In 5 years plastic cards will be dead! A bold prediction for sure and likely one you’ve heard in any of a dozen payment mixers you’ve attended over the last year. But for our restaurant brands, we see a more nuanced picture that requires us to execute a simple, perhaps obvious, formula.
The five most important takeaways from Money20/20 that will shape payments for the foreseeable future.
Craig James explains how passporting with an e-money license allows U.S. prepaid companies to conduct business in EU countries.
Banking and disruptive change go hand in hand. There was the era of deregulation. Then the 2008 crisis and the era of re-regulation. Then PPI. Now there is digital, and no sector is secure from its transformative power, not even a heavily fortified one …
In this age of tablets and smartphones, customers expect instantaneous access to information and services. Emails, tweets, shopping: everything is now real time or forget about it. As a result, instant payment is upon us, writes David Andrieux. Benefits of instant payments aren’t hard to see. For the economy, they allow consumers and businesses to […]
There is no doubt that IT and IT projects are becoming increasingly critical to banks’ success, yet a recent survey by Accenture found that only 6% of the directors of the world’s largest banks have any IT experience …
The UK’s payments system infrastructure is widely recognised as market-leading. However, evolving customer expectations and innovation in the fintech sector dictate that now is no time to rest on laurels. Work must begin today to develop the payments experience that will be taken for granted in 20 years.
The news of major lay-offs to come put a dampener on otherwise good news in the financial sector jobs market in the UK last month. According to the Morgan McKinley London Employment Monitor, October saw an across the board increase in both new job opportunities and new job seekers.
Recent years have seen unprecedented changes to the technical infrastructure of financial institutions. Many of these changes have been driven by regulatory mandates drawn up in response to the financial crisis of 2007/8. As the Global Systematically Important Banks battle to comply with the January 2016 deadline of the Basel III Directive BCBS239, it is […]
Legislators and regulators are grappling with how to apply existing money transmitter laws to an emerging industry. Read about the challenges and latest developments across the U.S.
Eight years on from the global financial crisis, and banks continue to face a growing number of challenges. Many have ceased or significantly reduced proprietary trading, with the resulting reduction in both risk and reward. This period has also seen lower risk appetite among many investors and continuing global competition which has put pressure on profit margins,
From the very first coins changing hands in 700 BC, through to the Bank of England pioneering the first use of a pre-printed form – or cheque – in 1717, and the emergence of credit cards in the mid 20th century, how we pay for goods and services has continued to evolve. We now face a cashless society
The fact that London’s financial services sector is also a hot spot for technology innovation is not news. In 2014, investment in financial technology firms grew by 136%. Earlier this year, George Osborne identified London’s financial technology sector as a particularly bright spot in the recovering economy – not surprising when you consider the transformational effect that information technology continues to have on the industry
The selfie boom was born in 2003 with the world’s first front-facing camera, and millennials are the first generation to grow up with technology focused on one’s self, bringing new expectations to the meaning of personalized, digital services.
Personalization has become more important than ever to consumers, as they shun anonymous mass advertising in favor of individual reviews and one-to-one brand engagement. But what if instead of helping big brands to adapt, you were to lead the change? This is where competitive advantage comes to life.
Clearly there’s an issue with how banks manage cross-border money transfers and payments. The process is inefficient, costly and archaic. That being said, I can understand why it is the way it is—building a truly global platform that enables FedEx-like payment transfers is no easy feat.
The fintech revolution is now firmly established, and disruptive technologies are blooming all across the sector. From securities to payments, everyone in the sector is watching to see how the next innovation will affect their business.
Technology has infiltrated every facet of our lives, fundamentally changing our behaviour patterns and our expectations of what constitutes a good customer experience. The banking sector has not been immune to these changes; the industry has been forced to drastically transform its business processes and services in order to keep up with customers’ expectations. Today, customer satisfaction is judged not by the smile on the face of a cashier, but on the speed with which one can gain mobile access
America has led Europe in payments innovation. Europe has led in payments regulation. The recent rubberstamping of PSD2 in Brussels suggests that’s likely to continue.
