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.
The annual transaction value of online, mobile and contactless payments will nearly double over the next four years, reaching $4.7 trillion by 2019, up from just over $2.5 trillion this year, with contactless payments primarily driven by card purchases rather than mobile.
In April, US post-trade utility the DTCC called for the US settlement cycle to be moved to T+2, to bring it into line with what’s happening in the rest of the world, which is converging on T+2 settlement cycles – at different speeds.
Combining development and operational deployment of software into a more integrated cycle can greatly improve time to market and improve efficiencies giving “10 times faster software driven innovation”, delegates at the annual SifmaTech trading systems conference and exhibition in New York were told.
As the European Parliament adopted MiFID II/MiFIR on 15 April, the financial services industry was left wondering what exactly the new transparency regime is going to mean. Despite a curiously low EC estimate of compliance costs, at between €512 and €732 million, it is clear that MiFID II will have a large impact on the tens of thousands of firms and counterparties that will now fall under its scope.
Banks are paying lip-service to the concept of customer service and are years behind on innovation – and unless they literally get their act together by collaboratively embracing open software libraries and sharing applications and data, they will not survive.
With the US markets heading in the same direction as Europe and elsewhere, the world is converging on T+2 settlement, albeit at different speeds.
Standard Chartered Bank and Singaporean incumbent telecoms operator SingTel have launched a new mobile money service called Dash, in which customers can move money onto their mobile device and then use it to make payments without ever coming into a bank branch.
Citi has chosen the ‘headliner’ finalists for its mobile innovation competition in Latin America, the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, which aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
Collateral management as it is currently known will no longer exist within a few years as increased regulatory demands, rising levels of automation and growth of industry tools to optimise collateral transform the industry, according to a new survey and report by Sapient Global Markets.
Kazakhstan’s Eurasian Bank has launched a mobile banking service which offers basic mobile banking features to Kazakh, Russian and English=speaking customers.
Across the financial services sector, the question is now less about where cloud technology is being used, and more about where it isn’t used. Where do financial institutions draw the line when it comes to deciding whether to keep a process or IT-related service in-house or outsource it to specialists such as Amazon Web Services, SAP and many others?
The speed at which the mobile market evolves is staggering. Just as we started to look at mobile first, where banks need to align their services and strategies to cater for mobile before desktop or other traditional channels, the notion of mobile-only is now creeping to the fore.
More than two years after the UK’s FSA introduced rules on mobile call recording for financial institutions, more than half of those affected still have not rolled out a solution – leaving many at risk of enforcement action, according to a new report by analyst firm Ovum and computer telephony specialist Teleware.
BIAN – the Bank Industry Architecture Network – has made further progress in its efforts to promote banking system standards internationally with the US First Niagara Bank and Computer Sciences Corporation and Japan’s Nomura joining as members.
This event is the only one high profile summit talking about supply china finance in China. With the scheme of “Seeking the Balance with Supply Chain Finance”, we will deeply discuss the topics like Supply Chain Finance Market Outlook and Trends for China;Collaboration in Supply Chain Finance;Products Innovation and Risk Control; Collaboration model of the whole supply chain;clearing&settlement etc.
Core banking system replacement projects are notoriously difficult and disaster-prone, but successful legacy migration and systems modernisation can be shown to improve profitability, at least for smaller banks.
Regulators want banks to modernise their IT systems to remove risk, but despite evidence that this will also improve profitability, few are making the leap.
Citi is hosting a major new mobile innovation competition in Latin America. Called the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, the competition aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
HSBC has installed free Wi-Fi in 650 of its UK branches, bringing the bank into line with Barclays, which introduced free Wi-Fi in February 2013. Both banks signed deals with BT to provide the connectivity, which is managed by BT as a white label service.
As contactless and mobile payment methods continue to grow, building societies and other financial institutions need to avoid being complacent about new technology, according to senior delegates speaking at the BSA annual conference in Manchester this week.
The introduction of a financial transaction tax could mean London losing a swathe of banking business to financial centres with a lighter regulatory regime, such as Hong Kong or Singapore not to mention the logistical and technical challenges for banks.
In one of the highest-profile tech hire in recent years, Barclays has poached Commonwealth Bank’s Michael Harte as chief operations and technology officer, filling the gap left by the surprise departure of Shaygan Kheradpir last autumn.
Confusion and concern over security is cited over and over again as the biggest barrier to widespread consumer uptake of mobile payments. And no wonder – confidence in the protection of sensitive cardholder data lies at the heart of trust in this technology. An EMV card as a physical asset is cryptographically secure. How can we emulate this security with something that is virtual?
Payment services provider Adyen has reported that one in five payments made on its network are now being made using a mobile device – a finding that reflects the rise of mobile payments worldwide, according to the firm.
US clearing body the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation is pushing a move to shorten the settlement cycle for the US markets to T+2, claiming support from industry bodies and firms including JP Morgan.
Standards consortium BIAN has released a new version of its industry standard framework containing more than 180 business scenarios including back-office, trade finance and sales.
Consolidation of market infrastructure in Europe will continue, as firms choose post-trade service providers that meet their needs in terms of cost-effectiveness or value-added services. However, some of the real cost issues in Europe are still to be addressed.
Balázs Vinnai, now with Misys, talks about changing banking and payments technology needs.
Intraday liquidity reporting becomes mandatory next January. It might just provide an opportunity to reassess the way banks approach risk.
Why are different parts of Africa experiencing widely different levels of success with mobile banking, despite years of experience in Kenya? Panellists at the IPS conference in London offered a range of explanations
Partnerships and alliances with innovative digital entrepreneurs will allow the large incumbent banks to adapt and thrive in the new economic ecosystems being created by the mobile and digital revolutions currently changing the industry.
The banking industry is complex by its nature but banks and bankers should look up from their budgets, listen to their customers, stop whining about regulations and collaborate on industry issues.
Mobile money service M-Pesa has launched in Romania, bringing an idea hugely successful in Kenya to a European Union member state for the first time.
UK consumers have doubled the amount of transactions they make on their mobile phones over the last year, according to new figures released by the BBA.
Despite the well-known benefits of cloud computing, 75% of banks in Europe are using outdated core banking systems. Why are some banking institutions slower to adopt cloud than others?
Orange Business Services and technology infrastructure provider SIA have done a deal aimed at encouraging European banks and merchants to manage more payments via mobile point of sale terminals.
Brazilian banking group Bradesco is planning to roll out NFC mobile payments across Brazil by summer 2014, through a partnership with mobile operator Claro and technology provider Giesecke & Devrient.
US financial institutions are spending more on risk mitigation than ever before, according to a new study by post-trade services utility the DTCC.
While established banks struggle with their legacy systems, smaller players and new entrants are quickly adopting new technologies – but there are some trends in digital banking that are being slowly adopted by the banking industry as a whole.
