Ericsson has joined forces with HomeSend, a joint venture between Mastercard, eServGlobal and Bics that focuses on mobile money remittances in emerging markets. Ericsson’s digital wallet, Ericsson Wallet Platform, is now HomeSend Certified. The product has access to HomeSend’s network of money transfer operators, cash agents and banks in more than 200 countries. Peter Heuman, […]
Sberbank and the Linux Foundation have entered into an agreement on the bank’s participation in the Hyperledger Project. The deal was signed at the Sibos conference in Geneva and Lev Khasis, first deputy chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, said the new development with Hyperledger, and its open source platform based on blockchain, offered “access to […]
The International Bank of Azerbaijan has partnered with Backbase to implement its omnichannel digital banking platform. With the platform, the bank will be able to provide its products and services to customers through multiple channels synchronously, creating a single multimodal touch point. The contract was signed yesterday onsite at Sibos at Backbone’s booth, between Jouk […]
To drive ISO 20022 adoption, the industry is calling for collaboration and for those with the ‘right stuff’ to lead the way. A panel yesterday, ISO 20022 market practice developments, gave a global view of the status of ISO 20022 in the payments and securities markets. Gerard Smith, director collateral services at LCH.Clearnet, said the […]
Correspondent bankers have been advised to “fail fast and fail cheap” when it comes to blockchain technology. During the Blockchain and correspondent banking – The way to go? session yesterday, a panel explored the possible use cases and barriers to adoption of blockchain technology – one of the most talked about technologies at this year’s […]
A decade ago, cities fought to be financial hubs; today they fight to be financial technology (fintech) hubs. While London, New York and Silicon Valley claim strong status as fintech hubs, Sibos has proved that there are plenty of emergent centres snapping at their heels. Innotribe’s Startup Challenge, which brings fintech companies to the attention […]
Blockchain innovation for central securities depositories (CSDs) is a slow burn and one that can divide opinion. During the Innovation in CSD space: What about distributed ledger technology? session yesterday, some panellists argued that the technology would hail the end of CSDs while others said there would be no revolution, just a “natural evolution” of […]
Bank of Palestine debuted at Sibos this year with a colourful booth and much interest from Sibos delegates. “We have been attending Sibos for many years as delegates and as our delegation grew from two or three people to bigger numbers, we decided to have a stand,” said Hashim Shawa, chairman and general manager of […]
If central banks want to retain a large share of payments in central bank money, they must innovate, said Andrew Hauser, executive director for banking, payments and financial resilience, Bank of England (BOE). Speaking during the Towards a single platform for all payments session, he said BOE consultation on a refresh of its real time […]
Open application programming interface (API) banking and immediate payments are a perfect storm for new banking, according to FIS. Established payment systems do not work in the way most consumers and businesses expect in a digital, mobile, real time world. Consumers expect instant gratification; digital money should act more like physical cash in terms of […]
U.K.-headquartered mobile payments provider Bango has selected Robert Payne to serve as executive vice president of strategic partnerships.
CardConnect has hired Jason Williams as senior vice president, business development.
EastNets, a global provider of compliance, payment and cloud solutions for the financial services industry, has appointed Robbert de Vries as the company’s new chief technology officer.
Following Emerchants’ May 2016 acquisition of Store Financial’s U.S. and Canada operations, the company has unveiled a new brand name and identity: EML.
Gresham, a provider of transaction control and enterprise data integrity software, has hired Jim Hannibal as sales director for Europe.
Alex Sion, co-founder of mobile bank Moven, will join JPMorgan Chase as executive director of mobile banking, effective Oct. 3.
Omnichannel transaction services provider NCR Corp. has appointed Mark Benjamin as president and COO.
An era of “unprecedented change” is happening, driven by new regulation and technology, Ginni Rometty, chief executive of IBM, said during a plenary address, Cognitive Business and the Future of Financial Services. “There is a moment of opportunity if you choose to seize it,” she said, referencing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, big data and […]
Top pics and captions from Swift’s Sibos 2016 conference in Geneva! A compilation from day 3.
More collaboration is required among members of the correspondent banking community, despite the progress that has been made through efforts such as the Global Payments Innovation (GPI) initiative.
CLS Group has started building a payment netting service, using existing message protocols and distributed ledger technology (DLT), which will be open to all FX market participants – not just CLS members –and will also enable CLS members to net some FX trades that are currently settled outside the CLS settlement service.
Eight years on from the financial crisis, the market climate remains challenging. The global economy is still very shaky, there is still plenty of uncertainty regarding ongoing reforms and interaction with regulators, lending is limited by higher capital requirements, extremely low (or even negative) interest rates are not generating good returns and banks need to invest heavily in IT infrastructures to appease the supervisors.
