Are you suspicious? This is a key question at the heart of efforts to tackle money laundering: if you work for a bank or other financial institution and have suspicions money laundering is happening, you have a legal duty to speak up.
PSD2 comes into force on 13 January 2018. It aims to open up the European payments market to greater competition and transparency, but its effect will be more far-reaching, acting as a catalyst for innovation not just in payments, but in the wider financial services market.
Are GDPR and PSD2 really that dissimilar and incompatible? Or do they combine to create a robust security mind set?
The Financial Stability Board has stated in its first report on AI that the risks they pose need monitoring.
Fintech companies will find that they are a different kind of business in 2018 than they were in 2017.
The recent World Economic Forum (WED) report “Sweden could stop using cash by 2023”, says that the country is moving towards favouring cards and mobile payment apps. Yet retailers are expected to accept cash for at least a couple of years afterwards.
Supply and demand are the bedrock of market-based economics. To achieve economic equilibrium, supply and demand must be in balance. If one is too high or too low, the system is in a state of disequilibrium, associated with inefficient allocation of goods – not a healthy state.
Nick Kerigan, MD of Future Payments at Barclaycard, looks at how innovation is helping the payment industry to balance offering seamless payments with keeping people in control of their money.
Recent cyberattacks, such as the October 2017 Swift attack, show how vulnerable financial firms across the globe are to the machinations of hackers.
To date, there hasn’t been a way to understand if online users are being compromised or to be sure precisely what they are seeing whilst visiting and interacting with a web page. We know that endpoint security and anti-viruses fail and online users can be infected even with all the precautions that they may take. Server-side security is now very mature and excellent progress has been made in that particular field.
To reap the real benefits of technology, treasurers should be thinking about an extended journey, not a day trip.
Technology is having a tremendous impact on the way communities shop so changes are more or less expected as we see these shopping mall operators push back on so many dire predictions being made about them. But can they change and yes, could these changes lead to a greater overlap with banking as it exists today? Do we even need differentiation between the two and yes, will they both be able to keep us satisfied when it comes to access to our cash?
Rapid changes are occurring in the wealth management space and the level of disruption in how advice and capital are managed is only beginning. Wealth management is a monumental industry. The players in the space run the gamut from gigantic hedge funds to individuals who manage their own investments. This changing wealth management landscape is driving a significant uptick in transactions.
We are living through a period of unprecedented innovation in finance, and regulators know they need to adapt to keep up with the fast pace of change. To understand and manage the risks posed by new products, services, and business models, many financial authorities are setting up regulatory sandboxes or reglabs.
Through increasing functionality and by consistently pushing boundaries, super apps could have the power to influence, shape and even redefine m-commerce of tomorrow. Tom Wood, co-founder and managing partner of experience design agency, Foolproof, shares his insight on the opportunities that super apps could bring to m-commerce.
The Canadian Prepaid Providers Organization (CPPO) released its second annual benchmark study, “Canadian Open-Loop Prepaid Market: 2016”, that shows 17% growth of the open-loop prepaid card market in Canada between 2015 and 2016.
In an exclusive interview with payment specialist Volante Technologies, Nadish Lad, director – head of payments product, explains the firm’s foundation, vision and its key unique selling propositions (USPs).
Insurance is an industry at a turning point. Few could have predicted that “innovation” would become one of its watchwords, but as the digital revolution spurred on by insurtech gathers pace fundamental changes are beginning to take hold.
Joining FirstView Financial in July 2017 as president and CEO, Bob Raffo has quickly become a proponent of developing the paytech segment, the opportunities it presents to serve larger consumer and B2B bases and accelerate payment processes.
It may not provide all the ticks on everyone’s wish list, but the new SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme (SCT Inst) could well be the start of something even more seismic for the European payments sector and also pave the way for a different, more immediate way of conducting business.
