Growth in the volume of debit and credit card purchases in the UK continues to outstrip the growth in value as consumers use their cards more frequently for lower value payments. A threefold increase in contactless payments was a factor in the trend.
Young Asian consumers on motorcycles want to be able to start a transaction while riding and finish it at an ATM. For many, that ability is about to become a reality as ASEAN banks switch to real time core banking systems.
The UK Government is to examine the potential of digital currencies as positive force in the wider economy and as a means of encouraging innovation in financial services.
After a decade of being the ATM maker you’ve never heard of, Diebold is returning to Europe and a year into his tenure as president and chief executive at the firm, Andy Mattes thinks that the company’s profile is about to change.
A Financial Conduct Authority investigation that found banks and brokers are failing to provide best execution highlights the need for more responsibility and education among their buy-side customers.
The reason Europe calls it a regulatory ‘hearing’ is that it is an opportunity to hear views from both regulators and the market. Of course, that’s just part of the experience as many other senses are triggered when 400 people are locked in a basement for 2 days, deprived of connectivity, food and caffeine …
New intraday liquidity reporting tools set out by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision could pose a serious challenge for banks, according to a new white paper by Swift.
The London Metal Exchange is working with Colt to launch a new dedicated network interconnecting all its systems including the LME Clear clearing service.
Entries for the Banking Technology Awards 2014 have been open for a while now, but as we move into the last few weeks, this is always a time when we are flooded with questions about the process. By way of response, here are some guidelines based on my experience chairing the judging panel over the past 11 years.
The European Commission wants to bring down the barriers to cloud computing in a move that promises to revolutionise the way transaction banks can serve clients.
London Underground, DLR and Overground trains are to accept contactless payments, following an announcement from Transport for London. The decision comes as mobile operator EE sets out plans to support NFC payments on London Underground, the UK’s biggest building society begins issuing contactless cards to its customers, and Apple explores cooperation with Visa on a potential new mobile wallet.
The UK’s high street banks are failing to satisfy consumers and may be in danger of falling behind the big supermarkets, leaving them vulnerable to competitors, according to a new report by VerintSystems and the Customer Contact Association.
Nordic financial services group Nordea has gone live in Frankfurt and London with a web-based trade finance solution, which it says will help to strengthen its international trade finance business.
Trading technology firm Corvil has launched a new streaming analytics platform which it says will help exchanges, banks, brokers and other trading firms to sweep away the IT failures of the past and learn to better understand the market.
A European financial transaction tax on equities and derivatives trades could be damaging for European liquidity levels and the City of London, but it also looks set to impose serious operational challenges for banks, brokers and their buy-side clients following the failure of a UK appeal to the European Court of Justice earlier this year.
Commissioner Scott O’Malia of the US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission has called for continuing international co-operation on market surveillance and warned that current oversight mechanisms are flawed in terms of the data they collect and the way that they analyse it.
Essential parts of the UK retail banking sector lack effective competition and do not meet the needs of personal consumers or SMEs, according to government body the Competition and Markets Authority, which is now planning to launch a full investigation that could last 18 months.
Current account holders in the UK are switching between banks more often than before – but with some customers struggling to see the difference between banks, more needs to be done to make switching worthwhile.
Surprising changes in customer behaviour suggests that banks need to revisit their approach to branch banking and digital services, according to a new study by Accenture.
Milan-based payment processing specialist SIA says that a migration of its systems to the Red Hat Linux environment has led to a 270% reduction in processing times.
Unlike manufacturing companies, which run their operations on a single predominant ERP system supported by a few auxiliary solutions, banks have added layer upon layer of technology, ending up with an unmanageable snarl of systems and applications. Just to put things in perspective, it is estimated that on average global banks have more than 5,000 applications.
Regulators across the globe appear divided on the question of whether tighter control of algorithmic trading is necessary: the Australians are pretty laid back about it, the Germans are ahead of the game, while political debate rages in the US …
Setting up a bank in the UK is costly, time-consuming, heavily regulated and not easy. As a result, the dynamic, start-up culture that drives innovation in many other sectors is less prevalent within banking and financial services.
MiFID II could cause serious problems for banks, brokers and other market participants in the run up to the January 2017 implementation, according to executives attending a meeting chaired by the European Securities Markets Authority in Paris earlier this week.
The rise of new technologies is drastically redefining both the responsibilities of chief financial officers and the way they work, providing the ability tomake better organisational decisions with faster, accurate and more reliable data.
Analyst firm Juniper Research reckons more people will be using mobile apps for banking than web-based options by 2019, as the 800 million people who used their phones for banking more than doubles to 1.75 billion in five years.
Banks are continuing to spend money on branches, but they are dramatically changing their role to become centres for sale-oriented advice rather than service-oriented transactions, driven by the rapid growth of digital banking.
As the implementation of T2S approaches, there is still a gap between the readiness levels of different types of market participant, new Celent research finds. But a ‘wait and see’ approach can only take some firms so far, argues Isabelle Olivier, head of clearing and settlement EMEA at Swift
The EU has set a date for the introduction of MiFID II, the long-awaited legislation from the European Commission which was recently approved by the European Parliament. The decision follows years of consultation and negotiation, but serious reservations remain about how transparency will be applied to non-equity markets.
Shortening settlement cycles and increased regulatory oversight are pushing financial institutions to reform their post-trade processes. That can only be a good thing, according to a new whitepaper from trading technology specialist Fidessa.
Australian broker Macquarie Futures has begun using a cloud-based reconciliation service from Gresham Computing and Amazon Web Services, which the broker says will help it to make its North American derivatives business more efficient.
Italy’s Banca Popolare di Bari has chosen ATM manufacturer NCR to help it revitalise its branch network with a new set of systems that it says will help to cut queues and better connect with customers.
The Fairbanking Foundation, a non-profit charity focused on improving the financial health of consumers, has launched a drive to encourage banking providers to improve their products and achieve an additional 15 Fairbanking Mark certifications from the Foundation by October 2015.
The European Securities and Markets Authority has disputed claims that it should be doing more to help financial institutions connect with trade repositories, following industry complaints that the regulator has not allowed enough time, has issued key specifications at the last minute, and is now scaling back its involvement with the job unfinished.
In a landmark ruling, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the intermediated settlement of financial exchanges is an abstract idea and therefore not patent-eligible. David Puth, chief executive of CLS, which won the case in question. discusses the implications of the ruling.
French trading solutions and connectivity specialist Ullink has agreed to acquire NYFIX and Metabit from ICE Group, as part of a deal the international company says will give it brand recognition in the US and new opportunities in Asia.
The BBA has called for regulators to do more to improve competition in UK retail banking by making changes to the way payments, capital, access to funding and proportionality of regulation are handled and opening up more opportunities for challenger banks.
Rule Financial, the London-based investment banking consultancy, has been acquired by GFT Technologies, adding some €42 million to the German technology firm’s turnover for the second half of this year.
A lesson learned from the global financial crises was how critical free cash flow can be for corporates, their customers, and their suppliers. As businesses seek to unlock cash flow from day-to-day operations, savvy treasurers have discovered vendor payments as a means to extend payment terms while improving vendor health, writes Chris Bozek, Managing Director, Head of Global Trade and Supply Chain Products Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Banks need to do more to educate consumers about the ways in which they may be exposing themselves to fraud risks, according to a new report by Aite Group using data from ACI Worldwide, which notes that one in four consumers has been victimised by card fraud in the past five years.
