Go big or go home: Fifth Third on Jan. 11 said that its customers can now use five major mobile wallet providers, with debit and credit card purchases via the recently added Android Pay and Microsoft Wallet, along with previous partners Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Masterpass.
Mobile-only challenger bank Monzo has revealed some witty conversations between its banking customer support team and customers. In an amusing blog post, the bank says its customer support team of around 17 people manage hundreds of queries on a daily basis in as “close to real-time as possible”. Some of these conversations struck a chord […]
Andrew Buckley has been named executive vice president, global prepaid solutions at Mastercard.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has appointed Green Dot Corp. founder and CEO Steve Streit to its Los Angeles Branch board of directors for a three-year term, beginning Jan. 1, 2017.
Airtel Payments Bank has appointed Dhiraj Sharda as its new chief digital officer ahead of the full launch of the digital banking service throughout India
E-money and payment solutions provider Contis Group has named Neil Delaney as chief commercial officer.
Jay Lerner has been sworn in as the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
GlobalPlatform, an association which standardizes the management of applications on secure chip technology, has announced its board of directors for fiscal year 2017.
Mastercard has announced three new leadership appointments for its global products and solutions team in Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore.
Corey Besaw has been appointed senior vice president of innovation for Ubiquity Global Services, a multinational services organization offering solutions for the financial services and payments space.
FinTech Hive, to be housed at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) in Dubai’s Central Business District (CBD), is set to launch this quarter. Accenture runs fintech innovation labs in New York, London, and Hong Kong; and has been tasked with setting up and operating the accelerator. Aimed at providing better financial services technology to […]
India-based HDFC Bank is about to introduce its first “humanoid” branch assistant – Ira. The human-sized robot was built together with artificial intelligence (AI) company Asimov Robotics.
A skirmish over the future of US fintech is underway in the new US Senate, with two Democratic senators this week saying a new federal charter governing the industry “could weaken consumer protections, limit competition and threaten financial stability”, reports Paybefore. Late last year, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a […]
Honda and Visa are testing a system that enables a driver to pay for fuel and parking from inside Web-connected cars, the latest development in the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), and yet another sign that more payments are moving beyond physical payment cards, reports Paybefore. The announcement, made from the Consumer Electronics Show in […]
Commerzbank has developed the first digitalisation platform for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Called “#openspace”, and located in Berlin-Schöneberg, it offers long-term co-operation between SMEs, “innovation partners”, and start-ups with the objective of “tackling the challenges posed by the digital future together”. Holger Werner, CEO and founder of #openspace, says “digitalisation dominates the media, sciences, […]
SunTrust Bank in Nigeria has renewed the contract with banking software vendor ICS Financial Systems (ICSFS) for its ICS Banks core banking system.
Municipal Credit Union (MCU), a $2.5 billion credit union in New York, is implementing a new digital payments platform supplied by Payveris.
DH Corporation (D+H) is now offering banks a cloud-based testing environment to simulate connectivity to The Clearing House’s (TCH) real-time payments system. D+H says it is the first payments hub vendor to provide banks in the US “easy and low-risk” access and with “minimal investment”. It offers an optional open API layer, where banks can […]
Axis Bank has become the first bank in India to use Ripple’s blockchain network for cross-border payments. The bank, the third largest in the private sector, will use the network for real-time settlement as it targets future growth. Amit Sethi, president and CIO at Axis Bank, says: “We will come out with solutions for our […]
The newly seated 115th U.S. Congress includes several new faces on one of the most important committees for financial services regulation. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) announced 10 new Republican members who will serve on the committee for the new Congress.
Honda and Visa are testing a system that enables a driver to pay for fuel and parking from inside Web-connected cars, the latest development in the emerging Internet of Things, and yet another sign that more payments are moving beyond physical payment cards.
A skirmish over the future of U.S. fintech is underway in the new U.S. Senate, with two Democratic senators this week saying a new federal charter governing the industry “could weaken consumer protections, limit competition and threaten financial stability.”
U.S. adults bought about $46 billion worth of gift cards over the past year—and a significant chunk of that total was comprised of gift cards for self-use, according to a new study by market research firm Packaged Facts. Of the total consumers spent on gift cards, $28 billion was for gift cards given to friends and family, while $11 billion was for gift cards they gave to themselves, the report found. The remaining $7 billion was comprised of gift cards given by companies to their employees.
