FairFX gains e-money licence with takeover of digital banking service for SMEs, Q Money
FairFX, a London-based multicurrency payments service, has acquired Q Money and its e-money licence.
Europe
Misys out, Temenos in, at Persia International Bank
London-based Persia International Bank, a joint venture of two Iranian financial services groups, Bank Mellat and Bank Tejarat, is undergoing a tech revamp.
Airdrie Savings Bank goes out of business
Airdrie Savings Bank (ASB), the only remaining independent savings bank in the UK, is closing down for good.
Rabobank to modernise payments ops with ACI Worldwide
Rabobank is implementing ACI Worldwide’s UP Immediate Payments solution to support SEPA instant payments.
CMA comments on current account switching plans & VocaLink’s takeover by Mastercard
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK has accepted undertakings from the Bacs payment scheme that commit it to delivering the improvements required by the CMA retail banking market investigation within a year.
Single point of access to all real-time payments schemes worldwide from ACI
Payments software and services vendor ACI Worldwide says its latest version of UP Immediate Payments provides “single point of access to all immediate payments schemes globally”.
AnaCap to acquire German payments provider Heidelpay
Private equity firm AnaCap Financial Partners is taking over a controlling stake in Heidelpay, an online payment service provider (PSP) in Germany. Heidelpay’s co-founders and existing management will retain a minority stake in the business.
RosEvroBank builds blockchain platform for remote customer identification
RosEvroBank, a top-50 bank in Russia, has created a prototype of a blockchain-based system that enables remote verification of customers for other financial institutions. The decentralised system is built on the Microsoft’s Ethereum Consortium Blockchain infrastructure.
Private equity firms to buy German payments provider Concardis from local banks
Advent International and Bain Capital Private Equity have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Concardis, a German payment services provider currently owned by local banks. It is understood the price tag is around €700 million.
One in four UK card payments now contactless
According to the UK Cards Association, a trade body for the country’s card payments industry, a quarter of all card transactions are now made via contactless in the UK. 325 million purchases, altogether worth £2.9 billion, were made using contactless debit and credit cards in November 2016.
Seven European banks join forces for blockchain platform for SMEs
Seven European banks – Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Natixis, KBC, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit – have agreed in principle to develop a blockchain-based shared platform for domestic and international commerce for SMEs.
Fintechs making strides in PSD2
In November last year, German fintech firm figo completed a financing round that totalled €6.8 million. Figo has developed a banking application programming interface (API) and various products and services related to the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2). It is just one of the many fintech firms that are poised to grab the considerable opportunities that PSD2 opens.
UK BPO and fintech provider Target Group buys Commercial First
Target Group, a UK-based business process outsourcing (BPO) and software vendor, has purchased the operating business of Commercial First, a provider of commercial and residential mortgage servicing, due diligence and property valuations. Commercial First, also based in the UK, provides clients with services in the real estate lending market ranging from loan administration through to […]
Transatlantic trio gets tough on financial crime
A three-way alliance of legal firms is helping Europeans call out financial wrongdoing and benefit from US whistleblower laws. New York-based Meissner & Associates is collaborating with Stuttgart/Berlin-based Naegele and London-based Brahams Dutt Badrick French (BDBF) to create the new transatlantic initiative, the “first of its kind”. The plan is to help employees, suppliers and […]
Europe a pushover for machine takeover
In another example of glacial bureaucracy, a committee from the European Parliament has written a report which recommends a meeting about robots and artificial intelligence (AI).
New name in the UK challenger bank space – ClearBank
The bustling UK challenger bank scene has grown by another addition, ClearBank. It is a brainchild of Nick Ogden, founder and former CEO of WorldPay.
BMW Financial Services in major tech overhaul with Sword Apak
BMW Group Financial Services (BMW FS) has selected UK-based fintech vendor Sword Apak to support the planned harmonisation of its European core operating systems. Called the Ideal Programme (integrated delivery of a European application landscape), it was launched in November 2016. It is designed to integrate three key modules: commercial finance, dealer front-end and the […]
Belgium gets sweet on London fintech
Belgium is making overtures to London’s fintech scene as it looks a build a bridge between both communities. Innovate Finance, a UK-based fintech membership association, held talks today (11 January) in London with a delegation from Belgium’s digital finance community led by the Minister of Finance Johan Van Overtveldt. As part of this meeting, Overtveldt […]
Can you marry an app Monzo?
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 […]
Commerzbank unveils first digital platform for German SMEs
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, […]
PSD2: Who wins?
I was recently asked who the biggest winner would be to emerge post-PSD2, the banks or the fintech firms. If we ignore for a moment that the biggest winners are clearly you and I, the end consumer of these services, it did reveal an interesting thought process and dynamic at play.
