Poland’s Warsaw Stock Exchange has introduced co-location systems designed to appeal to high-frequency traders, as Italy clamps down on HFT with Europe’s first HFT-specific tax. The moves highlight ongoing national and international divisions over the role of HFT in capital markets.
Created in April 2013, Turkey’s new Borsa Istanbul exchange is at the heart of an ambitious project to turn Istanbul into a major global trading centre. With the country’s economy ascendant, Turkey has a lot to offer, according to Ali Çöplü, chief information officer of Borsa İstanbul.
Turkey’s Garanti Bank has launched a new ‘socially integrated’ mobile banking service called iGaranti, which connects with Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare to help users send money to friends and family.
German derivatives exchange Eurex has signed an agreement with Russia’s Moscow Exchange that will allow it to launch Euro-Russian Rouble and US Dollar/Russian Rouble FX futures in Q4 2013.
Dutch cooperative bank Rabobank has chosen tools from SuperDerivatives to help revamp its global FX trading operations.
Russia’s BCS Prime Brokerage has launched an ultra-low latency data line between London and Moscow which it claims is the fastest trading connection yet built between the two cities.
Half of Europe’s bank branches could be obsolete within the next seven years, according to new research by real estate advisory firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
The UK Payments Council has set a date for the introduction of the seven-day account switching service, which will make it easier for UK customers to switch their bank.
Azerbaijan card processing company AzeriCard has partnered with software firm OpenWay to create a mobile wallet that helps Azerbaijanis to withdraw cash from ATMs using a mobile phone and transfer money without using a bank card.
Visa Europe has appointed Nicolas Huss as its new president and chief executive. Huss will join Visa Europe from investment management firm Apollo Group, where he is chief executive for credit card and customer servicing business Avant Spain and Ireland.
French railway operator SNCF has adopted a mobile payments system from Californian tech firm VeriFone Systems, which allows customers to pay for railway tickets using a mobile device.
Following the news that Polish banks will work together on establishing a common mobile payment infrastructure, Philippe Eschenmoser, head of business consulting at SIX Payment Services, explains why other European banks should learn from the Polish market.
Robert Barnes, former chief executive of UBS MTF, is to take up a new role at Turquoise, the MTF owned by the London Stock Exchange. Barnes, who had been advising in a consultancy since he left UBS in February, will replace outgoing Turquoise chief Natan Tiefenbrun, who is understood to be leaving for his own reasons.
As the Moscow Exchange launches a new liquidity incentive promotion, Sergey Sinkevich, head of DMA at Russian broker Otkritie, argues that Russia’s move to adopt T+2 settlement is the most important development in the last 20 years for the country’s capital markets.
Is there anything to fear about the new FCA? Well, possibly quite a lot, it would seem. A hundred or so days into the new era of the FCA and it would be hard for anyone in the wealth management or private banking sector to have missed the message that the regulation of the sector is going to be different from now on.
The introduction of seven-day account switching in the UK in September is a fundamental pillar of UK government plans to inject more competition into retail banking. But the plan has its critics – some of whom warn it may achieve the opposite of what it intends.
Ukraine’s UniCredit ‘Ukrsotsbank’ has chosen US technology firm Fiserv to provide its Integrated Currency Manager tool, which the bank will use to improve its supply chain management and make better use of its available resources.
De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Netherlands’ national banking regulator, has cleared Amazon Web Services for use in the country’s financial sector, clarifying key supervision criteria for Dutch organisations looking to move infrastructure or services to the AWS cloud.
In an effort to improve the protection offered to consumers, and to harmonise data practices, the EU is currently in the process of passing two pieces of legislation: the Cybercrime Directive and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Few people have given much thought to how these will align with international financial regulation.
All of the UK’s mobile network operators have extended their carrier billing offerings by connecting to Gemalto’s direct billing platform, the mobile security solutions provider announced.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has chosen Canadian IT firm CGI Group to help its corporate clients manage the transition to SEPA, the European Union project to simplify bank transfers denominated in euros.
Spain’s CaixaBank is planning to target Brazil’s payments industry via a new joint venture with US transaction processing firm Global Payments that builds on the bank’s experience of digital channels its home market.
Banks should not be afraid to go further and faster in their adoption of cloud computing, says Mohamed Gamil, chief operating officer at Islamic Bank of Britain.
For firms who remember MiFID I, and those that don’t, round two is almost upon us. This month, the Council of the EU agreed their general approach, meaning that the draft of MiFID II/MiFIR is free to advance to the European Parliament. If all goes according to the current plan, the new combined legislation will be with us in time for 2015 implementation.
Financial technology company SIA has acquired Italian telecoms firm Emmecom, as part of a plan to create a new technology infrastructure across Europe for merchants and banks.
Market participants have condemned a proposal in the UK House of Commons that calls for the UK government to consider implementing a tax on high-frequency trading activity in the country.
The introduction of seven-day account switching in the UK in September is a fundamental pillar of UK government plans to inject more competition into retail banking. But the plan has its critics – some of whom warn it may achieve the opposite of what it intends.
Securities trading in France, the Netherlands and Belgium is to move to T+2 settlement in October 2014, following a decision by Euroclear to pre-empt Europe-wide settlement reforms.
A mobile wallet offering built by Kalixa Group claims to be able to turn just about any phone – including the iPhone – into an NFC payment device. The toolkit has launched in the UK, marking the first step in the firm’s plans for Europe-wide NFC mobile payments.
Mobile operator EE is launching a UK mobile payments service called Cash on Tap, in a move that highlights recent efforts across Europe to make mobile payments a reality.
At a passionate debate in Westminster this week MPs, led by Rushanara Ali, member for Bethnal Green & Bow, called for government action in the wake of Barclay’s recent decision to close accounts for a large number of small payments businesses in the remittances sector.
German exchange Deutsche Börse is to launch a new block trading service in partnership with Liquidnet, the buy-side crossing network.
The on-going turf wars that have held back the adoption of using mobile phones as a payment device at the point-of-sale will soon be a thing of the past if the progress made in Bratislava over the past year is any indication. The success of a project involving Visa Europe, Tatra Bank, Telefónica Slovakia’s O2 operation and a substantial number of retailers makes the Slovakian capital a showcase market for contactless technology.
The London Stock Exchange’s plans to establish a new central securities depository in Luxembourg reveal the way regulation can have unintended consequences – in this case a proliferation of CSDs.
Clearstream, Euroclear and Eurex Clearing have signed an agreement with the ICMA European Repo Council to create a joint project aimed at improving the efficiency of the repo market.
European securities regulator ESMA has started the latest round of consultation on OTC derivatives clearing with the release of a discussion paper on regulatory technical standards for the European Market Infrastructure regulation, the new pan-European rulebook.
BNP Paribas Securities Services is to use Swift’s value added network service to connect to T2S, the single European settlement platform due to roll out in 2015-16.
KBC Bank Ireland has signed up payments technology company Tsys to help launch its debit card portfolio in Ireland.
A partnership between German and Turkish payments specialists aims to take advantage of Turkey’s rising levels of online commerce, with the help of three Turkish banks.
Mobile payments looks set to receive a boost in Poland after six banks announced they will collaborate to create a new standard in the country.
