WorldFirst, an international payments business, has unveiled its new World Account platform for UK corporate customers, providing a range of international banking services to SMEs trading overseas who find it difficult to access through traditional banks.
Alior Bank’s Romanian branch has teamed up with Deutsche Telekom Group’s Telekom Romania Mobile Communications to develop a new digital financial service. And providing the online exchange for this service is none other than Alior Bank’s long-time partner, Efigence.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) will adopt Landmark Valuation Services’ (formerly Quest) valuation risk model (VRM) service for its mortgage valuation process for both RBS and NatWest. Using property analytics and land and environmental data, VRM helps the banks to apply an automated valuation where the risks are considered “low”. Where a physical inspection is […]
HSBC UK and its First Direct online banking subsidiary have partnered with fintech start-up Bud to provide customers with an integrated selection of financial services products and tools from across the market.
There is intense interest in instant payments (IP) throughout Europe. Domestic schemes are already live in the UK, Denmark, Poland and Sweden. The success of these schemes shows what’s possible but also teaches many lessons.
In an exclusive interview with Daily News at Sibos, Fabian Vandenreydt, executive chairman of collaborative innovation platform B-Hive, explains what it’s doing for creativity and how it will form a separate company for scale-ups.
South Africa’s financial services group FirstRand is in takeover talks with Aldermore, a UK-based challenger bank focused on SMEs.
Financial authorities globally are promoting open banking. While it represents a shift in the mindset of traditional banks, Heather McKenzie, editor of Daily News at Sibos, finds they may be up to the challenge.
BFC Bank, a subsidiary of the Bahrain Financing Company money transfer group, has completed its mobilisation process and is preparing for a launch in early 2018. As reported last year, BFC received authorisation from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). After an initial “soft launch” for selected companies (such as SMEs […]
A variety of Spanish banking, energy and telecommunications companies have established Alastria, the “world’s first regulated national network based on blockchain”. The non-profit consortium will develop distributed ledger technology (DLT), which it believes is “set to become the new data exchange ecosystem”. As reported in May, the group created Red Lyra, the “first multisector technology […]
The European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) governing council will decide by the end of this year whether to greenlight a new real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system to replace the decade-old Target2 platform.
It took just half a year for the team of National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, to find a solution for the challenge of maintaining confidentiality when verifying distributed ledger transactions.
We live in impatient times – everyone wants to be able to pay who they want when they want, instantly and regardless of location. The UK has had instant payments since 2008; Faster Payments volumes have exceeded all predictions and now exceed 135 million per month.
The disruptive threats that banks face today are well documented: fintechs, decentralised cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology and now the tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Apple, to name a few. These players are all now placing themselves between retail banks and their customers, meaning that banks are not just competing with other banks anymore.
UK-based Lloyds Banking Group is modernising its payments technology for corporate and institutional clients with SAP. The bank has signed for SAP’s cash management and payments platform, powered by SAP HANA.
Instant payments are set to be one of this year’s hot topics at Sibos. Last week, Swift and EBA Clearing announced that users of EBA’s instant payments system, RT1, will be able to access the platform via SwiftNet Instant, Swift’s instant payments messaging solution, from November 2018. Elsewhere, Australian consumers have been told they will be able to make instant payments from January next year.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has published a guide to assessments of fintech credit institution licence applications.
Mongolia gets a mention in this concise fintech funding round-up. Features OakNorth Bank, AND Global and TransFICC. UK challenger OakNorth Bank has secured £154 million investment as it looks to lend a further £1.5 billion to businesses in the country in 2018, and then attempt to move on globally. The funding came from the Clermont […]
Fintech start-ups are being invited to apply to Accenture’s sixth FinTech Innovation Lab London, a three-month programme offering mentoring and the chance to accelerate business development. Accenture says this year’s lab has introduced a new stream to help regtech start-ups, because banks are “being compelled to open up their customer data and ensure this data […]
Wunderbar! Deutsche Bank has completed internal proofs of concepts (PoCs) with IBM for the deployment of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered Watson cognitive system in the German language. The system will be used in the bank’s Artificial Intelligence Client Communication Centre (AI-C³), and Deutsche Bank says it will use Watson for the development of a […]
Instant payments and real-time authentication checks are coming to business clients of Nordic software provider Emric – courtesy of a new partnership with Trustly.
Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank (apoBank) has selected the Avaloq Banking Suite as it looks to increase operational efficiency via a digital strategy. As reported last year, apoBank was considering the implementation of Avaloq’s flagship core banking system. The two parties signed a contract to “analyse and elaborate how far the execution of the apoBank IT […]
NCR Corporation has signed a five-year deal with UK’s TSB Bank to look after the bank’s 900+ ATMs and IDMs as well as provide service desk support for its employees across its branch network.
Openbank, a digital banking subsidiary of Santander, has made its new core banking system decision – the bank has opted for Temenos T24. Infosys with its Finacle offering lost out in the final.
Payments services provider has introduced Centre, an open source project built on blockchain and designed to connect multiple digital wallets to process money transactions.
Luxembourg-headquartered start-up Peer Mountain has unveiled a peer-to-peer self-sovereign identity, compliance and commerce delivery solution as it seeks to exploit the Equifax data breach episode. The firm says it gives users control of their data across blockchain. Consumers can choose who can access the data without the need for third party involvement. Peer Mountain says […]
Users of EBA Clearing’s instant payment system, RT1, will be able to access the platform via Swift’s SwiftNet Instant solution from November 2018. According to Swift, its solution will address all RT1 customer requirements, including instant messaging, file transfers and a browse solution. Erwin Kulk, head of service development and management, EBA Clearing, says: “RT1 […]
It’s been over a year since I first blogged on the subject of open banking and it is fair to say, mainly driven through the regulatory pressures of PSD2 and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) led UK Open Banking initiative, that across Europe, much progress has been made in moving the banking industry to adopt APIs.
Earthport, a cross-border payments service provider, has been appointed by Swiss Euro Clearing Bank (SECB), a clearing hub for Swiss banks, to provide Swift processing services.
The European Commission (EC) has confirmed its officials carried out unannounced inspections in “a few member states” concerning online access to bank account information by competing service providers. The EC doesn’t name the countries involved, but “according to people familiar with the matter” that spoke to the Financial Times, Poland and the Netherlands are among […]
The UK’s Faster Payments Scheme (FPS) is asking for expressions of interest for the renewal and management of its infrastructure – the services that enable the nation’s 24/7 real-time payment service. This is the first of a three-phase competition for the infrastructure for up to ten years. The renewal will migrate the Faster Payments Service […]
Helsinki-based credit institution Municipality Finance (Kuntarahoitus) has gone live on Profile Software’s Acumen treasury solution to manage and automate its operations. Acumen will be used to manage deal capture, pricing, middle office, reporting, collateral management, back office and risk management processes. Profile says Acumen can integrate with “numerous” systems and pricing platforms to import real […]
What countries among the 20 largest economies are adapting quickest to using cashless systems like phones and contactless cards? New research (and nifty infographics) from global trading site Forex Bonuses reveals that Canada takes the top spot, narrowly edging out Sweden for the top position.
UK based insurer Aviva confirms that it’s acquired a majority stake in robo advisor, Wealthify.
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
The UK’s Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, is a woman on a mission, and that mission is to mutilate the reputation of platforms like WhatsApp in the pursuit of the destruction of end-to-end encryption, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology’s sister publication). It isn’t new. Rudd must have been wronged by an online troll at some point and […]
Warsaw-based Bank Millennium has launched “Europe’s first issuer wallet” using Visa tokenisation – so its customers can use the mobile app to create a virtual equivalent of their card. The bank says virtualising the card and using the service is free of charge, and cardholders can pay with their phone via HCE (host card emulation). […]
Four of the latest stories in one for a fast fintech funding round-up. Features SalaryFinance, Featurespace, Worldpay, Invoke Capital, ESF Capital and ThinCats.
New10, ABN Amro’s newly launched fintech firm, has selected Mambu’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) engine to power a range of SME lending products in the Netherlands. Like many start-ups, speed is part of the sales pitch, and New10 says it aims to provide credit decisions for SMEs within 15 minutes and offers a fully digital application process. […]
The European Commission (EC) has ruled that Luxembourg illegally let Amazon off €250 million of taxes and must now get them back, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology’s sister publication). This is the latest round of a general purge by the EC of European countries effectively bribing US tech companies to use them as their European hub by dangling […]
