Controversy over Sharia Law reached Hollywood recently as protesters boycotted the glamorous Beverly Hills Hotel over a tough new code introduced by the hotel’s owner, the Sheikh of Brunei. More prosaically, bankers remain divided over how best to respond to demand for Sharia-compliant banking.
During a Money20/20 keynote, New York State Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin M. Lawsky raised the possibility of a new addition in the proposed rules; licensing specially designed for virtual currency startups.
Yesterday the CFPB posted on its Website the announcement of its next field hearing, 11 a.m. EST, Thursday, Nov. 13, in Wilmington, Del.
While more than a quarter of American households still were either unbanked or underbanked last year, as was the case in 2011, the proportion of unbanked households declined to 7.7 percent or 9.6 million households, compared with 8.2 percent in 2011, according to the latest report from the FDIC.
The hypothesis that seems to be gaining ground is that banks have a wider responsibility in society. If we believe that, then part of their responsibility must clearly be to provide banking products and services that serve the financial needs of the less affulent.
Those of us immersed in payments may have a unique perspective on Apple Pay, but what about other folks? I asked one self-proclaimed Apple “fan boy” to give the mobile wallet a test drive.
Giving consumers what they really need and want from mobile payments will require making payments as invisible as possible.
India is on the brink of a huge economic transformation and making money digital is a crucial part of the solution.
Do banks still need branches, or does the smartphone make a physical presence obsolete? Panellists disagreed during a spirited debate hosted by ATM maker Wincor Nixdorf in Istanbul last week.
In the rush towards digital banking, are banks in danger of abandoning one of their best ways to engage with customers – their branches?
Finding ways to use GPR prepaid card usage data as a tool to help thin- and no-file consumers build credit has been an enticing yet elusive goal for the industry for years.
The regulatory spotlight is shining on high frequency traders and dark pools, but the technological changes that have driven down trading costs for everyone will not be reversed. With market making increasingly the preserve of profit maximising algorithmic traders, there is a growing responsibility on institutions to control where their trades are going and how they are being executed. Those that do not are writing checks to HFTs with clients’ money
In light of the intense regulatory focus and pressure on prepaid cards, it’s time for program managers to step up and manage their own compliance to the point of being “exam-ready.”
Retailers and financial institutions struggle with costs of data breaches.
TD Bank has reached a settlement over a 2012 data breach that compromised customers’ personal information.
The recent nomination of the British Banker’s Association as an intelligence node and source of benchmarks and practices in the UK’s financial infrastructure, via CBEST, has pushed the role of the banking sector in detecting and remediating breaches into the spotlight. So what can banks do to ensure their cyber defences are up to the task?
As banks develop new retail styles, they face new security challenges as the changing use of space in-store means surveillance and alarm systems must evolve in tandem.
RDC specialist’s busy year includes an IPO and a fast-growing prepaid platform.
The social contract between the banking system and society is fundamentally broken. We deserve a financial system that we can all be proud of, one that is fairer and more sustainable than the current iteration.
The internet has opened the door to purchase almost anything from any part of the world through electronic payments. As globalisation continues to flourish – especially in the banking industry – it’s now possible to transfer money across different countries with ease and speed. While this has increased the opportunity for businesses to extend their reach globally, it also creates an appealing opportunity for criminals.
The CFPB is gathering information about the methods banks and credit unions use to screen consumers before approving or denying them a checking account.
While a great deal of attention has been given to Lloyds Banking Group’s retail operations as its various elements are split up, less has been given to its activities in transaction banking, where it is “one year into a three-year journey” to transform itself and its customer offerings to create“the best global transaction bank in this region”.
It is essential for banks to ensure they have the right strategies and technology in place now, if they are to retain their position as market-leading payment providers in the future, writes Saket Sharma,chief information officer, treasury services, BNY Mellon.
The M&A market for payments companies is booming, as larger companies look to acquire smaller innovators. Even if no deal is on the immediate horizon, early preparation pays off when a sale transaction is at hand.
If we want to consolidate the gains we’ve made and scale the innovations we’ve seeded, we need to think big. We need to redefine financial services from the pursuit of wealth to the pursuit of health.
GPR cards are quickly moving beyond their traditional role as an alternative to checking accounts for the financially underserved, to serve broader use cases for a changing demographic.
In the ongoing discussion about the need to use data to increase business value, it is imperative to substantiate the argument with practical, real-world use cases. Otherwise, the debate becomes just another line of marketing waffle around big data – an area already suffering from too much hype.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of World Payments Report. In this extract from the report, which was launched at Sibos this week, the impact of innovation on payments is examined.
The rise of Facebook has been one of the most striking cultural phenomena of the past decade. In January 2007 the site had around 25 million users. But by July 2014, Facebook had reached 2.2 billion users; a number equivalent to one out of every three people on this planet. Meanwhile, Twitter had emerged as the platform of business and news, with 500 million posts ‘tweeted’ daily by its 271 million active users.
A lack of available collateral to meet demand has become a global problem, with various models being deployed to ensure financial institutions meet the changing regulatory requirements.
The debut of SAP’s Financial Services Network at Sibos last year led many to see it as a threat to Swift’s plans for corporate connectivity.
In a recently published white paper on intraday liquidity reporting*, Swift urges financial institutions to initiate programs now to address serious challenges with regard to data availability, centralisation, aggregation and interpretation in meeting Basel Committee guidelines. Greater industry collaboration will also help to accelerate moves towards cost effective and sustainable models and solutions.
The growth of peer to peer lending demonstrates that there is an alternative to the traditional lending model of banks. But can crowd funders ever replace the incumbents and do they enjoy long-run advantages or face being co-opted?
Changing trade patterns and attempts to ‘de-dollarise’ international commerce are changing the landscape of trade finance, as new partnerships emerge.
The original concept of the ISO 20022 was to create a repository of data used in financial messaging to communicate business information of any type – and to be able to add any types of data that might arise in the future. There has been a lot of focus on the use of the standard in payments and securities messaging roles, this has obscured its current and potential use in other areas.
Building a single regional market is a goal for many groups of nations; however Europe’s development of a single settlement platform is the only effort to come to fruition.
Forget Bitcoin, cryptographic payments networks will be the real game-changer, according to many people working in the payments world.
Data in all its forms and access to it in real time is becoming ever more critical as financial institutions seek to manage myriad risks.
Crypto and virtual currencies have garnered plenty of headlines in the past couple of years. Now financial regulators around the world are turning the spotlight on these instruments and attempting to bring them into the legal fold.
Global financial markets are experiencing a paradigm shift as governments, regulators and participants recalibrate the processes and structures underpinning global finance. The challenge is to repair and remedy where needed, with dialogue between central banks, regulators and participants, but also to avoid creating fragmented markets or worse, unintentionally reintroducing risk.
