News


Blockchain and Bitcoin round-up: 25 August 2017

Nations, platforms and some bad news. It’s our latest blockchain and Bitcoin round-up. Featuring securities in South Korea, KyberNetwork and the suspended First Bitcoin Capital Corp. Over in South Korea, 18 securities firms will start offering blockchain-based authentication services from October for the “first time in the world”, according to BusinessKorea. This follows the investment […]

Alipay Buzz Continues with Starbucks Deal

Alipay is zipping along in terms of its international expansion. With its latest partnership, the world’s largest online and mobile payment platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group, is now available for Mainland Chinese tourists at all 242 Starbucks branches across Malaysia.

Apple chases $200m tax incentives with Iowa data centre

It was a promise on the campaign trail from President Trump, and at least this one is coming true. Apple has been teased into opening a data centre on US soil with the promise of $207.8 million in tax incentives, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology‘s sister publication). As part of the project, Apple will purchase 2,000 […]

Top 5 Best Challenger Banks: Varo Money

“There’s a reason that the bank of the future hasn’t been created yet—it’s extremely difficult,” says Top 5 Best Challenger Bank Varo Money. See if you think they’ve got what it takes to rise to the challenge.

Square Opens Manhattan Store

Mobile POS pioneer Square is venturing into new territory with its own brick-and-mortar store in Manhattan.

Commonwealth Bank rooting for Australia’s foray into quantum computing

Commonwealth Bank of Australia has joined telco firm Telstra, the Federal Government, the New South Wales Government and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in an $83 million venture to found Australia’s first quantum computing company. The firm, Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), has been launched to advance the development and commercialisation of the UNSW’s […]

Accenture acquires fintech consulting firm Verax

Accenture has acquired Verax Solutions, a Toronto-based technology and systems-integration consulting firm. Financial terms were not disclosed. Verax is a privately-owned company founded in 2003 that employs around 180 people at offices in Toronto and Halifax. Its service areas include IT strategy, enterprise architecture consulting, project and programme management, financial risk and compliance solutions, as […]

Fraud prevention firm Emailage raises $10m funding

Fraud prevention and identity verification firm Emailage has raised $10 million in new funding. The round was led by Anthos Capital, and featured the participation of Mucker Capital, Radian Capital, Tallwave Capital, and Wipro Ventures, reports Finovate (Banking Technology‘s sister company). “This investment will allow us to continue our rapid growth, enhance our leadership position […]

Banking Technology Awards entry deadline extended

Due to high volume of requests, the deadline to enter Banking Technology Awards is being extended. The final chance to enter the Awards is now Friday, 8 September 2017. Nominate projects, products, services or partnerships for a Judged Award or tell us about inspirational people by nominating them for a Leadership Award. Full details on […]

InComm to buy Serve platform, become exclusive Amex prepaid distributor

American Express and InComm have entered into an agreement for InComm to acquire the exclusive distribution rights of Amex’s prepaid reloadable and gift card products in the US, including Bluebird and Serve. InComm also will acquire the Serve technology platform and other assets related to the American Express prepaid reloadable and gift card products business. […]

Top fintech stories this week – 25 August 2017

Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Fiserv buys payments software vendor Dovetail Pushes deeper into the payments infrastructure sector. Mobile contactless transactions hit £370m in UK in H1 2017 A whopping 336% year-on-year increase. Avaloq maintains momentum with massive earnings rise Adjusted EBITDA increased […]

Mizuho primes for financial crime with IBM Watson time

Mizuho is testing out new ways of risk management and dealing with financial crime by using IBM Watson’s cognitive technology. The plan is to use the Watson-powered software, which runs on the IBM Cloud, to analyse a range of data sources, including retrieving news sources and extracting data using screening technologies, that were previously done […]

Avaloq maintains momentum with massive earnings rise

Avaloq has reported impressive earnings growth for the first half of 2017 due to investment in its banking suite and the “accelerating trend of the market” towards digital, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and transaction processing services. For H1 2017, the firm says compared to the same period last year, adjusted EBITDA increased 257% to CHF 36.3 million […]

Guatemalan co-operative network selects Temenos core banking platform

Guatemala-based Federacion Nacional de Cooperativas de Ahorro y Credito (Fenacoac) has selected Temenos‘ RetailSuite core banking platform for its 25 co-operatives that operate under the brand Micoope. RetailSuite is the brand name for a variety of Temenos products, and includes the T24 core banking system and the business intelligence offering, Insight BI. Banking Technology understands […]

Symphony Communication Services makes its Asia debut

Hong Kong-headquartered capital markets and investment group CLSA has deployed Symphony Communication Services collaboration platform across its entire business. The roll-out of Symphony to CLSA’s 1,900 employees is its largest deployment to date by an Asia-headquartered firm. CLSA joins a community who connect on Symphony, comprised of over 220,000 corporate users from 190 firms. CLSA […]

ING Czechs out FICO for lending programme

ING will use decision management software and predictive models from analytic software firm FICO to launch its unsecured lending programme in the Czech Republic. The bank will use one retail banking platform, which will have FICO Blaze Advisor decision management rules system as its “risk brain”, making “fast, consistent, analytically guided” credit risk decisions on […]

Simplify Back-to-School Season with E-Payments

Prepaid cards and alias-based payments that rely on email or mobile phone numbers can offer students and colleges and universities significant benefits over traditional check disbursement of financial aid.

Top 5 Best Challenger Banks: Capital on Tap

Get to know the SME lending specialist that’s challenging U.K. high street banks by providing zero percent interest when balances are paid in full within 37 days.

