Germany-based National Bank has selected Atos for a five and a half year contract to revamp its IT infrastructure. The contract includes data centre, server, mainframe, database and storage services. Atos will deliver the operation and maintenance of the internet and application servers; and be responsible for creating customised security solutions. Thomas Stephan, head of […]
Alternative credit scoring company, Aire, has raised $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Sunstone Capital, with funds also coming from White Star Capital, which led the company’s 2016 seed round. Aire’s funding now totals $12 million, reports Finovate (Banking Technology’s sister company). The London-based company plans to use the funds […]
Berner Kantonalbank (Banque Cantonale de Berne or BEKB/BCBE), one of the last users of the IBIS3G core banking system, is pondering the system’s future as the contract with system provider is terminated.
Mastercard can breathe a sigh of relief as the £14 billion lawsuit – a collective action over card charges that were passed on to shoppers – has been stopped by the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal. As reported last year, Mastercard faced the massive lawsuit. The claim was headed by ex-financial services ombudsman Walter Merricks, who […]
Investment firm Permira will acquire a 10% equity stake in Swedish payments and banking firm Klarna. As part of the deal, Permira will buy shares from existing shareholders General Atlantic, DST Global and Niklas Adalberth, upon receipt of approval from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen). Once the transfer is complete, General Atlantic and DST […]
Data Pitch has unleashed its new accelerator in the search for start-ups and SMEs across Europe with fresh ideas for data products and services. The plan is to connect data providers “with nagging business problems” to firms with the right solutions. It’s not limited to fintech, but successful applicants will receive up to €100,000 equity […]
The UK’s House of Lords wants you to come clean on the rise of the machines – with a call for feedback on the economic, ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence (AI). The House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is asking for contributions to its inquiry and is looking for pragmatic solutions […]
The fintech world has been left breathless and bewitched by the stunning revelation that UK-based challenger Jargon Bank has appointed a sales director. As reported last year, the “game changer” bank launched offering “compelling and innovative” products. This was followed in February with a payments app update; an office move in March; and a cat […]
The buzz for biometrics gets bigger with TSB now eyeing up the launch of iris scanning tech to let users login into bank accounts by glancing at their phone. According to the BBC, some TSB customers will be able to do this from September when the bank introduces iris recognition to its mobile banking app. […]
The Bank of England (BoE) is opening up access to settlement accounts in its real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system with the goal to promote fintech innovation and competition. The bank says it’s extending access to non-bank payment service providers (PSPs), offering direct access to the UK’s sterling payment systems. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), […]
Swiss financial services provider SIX has selected Synechron as the systems integrator for the Calypso v15 solution as an update to its post-trade services. The deal is part of the SFR (securities finance renewal) programme, with the objective to revamp SIX’s post-trade services where it acts as a contractual triparty agent for its clients to […]
Italy’s only stock exchange Borsa Italiana, part of London Stock Exchange Group, and IBM are building a blockchain solution to digitise the issuance of securities for unlisted small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe. The aim is to simplify the tracking and management of shareholding information, and create a distributed shared registry containing a record […]
The Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) has implemented Deutsche Börse’s new T7 trading platform for the Irish equity market. According to Deutsche Börse, this new platform reduces cost for international trading firms to connect and trade equities on the ISE, due to lower development and maintenance costs for firms, which are active on T7 across multiple […]
Mobile-only challenger bank Monzo is taking it nice and easy with a steady roll-out of its current account. The bank, which received its full UK banking licence in April, says it’s been using the current account internally and today (17 July) is now inviting some of its customers to join and “help put it through […]
German fintech incubator FinLeap has a spring in its step with new capital, new partners and a new HQ. The company has raised around €39 million from several investors, including the German Insurer Signal Iduna, SBI Group from Japan and the Dutch NIBC bank. Furthermore, the reinsurer Hannover Re, as a “big institutional investor”, raised […]
As part of its massive job cutting spree, Commerzbank has agreed an outline reconciliation of interests and social plan with the employee representative committees in Germany. As reported last year, Commerzbank firmed up plans to lay off nearly 5,000 people. According to a letter by German labour union Verdi, the majority of these job cuts […]
Cash is no longer king in the UK, according to the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) annual Payments Survey, which found that debit card transactions accounted for almost 43% of all retail transactions in 2016, overtaking cash, which accounted for 42% of all retail transactions, for the first time. Banking Technology‘s sister publication Paybefore reports that […]
The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has got approval from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for its plan for the consolidation of the operators of three payment systems. As first reported in May, the PSR aimed to get Bacs Payment Schemes (BPSL), Cheque and Credit Clearing Company (C&CCC) and the Faster Payments Scheme (FPSL) […]
Falcon is the “first” Swiss private bank to provide blockchain asset management solutions for its clients through a new co-operation with crypto financial broker Bitcoin Suisse. The bank’s clients can exchange and hold Bitcoins via Falcon using their cash holdings. Additionally, a Bitcoin ATM has been installed in the lobby of the bank’s headquarters in […]
Darktrace, a start-up that tackles cybercrime with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, has raised $75 million in a Series D round, reports Light Reading (Banking Technology’s sister publication). The latest capital injection values the company at $825 million, testament to the security threat faced by network operators and fintech enterprises and the power of machine learning technology. […]
Mothership, a digital asset exchange, has launched offering a cloud hosting platform and wallet for blockchain financial services around the Estonian e-residency programme. The start-up is the “first company of its kind” to integrate with e-residency. As reported in May, the Baltic state unveiled this programme to let anyone apply to join its new digital […]
A consortium of European private and public sector organisations are testing out the use of a citizen’s national digital identity from France to open a bank account in the UK. The group comprises HSBC, Barclays, the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), Orange, OT-Morpho and the Open Identity Exchange (OIX UK). The project is co-financed by […]
Seedrs will be the sole equity finance provider in a new partnership with challenger bank Fidor.
