California based technology companies Varo Money and Envestnet | Yodlee have teamed up to drive fintech innovation. Varo Money, a mobile-only banking start-up hopes to leverage Envestnet | Yodlee’s data analytics and aggregation platform to provide customers with a more customised mobile banking experience, and better insights into their financial well-being.
The National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) is the first Middle East bank to introduce real-time cross-border payments on Ripple’s blockchain network. Ripple says its tech fits within NBAD’s existing infrastructure and offers an end-to-end payment flow providing “transaction immutability and payment integrity”. Vineet Varma, managing director and head of global transaction banking, NBAD, says […]
Swiss-based Vontobel Asset Management has chosen SimCorp Coric to automate its client communications and fund reporting processes. Vontobel will deploy SimCorp Coric as a hosted solution via Microsoft Azure and the agreement will see the Coric solution replace in-house manual processes as well as an existing incumbent third-party solution. Stuart Keeler, managing director of SimCorp […]
Swift Innotribe has partnered with the Russian National Swift Member and User Group (Rosswift) comprising the Bank of Russia, the National Settlement Depository, Sberbank, and Alfa-Bank, to launch its first start-up challenge in the region.
Swift Innotribe’s “Start-up Challenge for Africa” is open for applications. For the third year running, the challenge will be part of Swift’s African Regional Conference (ARC) held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, from 16-18 May 2017. ARC typically attracts up to 500 delegates from around 40 countries, according to Swift. It offers the usual mix of […]
FinTecSystems, Fidor Bank and credit comparison site Smava have teamed up to offer the “first fully” automatic credit system with an “immediate payout” in Germany. Called Kredit2Go, the entire process of requesting, processing and disbursement is digital, and the payment is made immediately after the digital signature. FinTecSystems provides the “building blocks” for the credit assessment […]
Autoriti Monetari Brunei Darussalam (AMBD), the central bank of Brunei, has partnered with regulatory fintech vendor, Vizor Software. AMBD will use Vizor’s solution to collect financial data from external entities via a single portal, to generate reports and insights. AMBD says this is a key step to building a sound and dynamic financial system. The […]
Tech consultancy firm Capgemini is calling for start-up applicants for its InnovatorsRace50 competition – with the chance to win equity-free funding of $50,000. To celebrate 50 years since its launch, Capgemini’s InnovatorsRace50 wants entrepreneurs and “disruptive early-stage start-ups” to apply. The top five businesses, one from each theme, will win equity-free funding of $50,000 each. […]
Spotcap, an online lending company headquartered in Berlin, Germany, has announced it is now operating in Auckland, New Zealand, as a registered financial services provider and is accepting applications for credit of up to NZD 250,000 ($182,000) from eligible businesses.
Mastercard saw faster growth than Visa in the Americas in 2015 but, with 43%, Visa still has significantly the largest market share, according to research by Retail Banking Research (RBR). According to RBR’s Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2021 study, the number of Mastercard cards grew by 6% in the Americas in 2015, […]
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Deutsche Bank £163 million for failing to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering (AML) control framework during the period between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2015. This is the largest financial penalty for AML controls failings ever imposed by the FCA, or its predecessor the Financial Services […]
UK-based mobile banking firm Tide has launched with its business account app for SMEs. As Banking Technology reported in July 2016, Tide was gearing up for its launch and said it will offer a “nimble small business current account”, with a swift set-up and no monthly fees. It claims to be among the “world’s first” […]
Nava Finance has been granted approval by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to begin offering personal loans to consumers. The company says it is now focused on working towards an initial launch date, which will be announced when all testing and other preparations are fully completed. Nava sources loan funding from institutional investors and […]
Powered by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Digital Financial Services (DFS) Innovation Lab has launched a new high-intensity fintech bootcamp for companies in Sub-Saharan Africa and and South Asia.
Bank Central Asia (BCA), an Indonesian bank with over 1,100 branches and 17,000 ATMs, has established a venture capital company, Central Capital Ventura (CCV). CCV has a paid-up capital of IDR 200 billion ($15 million).
India’s IT giant Wipro has teamed with and invested in supply chain finance platform Tradeshift to offer a cloud-based source-to-pay (S2P) business-process-as-a-service (BPaaS) solution. The partnership will provide digitalisation and automation in procurement, finance and accounting functions; and combines Tradeshift’s platform with Wipro’s integrated S2P services. Along with the partnership Wipro Ventures, the strategic investment […]
BNP Paribas Securities Services has acquired a minority stake in an Fortia Financial Solutions. This deal helps Fortia, a start-up that provides compliance software to the financial services industry, cement the relationship it formed with the bank during the inaugural session of the fintech accelerator by L’Atelier BNP Paribas.
