its own niche in the fintech space, and has quite a lot to offer.

Top fintech stories this week – 6 January 2017

Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! The first weekly news round-up of 2017. Happy 2017! Let it be a year of discovery and success.

S&P sells QuantHouse to original founder

S&P Global is selling trading solutions provider QuantHouse to one of its original founders, Pierre Feligioni. “The time is right for QuantHouse to regain focus and flexibility to exploit growing market opportunities in North America, Europe and Asia,” Feligioni states.

Idea Bank launches “pay as you drive” car loan in Poland

Idea Bank in Poland has launched “the world’s first pay-as-you-drive” car loan model – Happy Miles – with the payments calculated according to the travelled distance. A GPS device installed in the vehicle automatically sends the information about the distance covered to the lender.

MAIB in major core banking system upgrade

Moldova Agroindbank (MAIB), a universal bank in Moldova, has completed a major upgrade of its core software. The bank, a long-standing customer of Temenos, has moved from T24 R08 to R15.

Top five jargon winners in 2016

For some people in the world of fintech, they find comfort in the language of jargon. Pity these poor souls! Lost, confused and unable to communicate clearly and normally. Here are our top five jargon winners of 2016. You can avoid being on this list next year – just use English!  CIBC ends phase one […]