FinTech


Buy-side builds confidence as home-brew smart order routers gain ground

Buy-side firms stand to gain from developing their own smart order routers and carrying out their own capital markets research. But the growing independence of the buy-side must still be weighed against sell-side advantages of scale, according to speakers at the Trade Tech conference in Paris on Tuesday.

TEB expands mobile banking to include live chats

Türk Ekonomi Bankası, one of the private sector commercial banks in Turkey, and a strategic partner of BNP Paribas, has launched an enhanced digital banking service featuring the ability to hold live chat sessions with bank staff.

April 2015: Rewiring the Markets

Rewiring the Markets Is regulation making capital markets more efficient? Don’t bet on it … Procurement Policies Learn to love the annual budgeting process Supplier management Balancing cost and manageability in supplier sourcing Learning from experience What to look for as real-time payment systems proliferate unstoppable evolution How changes in payments will make some banks […]

Pan-European Instant Payment Forum kicks off in Frankfurt

The inaugural meeting of the Open Forum on Pan-European Instant Payments drew 77 representatives from 55 payment service providers, technology providers and other stakeholders to Frankfurt this week to kick off discussions about requirements and collaboration on infrastructure services to support instant payments at a pan- European level.

Nurturing innovation

Recently appointed president of investment and advisory firm Anthemis Amy Nauiokas talks about her plans to reinvent the world of financial services.

CBI/PwC survey sees rising optimism in UK financial services

Optimism among UK financial services firms rose strongly in the three months to March and profitability improved in most sectors, according to the latest quarterly CBI/PwC Financial Services Survey, but despite overall business volumes continuing to increase, the pace of growth was the slowest in a year

Bell ID supports ANZ New Zealand mobile app

Host card emulation specialist Bell ID is enabling the launch of ANZ New Zealand’s upgraded goMoney mobile app, which is set to feature a cloud-based HCE NFC mobile wallet. The project, for the New Zealand division of ANZ Bank, will bring contactless mobile payments to the smartphones of more than 120,000 ANZ customers. The ANZ […]

Banks scramble to keep up with digital race for pace

Despite rapid increases in innovation spending in financial services, many banks are still worried that it is taking too long to roll out new technologies – and that their own fragmented organisation is getting in the way, according to a new report by Accenture.

Santander launches ISA mobile app

Santander has launched the UK’s first standalone ISA mobile app , which was designed and developed with mobile specialist company Monitise.

Standard Chartered names Daimler man as CIO

Standard Chartered has named Michael Gorriz as group chief information officer, replacing Jan Verplancke, whose departure was announced earlier this year. Gorriz is currently vice president and CIO at Daimler.

BATS brings Hotspot FX matching engine to London

Hotspot, the institutional foreign exchange market owned and operated by BATS Global Markets, is to expand its European presence with the launch of its first Europe-based FX matching engine later this year. The new matching engine will be located in the London Slough Campus data centres and will target Europe and Asia and specific FX currencies that dominate the European and Asian trading hours.

EY leads latest round of new members for BIAN

The Banking Industry Architecture Network has announced six new members including ACI Worldwide, Atos, EY and Zafin. Its global network now numbers 58 banks, service providers, software vendors and academic partners.

Plato gains backing for new industry-owned equities trading utility

The Plato Partnership is a consortium of asset managers and broker-dealers working to build a non-profit trading utility in Europe. The group has just signed four more asset managers, including AXA Investment Managers, JP Morgan, Union Investment and Fidelity Worldwide.

‘Unstoppable evolution’ in payments poses threat to irrelevant banks

Banks have been warned that new entrants will come and ‘eat their lunch’ if they fail to remain relevant to the modern consumer in the face of an ‘unstoppable revolution’. The point was made repeatedly during sessions at the Payments International conference in London this week.

Regulations raise new questions about industry standards

Financial market regulations across the globe are increasingly focusing on risk management. This includes ensuring it is clear who firms are trading with and for, and confirming that firms can identify the instruments being traded. As a result, the field of reference data is increasingly held under the regulatory microscope and that lens extends to the standards used to identify financial instruments, writes Chris Pickles.