“First they think it’s stupid, then they think it’s obvious. Blockchain has passed the first test.” These are the words of an economics professor (quoted, but not present) on revolutionary ideas, and perhaps a succinct evaluation of where blockchain is right now. In a packed conference room on the Monday afternoon (26 September), the panel discussed “Blockchain 2020 – what next for adoption by the financial industry”.
Blockchain technology has the potential to help ease banks’ profitability pressures, particularly in Europe’s negative interest rate environment, an audience was told at an offsite briefing yesterday morning. Patrick Laurent, a partner at Deloitte, told delegates at a breakfast meeting organised by Temenos that companies such as Ripple had already developed blockchain solutions that could […]
Blockchain and distributed technology have been hot topics at Sibos this year, with a raft of announcements from banks and fintechs alike. One of the areas identified as of most promise is trade finance – an area of banking that is rife with paper-based processes.
Standard Chartered Bank has entered into a One Belt One Road (Obor) strategic alliance with China Merchants Bank (CMB) to accelerate the Belt and Road initiative and help promote economic growth and regional cooperation for countries along the Road. Obor is a development strategy and framework that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily […]
Innotribe’s Industry Challenge – the results of which have been just unveiled – was all about blockchain and disruptive technologies. Three star-ups won the challenge to introduce blockchain to the securities sector: SmartContract, Rise and Coin Sciences.
A pilot project to prove the concept of Swift’s Global Payments Innovation (GPI) initiative has been hailed a success and has cleared the way for a go-live of the service in early 2017. Swift has been piloting the GPI with 21 banks, including Nordea, Citi, Bank of China and Intesa Sanpaolo since February – all […]
It is vital that the Swift community learns from cyber attacks and strengthens cooperation, delegates were told yesterday. Chief technology officer (CTO) of Swift, Craig Young, said such attacks were increasing in number and sophistication across all industries. Marco Gercke, director of the Cybercrime Research Institute, said: “The financial industry is lacking co-operation. I know […]
It’s a fintech double as Equiniti has developed a digital banking platform and launched a mobile biometric authentication and identity lifecycle solution.
Credit Union Australia (CUA) can now onboard a customer in two minutes, including ID verification, offer generation and account generation to the core. The underpinning solution is provided by a domestic fintech start-up, Cloudcase Software Solutions.
Axion Swiss Bank, a private bank focusing on asset management and consultancy, is migrating its technology to Avaloq’s BPO centre, Avaloq Sourcing Switzerland. On the way out is ERI’s Olympic core banking system.
t’s been a bad month for the payments industry in the state of New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law Sept. 26 imposing restrictions on gift cards and gift certificates sold in the state. The new law comes just weeks after the New York Department of Labor (DOL) issued a final rule regulating the use of payroll cards. The gift card law goes into effect Dec. 25, 2016, as that is 90 days from the governor’s signing.
American Express scored a major legal victory on Sept. 26 when a federal appeals court ruled that Amex had the right to restrict retailers. Specifically, Amex had wanted to prevent Amex-accepting merchants from offering shoppers financial incentives to use other card brands. In its ruling, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit New York tossed out a lower court’s decision that said language barring such “steering” in American Express’ contracts with its merchant clients violated anti-trust laws.
Blockchain, the decentralized transaction-verification system that underpins bitcoin, received a boost Sept. 27, with Microsoft and Bank of America Merrill Lynch saying they will team up to further develop the technology.
With the proliferation of smartphones among consumers, retailers have an opportunity to reach customers in thoughtful and engaging ways that could help influence the decision-making process when it comes to making a purchase. Discover offers tips on what strategies retailers should consider implementing to enhance their mobile marketing campaigns.
Delegates attending yesterday’s Making real time successful in the Eurozone session at Sibos 2016 heard that the key to success for banks will be to initially focus on their own domestic payments markets – which still constitute the vast majority of their payments.
Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has gone live with new cash and liquidity reporting software, SmartStream Technologies’ Corona. The bank has taken “a proactive approach to Basel III” – being the first in the region to do so, said the vendor. The new centralised solution will help to monitor and manage cash positions on an intraday basis, throughout the RBI group.
ACI Worldwide and Vocalink have joined forces “to offer a complete end-to-end immediate payments solution to launch a domestic or regional immediate payments network”. The partnership will combine Vocalink’s Immediate Payments System (IPS) offering for central payment infrastructures and ACI’s UP Immediate Payments solution for banks and financial institutions.
Swift has committed to help its members combat the cyber threat “in challenging times”, delegates heard during yesterday’s opening plenary session. Security will be a feature every day of the conference because “the cyber threat is here to stay”, said Swift chief executive, Gottfried Leibbrandt.