USAmeriBank goes live on Finastra’s hosted payments hub

USAmeriBank has implemented Finastra’s hosted payments hub for US domestic and international wire transfers. As reported in April, USAmeriBank announced its payments hub plans – with the software supplier revealed as DH Corporation (D+H). In June, Misys and D+H joined forces to create Finastra, the third largest financial services technology company in the world. Finastra […]

Juniper predicts major global shift to contactless on heels of US EMV push

A new study from Juniper Research is forecasting that more than half (53%) of global transactions at the point of sale will be contactless within five years, compared with just 15% this year, reports Banking Technology‘s sister publication Paybefore. The new research, “POS & mPOS Terminals: Vendor Strategies, Positioning & Market Forecasts 2017-2022,” expects adoption in the US […]

Walmart taps Google for omnichannel commerce play

Google and Walmart are teaming up to take on Amazon (and Alexa) with voice-activated commerce and more plans for 2018, reports Banking Technology‘s sister publication Paybefore. Starting in late September, the retail giant will be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant – the largest number […]

FIS and Equifax want you to say goodbye to passwords

FIS has joined forces with information specialist Equifax to create OnlyID, a digital authentication solution that enables consumers to make secure transactions across multiple online accounts without passwords, reports Banking Technology‘s sister publication Paybefore. OnlyID provides “a single, secure digital log-in,” consisting of the consumer’s thumbprint or another unique identifier. The two companies jointly offer the […]

Douugh rises to occasion for AI-powered banking

Banking challenger Douugh has unveiled its artificial intelligence (AI) powered financial platform, guided by “Sophie” – a 24/7 personal assistant for finances. Andy Taylor, founder and CEO of Douugh, says: “We believe the future of banking is about platform, data and identity.” Douugh plans to use Sophie to offer better financial decisions for consumers. Services […]

TerraPay teams with Instant Cash for cross-border payments

Mobile payments switch TerraPay and money transfer company Instant Cash have teamed up to enable real-time cross border money transfers for migrants that want to send money back to Africa to recipients’ mobile wallets. Powered by TerraPay’s global clearing and settlement service for mobile wallets, the partnership “will make cross-border money transfer faster and convenient […]

SimCorp bags three wins in asset and investment management space

SimCorp is smiling as it’s secured three sweet wins in the asset and investment management space with C WorldWide Asset Management, Novo Holdings and FIIG Securities. Denmark-based C WorldWide Asset Management (formerly Carnegie Asset Management) has extended its Dimension licence agreement to include Data Warehouse Manager and will be replacing its current reporting solution with SimCorp Coric’s […]

Synechron teams with R3 for KYC project on blockchain

Financial services IT consultancy Synechron is working with enterprise software firm R3 on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) collaboration to develop a know your customer (KYC) solution. The solution will be built on R3’s Corda platform – that “operates in strict privacy in an open, global network”. The project aims to improve data collection, data […]

Walmart Taps Google for Omnichannel Commerce Play

Google and Walmart are teaming up to take on Amazon (and Alexa) with voice-activated commerce and more plans for 2018. Starting in late September, the retail giant will be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant.

FIS, Equifax Want You to Say Goodbye to Passwords

FIS, a global financial services technology company, has joined forces with information specialist Equifax to create OnlyID, a digital authentication solution that enables consumers to make secure transactions across multiple online accounts without passwords.

Qualcomm lays out AI vision of the future

Qualcomm’s view of the future is one in which every smartphone, device and car on the road is equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) via a connected – Qualcomm – chipset, reports Light Reading (Banking Technology’s sister publication). The company laid out this AI-driven view of the world last week as its Qualcomm Technologies subsidiary announced the […]

White paper: in-memory computing – now and tomorrow

As businesses cope with an explosion of data and users who expect real-time insights, many have turned toward in-memory computing solutions. As a result, in-memory computing platforms are becoming key infrastructure components for a growing number of organisations.

Mountain America CU chooses digital banking platform from Alkami

Utah-based Mountain America Credit Union (MACU), with $6.7 billion in assets, will deploy a new digital banking platform courtesy of Alkami Technology, reports Finovate (Banking Technology‘s sister company). The new platform will integrate with Mountain America CU’s existing core system and enable the 650,000 member institution to provide a variety of digital banking services including billpay and PFM. […]

Bank of America Merrill Lynch brings AI to accounts receivable

Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) is launching a new solution – intelligent receivables – that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and other software to help companies “vastly improve” their straight-through reconciliation (STR) of incoming payments to help them post their receivables faster, reports Banking Technology‘s sister publication Paybefore. Intelligent receivables is designed for large or […]

10% of FTSE 350 firms lack cybersecurity plans, but are you surprised?

A recent report from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport claims 10% of the UK’s 350 largest firms do not have a response plan in place for a cybersecurity incident, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology‘s sister publication). These clearly aren’t all fintech companies, but considering the rhetoric which is constantly flowing around, bigging up […]

Barclays enables voice payments with Siri

Barclays says it’s the first UK high street bank that lets mobile banking customers make a payment by asking Siri. The payment, which relies on TouchID for authentication, can be completed without opening the Barclays mobile banking app, reports Banking Technology‘s sister publication Paybefore. The Siri integration enables payments to existing payees or mobile contacts. […]

Commerzbank and BNP Paribas part ways over lending JV

Commerzbank and BNP Paribas have ended their Munich-based lending joint venture (JV), Commerz Finanz. The German bank says it has reached an agreement with BNP Paribas Personal Finance on the split-off of the business division holding the instalment loans brokered by Commerzbank from Commerz Finanz. Michael Mandel, member of the board of managing directors of […]

Mind the reality gap fintech

A new survey has highlighted the differences between customer expectation and experience in the fintech industry, with many companies failing to deliver the value that consumers crave. It has also flagged up the low standing that CEOs have as credible sources of information. According to public relations (PR) firm FleishmanHillard Fishburn’s (FHF) “Authenticity Gap” survey, […]