SME lender iwoca and Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo are partnering to provide Intesa’s SME clients with credit products. The partnership coincides with an investment in iwoca by Neva Finventures, Intesa Sanpaolo’s fintech venture capital arm. Maurizio Montagnese, chief innovation officer at Intesa Sanpaolo, adds that the “industrial synergies” between the firms “could be significant in the […]
The Bank of England’s (BoE) fintech accelerator has kept good speed and completed the third round of various proofs of concept (PoCs). As reported last year, BoE launched its own accelerator to harness innovation for central banking. The latest PoCs covered four areas of the bank’s work: analysing large-scale supervisory data sets; executing high-value payments […]
Banking tech provider Profile Software will acquire 100% of Paris-based Login, a specialised treasury software provider. Founded in 1988, Login offers its AcumenNet platform, which is used for front office, trading, risk management, middle and back office requirements. It covers a range of asset classes that include forex and money market instruments, exchanged traded and […]
Wirecard and Tencent are working together to give European retailers access to more than 938 million active WeChat and Weixin users by enabling QR code payments at the POS, reports Paybefore (Banking Technology‘s sister publication). The mobile payment solution, WeChat Pay, has more than 600 million active users, which is equivalent to nearly 40% of […]
It’s not enough for the fintech world to be sick to the back teeth of the “millennials would rather visit their dentist than listen to their bank” quote – but we now have yet another UK payments start-up – this time launched by an actual dentist. On the dirt-encrusted and pothole-festooned streets of the UK, […]
Finland-based Aktia Bank has completed “the full-scale implementation” of its new core banking system, Temenos’ T24.
Challenger Banco BNI Europa (BNI) has unveiled “Puzzle”, a digital and real-time credit approval process for the Portuguese market. Don’t be confused by the name, the bank says Puzzle is “simple, and non-bureaucratic”; and it even cites the Lending Club in the US, or Zopa in the UK by way of comparison. Puzzle offers credit […]
Nordea has chosen Estonian start-up Feelingstream’s artificial intelligence (AI) software to speed up response times for customers. Feelingstream’s AI solution analyses and categorises messages sent by customers so they can be forwarded automatically to the right person or unit in Nordea for further processing. The software can analyse hundreds of messages per second. The solution […]
Swedish financial technology company iZettle is reporting a 60 percent jump in revenues compared with 2016, and CEO Jacob de Geer is talking IPO.
If President Trump wants to make America great again, there are a few important ways he could bolster the fintech industry and help consumers—from supporting more uniform MSB licensing to reining in UDAAP.
By calling on the spirit of the 19th century Corn Laws repeal, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) believes it can weather the post-Brexit era with a new age of free trade. In a long speech delivered today (6 July), “Why free trade and open markets in financial services matter”, Andrew Bailey, chief executive of […]
The European Banking Authority (EBA) recently opened a consultation on its draft recommendations for financial institutions outsourcing to cloud service providers across all cloud-related domains including infrastructure, platform and software as a service.
Mobile-only challenger bank Monzo has reported a loss after taxation of £6.7 million in its latest financial results. For the year ended 28 February 2017, the firm’s directors do not recommend a final dividend. In fact, it has got worse compared to the 2016 full year results. There was also no final dividend because the […]
Open Banking, the implementation entity set up by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has released its accounts and transaction information and payments initiation API specifications. The payments initiation API will enable third parties to set up secure payments on behalf of customers and, once authorised by the customer, submit the payment for processing. […]
Vantiv, a US-based payment processing and technology provider, and Worldpay, its counterpart in the UK, have reached “an agreement in principle on the key terms of a potential merger”.
Nordea Bank has pressed the accelerator on its open banking ambitions with the launch of pilots. As reported in March, the bank released the first version of its open banking portal targeted towards external developers, as it gets ready for the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) requirements. At the time, it invited developers to sign […]
Copenhagen-based Danske Bank has unveiled its beta open banking service as it joins the fray for API-powered innovation. The bank says open banking is set to be the “most seismic shift in financial services since online banking” and it wants to tap into this market. Danske is looking to push on from its own banking […]