Mystery surrounds Postfinance online banking outage
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 […]
MIT’s trade finance platform debuts in Luxembourg
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 […]
Izola Bank selects Finex Solutions for digital banking revamp
Malta’s Izola Bank has chosen Munich-based Finex Solutions to overhaul its digital banking services for retail and corporate customers. The bank will use the Finex Excellence Digital Banking solution, which supports internet, tablet and mobile banking. Andrew Mifsud, CEO of Izola Bank, says it has already “successfully implemented a mobile token solution provided by Finex” […]
Fana Sparebank to revamp core banking, payment and self-service solutions with Evry
Norway-based banking software provider Evry has signed a new five-year agreement with a domestic banking group, Fana Sparebank, to modernise its core banking and payments tech.
Virgin Money to launch digital bank, looks for customer experience leadership
Virgin Money plans to launch a digital bank – VMDB – and is now recruiting for a head of customer experience. As Banking Technology reported in November, 10x Future Technologies, the start-up founded by former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins, is building a digital core banking platform for Virgin Money. The latter also signed a long-term […]
Country spotlight: Lithuania – the young ones
Banking Technology explores a less known – but a noteworthy – destination for fintech in Europe, Lithuania, and its capital Vilnius. Whilst it is realistic that it cannot compete with the European Goliaths such as London or Paris, it wants to carve its own niche in the fintech space, and has quite a lot to offer.
Idea Bank launches “pay as you drive” car loan in Poland
Idea Bank in Poland has launched “the world’s first pay-as-you-drive” car loan model – Happy Miles – with the payments calculated according to the travelled distance. A GPS device installed in the vehicle automatically sends the information about the distance covered to the lender.
Top ten fintech features in 2016
Look back at some of the top-read feature articles on all matters fintech published by Banking Technology in 2016.
Digital bank for migrants and expats, Monese, raises $10m
Monese, a mobile-only bank founded by Norris Koppel, an Estonian expat in London, has raised $10 million in Series A funding round as it looks to go pan-European.
SIX Payment Services completes Swiss Post payment terminals upgrade
SIX Payment Services says it has completed the enterprise-wide upgrade of payment terminals of Swiss Post four months ahead of schedule. The new “smart” payment terminals – Ingenico’s iSC250 – are “particularly good” and “among the most innovative ones on the market”, SIX says.
UK retailer House of Fraser to invest up to £35m in challenger bank Tandem
A UK-based challenger bank, Tandem, will start offering financial solutions to customers of retailer House of Fraser in 2017. As part of the collaboration agreement between the two companies, House of Fraser will invest up to £35 million in Tandem.
SEB to consolidate investment management ops with Simcorp Dimension
Sweden-based financial services group SEB has selected Simcorp Dimension as its new back office platform for transaction processing, reconciliation, settlement, accounting and derivatives processing.
Top fintech stories this week – 23 December 2016
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! The last weekly news round-up of 2016. Happy holidays from everyone at Banking Technology!
FCA green lights cloud technologies
We are constantly connected to the cloud (iPhone, DropBox, Google Drive just to name a few) and yet, in financial services, the adoption has been tremendously slow. In part, this is due to a lack of guidance from regulators, especially where cloud-based regulation technology is concerned. But finally there is forward progress.
Hungary’s central bank endorses instant payment infrastructure plans
Hungary’s central bank and regulator, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), is bringing a new instant payments system to the country. It will require “state-of-the-art IT and communication solutions in payments”.
Italian banks set up cybersecurity response team, Certfin
The Bank of Italy, the Italian Banking Association and the ABI Lab Consortium have signed an agreement to set up Certfin – “a highly specialised Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for Italy’s financial sector”.
“Game changer” Jargon Bank launches in UK
Jargon Bank has launched in the UK offering “compelling and innovative” products that have left journalists diving for cover… usually to the nearest pubs. In a press release, that ideally shouldn’t have been sent, the hipster-friendly bank decided that wishy-washy and generic statements would somehow garner the respect of fintech publications across the world. Serial […]
Arab Bank Switzerland ditches FIS/Sungard core system for Avaloq BPO
Arab Bank (Switzerland), a private bank in Geneva, has signed a long-term deal with Avaloq for the vendor’s complete business process outsourcing (BPO) services.
Credit card firm MBNA sold to Lloyds for £1.9bn
Credit card firm MBNA is to be taken over by Lloyds. The firm’s current owner, Bank of America, has agreed to sell it for £1.9 billion. The deal is expected to close in H1 2017.