Deutsche Börse extends cooperation with Bombay exchange

Deutsche Börse, Eurex and the Bombay Stock Exchange have further extended their strategic cooperation offering connectivity services. Participants of BSE will be able to use Deutsche Börse’s resilient low latency N7 network services to connect to BSE back-ends in India through the Deutsche Börse access points in Hong Kong and Singapore.

LMAX Exchange and Z.com Trade extend liquidity solution

A three-party alliance between alternative FX market LMAX Exchange, retail FX provider Z.com Trade and retail FX trading platform MT4 have built a combined liquidity pool, which aims to provide ‘last look’ liquidity to a wider market.

Securing the future of NFC?

Ever since the deployment of Apple’s NFC solution – ‘Apple Pay’, and the various competitors launches since, there’s been speculation around what the future holds for consumer payments and how security will impact it

SIA to connect Hungarian CSD Keler to T2S

SIA, in partnership with Colt, has been awarded the contract to connect Hungarian central securities depository Keler to T2S, the new single European platform for the settlement of transactions in domestic and cross-border securities.

Citi Mobile Challenge extends deadline

The Citi Mobile Challenge, which seeks to unearth innovation and developer talent in some of the most far flung reaches of globe in a bid to get the best talent to help change the way the world banks, has extended its registration deadline to allow more people to take part.

March 2015: A Balancing Act

A Balancing Act Mobile banking and payments are forcing banks to radically reconsider their systems architectures and processes Cloud in financial services How banks learned to stop worrying and love the cloud Biometrics Voice and fingerprint recognition are no longer esoteric or inaccurate – in fact, they’re becoming the norm Nurturing innovation Amy Nauiokas talks about Anthemis’s vision […]

Mobile money goes global in 2015 reports GSMA

Mobile money is expanding rapidly as global smartphone penetration grows. This year, many providers are looking to expand their range of mobile money services to areas such as credit and savings – but operators must be wary of the remaining challenges, including regulation and market sizes, according to a new report by the GSMA.

Samsung banks on backward compatibility in payments play

Samsung has announced a new mobile payment service called Samsung Pay, that it claims will break the obstacles to mobile wallet adoption by being compatible with older point-of-sale terminals through the use of Magnetic Secure Transmission, which allows terminals using traditional magnetic stripe technology to accept payments.

SIA sees mobile future in 2015

Nearly two-thirds of Italians will be able to make real-time peer to peer payments using a mobile phone by this summer, according to Massimo Arrighetti, chief executive of Italian payment processor SIA. That’s not the end of SIA’s plans however, as the company focuses on an internationalisation agenda that targets 400 million European current account holders.

Lloyds to plough £1 billion into digital banking

Lloyds Bank plans to invest £1 billion in digital banking capability over the next three years, re-investing a third of the savings it hopes to make in its drive to become ‘simpler and more efficient’.

Hybrid skills shortage threatens growth say international bank chiefs

Limited availability of key skills is seen as a threat to growth prospects by 70% of chief executives in the financial services sector. A global survey by PwC shows that the disruptive impact of new technology and new competition in the sector has created new challenges for employers looking to hire in the months ahead. Concerns centre on the shortage of employees with the right combination of skills, with more than three quarters of executives looking for a broader range of skills when hiring than they did in the past.

Can we trust cryptocurrencies?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a currency system seeking successful adoption must be in want of trust. Trust that a representation of value, such as a paper note, is backed by real value or a genuine obligation to repay; trust that those representations will be accepted by others as such; and trust that the representations of value are not counterfeit.

Citi Mobile Challenge comes to Europe, Middle East and Africa

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.

The evolving relationship between banks and IT suppliers

Customers are looking for organisations that care about their needs in a way that is personalised, responsible, transparent and – of course – secure. In recognising this, banks are stepping up to the challenge and just as technology is at the heart of this business, so their relationship with IT suppliers is a key component of this value shift.

Investment network eToro migrates to hybrid cloud

Online social investment network eToro has moved its core IT infrastructure onto a hybrid cloud system. The platform will allow it to maintain sensitive applications in a private cloud while using a public cloud for others.

Capital markets firms must do more to protect IP

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.