Fintech zeitgeist! Welcome to the third in a new series of brief reports. Every Monday, we might look back at last week; look ahead to this week; share a few thoughts (our own or others); or discuss anything that catches our eye. This week we welcome the views of guest writer Soumik Roy. Last week, […]
DCB Bank, a private sector bank in India, plans to allow customer transactions and account opening through iris scans for Aadhaar authentication. The Aadhaar infrastructure, created by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), onboards customers and provide them with online services. UIDAI collects the biometric and demographic data of residents, stores them in a […]
Barclaycard is trialling contactless donations as it says charities may be missing out on more than £80 million each year by only accepting cash donations. According to its research, four in ten (42%) Brits say they carry less cash now than they did three years ago. While, one in seven (15%) people admit to walking […]
Francisco Lorca, MD of Startupbootcamp FinTech London, a UK-based accelerator, highlights the pitfalls of starting a fintech firm, drawing on his extensive 17-year experience in finance and entrepreneurship.
UK-based Advanced Payment Solutions (trading as APS Financial) has launched a new mobile platform as it looks to compete with “neo” mobile banks. New services include the ability to set up a new account via the Cashplus app. Customers can also manage payments and transfers, get “instant access” to their money or arrange overdrafts using […]
US-based internet security firm Cyren has discovered an outbreak of malware which is stealing passwords as well as Bitcoin from cryptocurrency wallets on PCs. Avi Turiel, director of threat research at Cyren, says in a blog post this “versatile” keylogger malware is being delivered as an attachment to phony bank transfer emails, which inform the […]
Investment management software firm Linedata has acquired Gravitas Technology Services, a provider of middle office and technology services to the asset management industry. Gravitas is based mainly in New York and Mumbai, and the deal is part of Linedata’s ambitions in North America. It follows last year’s purchase of fellow investment management software provider, Derivation. […]
Turkey’s largest bank Isbank has unveiled its new app, IsCep, to allow “for the first time” banking and stock exchange transactions through one application with real-time data. The bank says IsCep has been integrated into its Mobil Borsa (mobile stock market) and is also available for all foreign customers in Turkey. Isbank deputy chief executive […]
There was an interesting discussion at the recent Finance Disrupted event in London, organised by The Economist, that highlighted the opportunity for regtech to support financial inclusion.
Canada’s Scotiabank has opened its new 70,000 square-feet “digital factory” in Toronto for fintech innovation. It is designed to be an innovation hub and incubator for the 23 million Scotiabank customers across the world, and is one among five centres in a network of such fintech-focused innovation centres. Mexico, Peru, Chile and Colombia will be […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Financial is splashing out $880 million for money transfer operator MoneyGram International. This is Ant Financial’s first acquisition of a US-listed company.
Pan-African banking conglomerate Ecobank has launched a fintech challenge for start-ups. The event, open to Africa’s entrepreneurs, innovators and developers, provides an opportunity to win $500,000 in funding as well as partner with Ecobank and roll out services across 36 countries.
Like a charming European fairy tale, questions over who shall inherit a crown and become the new ruler were raised. At the Economist’s Finance Disrupted conference, “Collaborate or die”, held yesterday (25 January) in London, the city’s pre-eminence in the fintech field fell under scrutiny. Initial discussions looked at why this metropolis is such a […]
Citi’s global perspectives and solutions team has issued a 100-page report on digital disruption in the fintech industry. It has analysed venture capital (VC) investments in the fintech industry between 2010 and 2016, as well as the emerging technologies across the globe.
As with any revolution, open banking will have winners and losers. How to stay competitive in the digital era?
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has issued a cryptobond for Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC) using its capital markets blockchain platform. CBA says it is “the first blockchain bond issuance by a government entity both in Australia and in the world”.
Fintech start-up Railsbank has signed its first partner, Arkéa Banking Services (Credit Mutuel Arkéa’s subsidiary), to use its platform to deliver SEPA payment services and IBANs across Europe.
Austria’s Erste Bank und Sparkassen can now verify new customers’ IDs via video. The functionality has been developed with specialist provider IDnow and introduced just a few weeks following the approval by the country’s Financial Market Authority (FMA).
The British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) wants to serve the fintech firms in the state better.
HSBC plans the closure of 62 of its UK branches in 2017, with the loss of up to 180 jobs. This will bring the number of branches it has in the country to 625 by the end of 2017. It says it has no intention to close any further branches in 2017 and this marks […]
The UK’s Post Office has entered the banking market as a new industry-wide agreement with the nation’s banks comes into effect. From today (24 January), 99% of UK personal bank customers and over 75% of business customers can do their day-to-day banking at the Post Office – described as the “biggest expansion in face-to-face banking […]
Equifax Canada has launched the first phase of a new multi-million dollar technology platform to provide financial data. The company organises, assimilates and analyses data on more than 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses across the globe. The first phase of its new platform is designed to provide predictive insights about consumer […]