A large part of any financial technology businesses is clearly driven by the need for banks to comply with the ever-changing regulatory requirements that affect their business. And this has brought about a frenetic period of activity and growth in this core market. These changes affect the various individual areas within financial organizations Wolters Kluwer Financial Services and others serve, including Finance (e.g. IFRS9), Risk (e.g. Basel III Liquidity, FRTB) and Regulatory Reporting (e.g. CRD IV). They also impact the way in which these processes are governed and controlled centrally
Blockchain has the potential to further disrupt banking in the way that we know it today, transform traditional interbank and even peer-to-peer payments, open up opportunities to replace existing mechanisms for the exchange of financial information, and how customer records are stored and processed.
You’d think an A-list celebrity had shown up when Apple Pay launched in the U.K. in July. Despite some speed bumps related to transit and international acceptance, prepaid providers shouldn’t ignore the mobile wallet.
Fundamental shifts in the way socially connected and digital-savvy consumers connect have altered the customer-engagement and marketing landscape forever. To succeed, retailers and consumer brands must use data-driven engagement strategies.
The time has come for financial institutions to truly reap the benefits mobile connectivity offers, and the place to begin is with customer onboarding.
Despite Apple Pay’s high-profile U.S. launch, recent First Annapolis primary consumer research suggests that only one in five iPhone 6 users has actually made a purchase with Apple Pay. But, that’s not the only stat that matters.
In bygone days the bank manager knew each of his customers by name but could offer them only the narrowest range of products. Today the computer can tailor bespoke financial solutions in a mass market – but has no empathy with which to convey its expertise …
With banking IT failures happening on a seemingly weekly basis, we perhaps should be examining the language they speak more closely. Most of our banks are built on systems and programmed with languages that pre-date the birth of the internet, let alone the birth of mobile banking …
Money laundering is a global phenomenon, evident in many parts of the world. Techniques have ranged from simple bulk cash movements across borders to more sophisticated techniques hidden in trade transactions. As trade between the Middle East and the rest of the world continues to grow, the threat of trade based money laundering becomes more […]
Sometimes the least obvious changes can have a big effect, and very often those changes are in areas that might considered outside the remit of the people best placed to make them. Bank staff remuneration, for instance …
When ANZ decided to make its acquisition of New Zealand’s National Bank into a single brand, it had some wide-ranging rationalisation ahead of it to reduce costs while expanding service coverage. Software from Californian geographic information systems specialist Esri helped.
An interesting trend is developing in the halal sector: regional hubs are developing in places that have some local demand but not the size that would be significant markets on their own. Think of Malaysia (the largest) or Dubai or tiny Brunei. Each sees the halal sector as being strategic to their economic growth, and for Dubai and Brunei at least, as key aspects of their economic diversification. This trend has the potential to support global growth in the Islamic economy as well as SME development but need a lot of (costly) infrastructure put in place to open up the international side to SMEs
While IT departments fret about BYOD and Shadow IT, a new security beast lurks on the horizon–the shadow internet of Things. A swarm of consumer devices are all connecting to the internet and beaconing out data in different forms. Because they don’t look like computers, they aren’t treated like computers, and IT departments are often not managing them to ensure that they are secure.
A bank cannot hope to compete in today’s retail banking market without a ‘digital executive team’ and banks need to reinvent their upper echelons’ if this is currently lacking, as Atom Bank and Apple Pay are merely the start of an avalanche of a new era of digital disrupters, looking to steal the lunch from traditional high street banks.
Pascal Augé, head of global transaction and payment services, Société Générale speaks to Daily News at Sibos about the growing importance of transaction banking for corporate customers
Last year, the ISO 20022 standard celebrated its 10th birthday, and consequently it may seem a bit odd to say that after more than a decade since its inception, the financial community really should start taking assertive action. Since 2004, the ISO 20022 standard has, thankfully, witnessed substantial adoption but it has been what could be termed an “uncontrolled adoption”. So why is action so critical now?
The UK payment services market has been under the spotlight in recent months with the introduction of a new Payment Systems Regulator created with the intention, amongst other things, of opening up the industry to new and emerging payment service providers.
When I joined the company in 2007, Google was just a search engine and Apple had nothing to do with payments. It was a time many prepaid executives have compared to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks—not everything did.
Business expense prepaid cards can fill in the gaps when credit, cash or other business payments aren’t ideal. Tapping this relatively young vertical market will require product features that make life easier for employers and employees.
The creation of domestic mobile payment schemes by retail banks is good news for their customers domestically, but potentially threatens mobile payments at an international level.
As the SEPA deadline has come and gone, what will be built upon its advances towards digitisation and standardisation?