Payments are changing rapidly, and the industry is struggling to keep pace. Many banks and other card issuers — including the service providers they rely on — lack the agility to stay competitive and quickly deliver the new products, features, and payments experiences today’s customers want.
As we reflect on 2017 and look ahead to 2018, we spoke with Colleen Dorwart, Retail Gift Card Association (RGCA) board chair, about the most popular gifts in America.
On the surface Handel or Shostakovich seem a world away from the world of finance. Yet, strange as it may seem, the similarities are there. This is because both the mechanics behind music and the technology underpinning the digital transformation are – unless you’ve had first-hand experience of either – pretty abstract concepts to understand.
One of the more entertaining aspects of this year’s Sibos in Toronto was the continuation of the rivalry between the event’s host, Swift, and distributed ledger technology (DLT) firm Ripple.
Joe Daly, COO payments processing North America, Paysafe, talks to us about all things paytech.
By adopting a layered model that moves the focus from presentation to orchestration, banks can deliver an omni-access digital service that truly works for customers, says Peter-Jan Van de Venn, CCO of Dutch digital core banking platform provider Five Degrees.
Since the global financial crisis the banking industry has witnessed three mega-trends: slow growth, digitisation and new regulation. None of these trends look likely to abate any time soon and in fact, it appears that all of them are set to intensify in the short to medium term.
Fintech is upending the way we understand the financial sector in Latin America; financial services are experiencing deep transformations as a result of start-ups’ love for change driven by new technologies.
A young woman has made plans to join a friend for dinner at a restaurant across town, and with a few clicks on a mobile device she sets her night in motion. Her go-to ride-sharing service has sent a car, she’s ordered a cappuccino from her favorite coffee shop – this one is free because she’s a loyalty member – and her social app pings her friend to let him know her ETA.
With ten years in fintech under my belt, I have seen the creation of the word itself. I have also seen the rise of various hypes, adoption of buzzwords, sky-high funding rounds, epic failures and a surprising knowledge gap in what is the world’s biggest industry.
The uncertainty produced by the Brexit vote – and the turbulent negotiations since – has led some to question whether the UK can maintain its status as a global fintech capital. But for London as much as for its rivals in the US, China and beyond, the key may lie in capitalising on the next competitive edge for fintech centres.
Watching the recent of smartphone launches, I am taken aback by just how much smartphone manufacturers have led to the normalisation and acceptance of biometrics by consumers.
There is a misconception about blockchain in the industry surrounding the belief that it is a solution to making faster and securer payments. There are some issues around the blockchain that explain why, in its present form, it isn’t an ideal replacement.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been sharing some extracts from a new crime thriller, Trading Down, by Stephen Norman, long serving CIO/CTO of RBS Global Markets. Here, in the third and final extract, we return to the action at the Hamilton Datacentre crisis.
Cyber risks have evolved significantly over the last couple of years across industry sectors. The financial services industry, in particular, has become the target of choice with malicious actors exploring every avenue they can in order to identify areas of vulnerability.
Clearing houses and central clearing counterparties (CCPs) play a pivotal role in managing collateral and counterparty risk, in increasing standardisation and transparency of financial markets, and in the credit enhancement process for clearing banks. For such systemically critical functions, how appropriate are innovative new technologies such as distributed ledger technology (DLT)?
A report released last year by EY and major Singaporean bank DBS declared China the “undoubted centre of global fintech innovation and adoption”. And China isn’t the only Asian country making waves in the fintech sphere. Overall fintech investments in the Asia-Pacific region reached $10.5 billion in 2016 – the highest amount witnessed to date since 2010, according to CB Insights data.
Trick or treat! It’s Halloween and brands everywhere are using spooky season as a way to have some fun with customers. However, any ghoulish behaviour belongs firmly in the land of fun, and should not creep into everyday customer interactions
Here’s a second extract from Trading Down, by Stephen Norman, which continues the drama in the Hamilton Datacentre.
Banks need to innovate to stay competitive, here’s how.