A major payments battle has come to an end: Walmart Canada and Visa said they have reached a deal that enables consumers to use Visa-branded payment cards at retail locations in that country, reports Paybefore. The companies did not disclose terms of the deal, which stems from a disagreement in 2016 involving interchange. Walmart said […]
Capital One Spark Business has announced “strategic partnerships” with two fintech companies, Bill.com and Gusto. The aim is “to build and deliver better financial management, HR and cash flow tools designed for small businesses”, Capital One says.
Washington-based Industrial Credit Union has converted to a new core banking system, Keystone from Corelation.
Data analytics and artificial intelligence are on nearly everyone’s 2017 trend-watch lists, but US-based Clarity Money wants to put those same tools directly into consumers hands with an app it says will improve financial well-being and increase users’ financial literacy, reports Paybefore. “Clarity fills in the role of an advocate with a personal finance management […]
Postfinance, the fifth largest retail financial institution in Switzerland, has suffered a 24-hour outage on its online banking service – and doesn’t know the exact cause. About 1.7 million customers were affected by a total loss of electronic banking on Sunday and Monday morning (8/9 January). On Monday afternoon, things were back to normal as […]
Bank GPB International, a member of the Gazprombank group, has selected MIT’s (Micro-Informatique & Technologies) trade finance platform to support its business from Luxembourg. The MIT platform chosen by the bank comprises Credoc, the Swiss firm’s flagship back-end trade finance solution, and TRAC, its middle/front collateral management system, which provide support for transactional commodity finance […]
Microsoft and Qualcomm have invested in Team8, an Israel-based cybersecurity company. Team8 also revealed a strategic partnership with Citi to assist with developing its products, and says this latest investment brings the total raised to more than $92 million. Team8 was founded by Nadav Zafrir, Israel Grimberg and Liran Grinberg, all former members of the […]
2017 is tipped to be a big year for regtech, with many predicting the beginning of fundamental, tech-enabled transformation of the middle and back office. While the excitement around what the coming year holds for regtech is clear, it could be useful to cast our minds back to December when regtech entrepreneurs and representatives of […]
The Shanghai Prepaid Card Association is warning consumers about buying prepaid cards from certain merchants because of “malpractice in managing their prepaid card schemes”, reports Paybefore. According to an announcement on Shanghai’s municipal Website, the notice includes a blacklist of 20 companies in Shanghai for committing various infractions. The association is urging consumers to quickly […]
In the latest sign that Bitcoin is moving into the mainstream, iPayYou, a US-based platform, said its technology now will enable coffee and food purchases at Starbucks, a chain typically associated with middle- and upper-class urban and suburban lifestyles, reports Paybefore. The partnership comes as Bitcoin approaches new highs, with its price shooting past $1,100 […]
Prepaid cards accounted for 9.9 billion transactions and $270 billion in spending volume in the US in 2015 – an increase of $600 million since 2012 – but according to a study from the US Federal Reserve, prepaid growth is slowing as the products become more mainstream, reports Paybefore (Banking Technology‘s sister company). Based on survey […]
Ahead of what could be some big changes for the CFPB during the incoming Trump administration, the agency has announced new appointments to several leadership positions.
A major payments battle has come to an end: Walmart Canada and Visa said they have reached a deal that enables consumers to use Visa-branded payment cards at retail locations in that country.
California-based InvestCloud has acquired Babel Systems in London for $20 million. Babel provides a modular and API-based trade and accounting platform, while InvestCloud has over 660 clients with “accounting needs served by legacy accounting systems that were designed in the last century”. This acquisition links InvestCloud’s digital platform with Babel’s capabilities. InvestCloud will also continue […]
Data analytics and artificial intelligence are on nearly everyone’s 2017 trend-watch lists, but Clarity Money wants to put those same tools directly into consumers hands with an app it says will improve financial well-being and increase users’ financial literacy.
E-commerce accounted for 21.3 percent of U.S. holiday retail sales this past season, up from 15.4 percent from 2015, according to First Data, a further sign that consumers continue to switch their buying and payments away from traditional retail stores. By contrast, full season holiday spending, excluding gas purchases, increased 4.7 percent from last year—still well behind the growth rate for e-commerce but better than the measly 1.8 percent growth booked in 2015.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has chosen IBM, in partnership with Axoni and R3, to provide a blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT) framework to drive improvements in derivatives post-trade lifecycle events. The firms will work on DTCC’s Trade Information Warehouse (TIW), building a derivatives distributed ledger solution for post-trade processing. The TIW service currently […]
