Worldwide


Blockchain: disrupting traditional architectures

Blockchain is disrupting the financial services (FS) industry. Deloitte recently called it one of the year’s most controversial and debated topics. Yet, despite the hundreds of millions being invested in blockchain technology by companies from all industries across the globe, there is still much confusion around how the technology works and the effects it will […]

JP Morgan launches In-Residence start-up programme

JP Morgan has launched In-Residence, a new programme for fintech start-ups to use its facilities, systems and expertise. The company says it is inviting start-ups to sit “side by side” with its businesses to develop innovations that could “revolutionise” the sector. Sanoke Viswanathan, chief administrative officer of JP Morgan’s Corporate & Investment Bank, says this […]

Banking Technology and FemTechLeaders launch W.I.T. Award, entries now open!

Woman In Technology (W.I.T) Award recognises an outstanding contribution made by a female to the fintech industry. The W.I.T. Award celebrates the spirit of inclusion, diversity and creativity in the fintech industry Supported by a worldwide network of FemTechLeaders To be presented at the Banking Technology annual awards ceremony and gala dinner on 1 December. […]

Standard Chartered revamps wealth management ops with Temenos

Temenos has landed a major deal with Standard Chartered, to modernise the bank’s wealth management software across 30+ countries. The bank signed for Temenos’ WealthSuite, front-to-back office, which incorporates the vendor’s T24 system; Insight BI for analytics; Temenos Connect for channels; and the TripleA portfolio management software that stems from Odyssey Financial Technologies, a wealth […]

All that glitters isn’t just our clothes!

When I first started travelling for my job, it wasn’t too afield. I was working in Australia so it involved trips to New Zealand, Singapore and not much more. However, in only a few years, my travel grew to where it became routine to visit the US, Germany and the UK, but with the aircraft […]

Top fintech stories this week – 1 July 2016

Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Brexit threat to UK jobs at Visa Should I stay or should I go? Swift hackers steal $10m from Ukraine bank Massive attack. New challenger bank readies for launch in UK Atten-shun! UK military personnel, veterans and their […]

Visa Lawsuit Alleges Walmart Plan to Eliminate Signature Verification

Visa has filed a lawsuit against Walmart in a dispute over customers’ use of signatures or PINs to verify purchases with EMV-equipped debit cards at Walmart. Last month, Walmart sued Visa, claiming the payments network required the retailer to offer EMV debit users the option of signature or PIN verification in violation of the Durbin Amendment.

Bottomline unveils universal aggregator for payments

Bottomline Technologies has launched its Universal Aggregator for payments and the accreditation of its “Faster Payment” processing capability. Bottomline Universal Aggregator has been designed to give banks, corporates, governments and non-financial banking institutions an “easy plug-in” to an array of payment clearing and settlement systems around the world. The “first-of-its-kind” service provides a single interface […]

Big data: bridging consumer experience & increased revenues in financial services

While the benefits of big data are well understood for compliance and fraud prevention, the technology can also deliver very useful insights into customer behaviour. Thanks to big data analytics, retail banks can monitor how customer behaviour evolves and any significant patterns that can inform which products to market and offer. In the UK, Lloyds […]

Wirecard Stakes Claim in North America with Citi Prepaid Buy

Wirecard AG has been making numerous deals and acquisitions over the past several months to expand its global footprint, but today’s news that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Citi Prepaid Services puts it firmly on the map in North America.

Senators Want Answers on Prepaid Outages

U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) are demanding answers from Green Dot, MasterCard and Walmart about a May outage that left Green Dot-issued Walmart MoneyCard customers without access to certain prepaid services. The senators also asked MasterCard to distinguish the circumstances between the Green Dot outage and the one RushCard experienced October 2015 when it switched to MasterCard’s processing platform.

Supreme Court to Hear ATM Fee Case

First filed in 2011 by a consortium of consumers, independent ATM operators and the National ATM Council, the suit alleges that payment networks’ ATM fee policies suppressed competition by barring ATM operators from offering discounts to users who transact via networks other than MasterCard or Visa.

Oracle’s new cloud-based banking solution targets default debtors

Oracle has launched its cloud-based Oracle Banking Collections tool – offering lenders a look at debtors’ total financial pictures and features. The firm says each year financial institutions (FIs) “waste millions of dollars attempting to solve their debt collection problem with the age-old tactic of throwing third party debt collection agents who may use decades-old […]

Kroger Latest Merchant to Challenge Visa Debit Verification Rules

Grocery giant Kroger Co. has filed a lawsuit against Visa Inc. over the payment network’s rules for verifying EMV debit card transactions. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, the suit is based on similar issues as those in a legal challenge by Walmart, which sued Visa in May.

Android Pay, QuickPass Expand to New Markets

This week marks a couple of “firsts” for two mobile wallets. Android Pay has launched in its first Asian country, and UnionPay International’s QuickPass mobile wallet took its first step outside of China.

QikServe Updates Mobile-Ordering Technology for Hotels

QikServe, which sells mobile ordering and payment services, has released QikServe5, which the company said caters to the hospitality sector. Mobile ordering, particularly order-ahead features, have been more prevalent in the QSR industry thus far.

Swift’s global payments initiative gets boost from 73 banks

Swift has revealed 73 banks worldwide have now joined its global payments initiative for cross-border payments. The latest to join are Alfa-Bank, Axis Bank, Banco de Crédito del Peru, Banco do Brasil, Bangkok Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Banque Européenne d’investissement, CaixaBank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Credit Agricole, CTBC Bank, E.Sun Commercial Bank, Fifth […]

Amex teams with Facebook for Messenger bot

American Express is partnering with Facebook to provide an Amex bot for its card members in Messenger. The concept will allow Amex card members to sign up to receive real-time notifications about their purchases, and information about card benefits and services related to those purchases. For example, if a member purchases an airline ticket, the […]

Amex to Reach Cardholders through Facebook Messenger

A new partnership with Facebook will enable American Express to interact with cardholders via Facebook Messenger. Unveiled at the Cannes-Lions International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France, the initiative features an American Express messenger “bot” that sends cardholders real-time purchase notifications and information about card benefits and services related to those purchases.

Jacobs Named Green Dot Chairman

Green Dot Corp. has announced the appointment of William I Jacobs as chairman of the board of directors, effective June 23, 2016. Jacobs takes the helm following the company’s May decision to split the roles of chairman and CEO—both of which had been held by Steve Streit—after a lengthy proxy battle with shareholder Harvest Capital Strategies.

Symitar’s Episys core system integrated with Amazon Echo; Baxter CU an early taker

Symitar, a credit union software subsidiary of Jack Henry, has teamed up with a think tank, BIG, for an initiative called Financial Innovations Voice Experience (FIVE). FIVE explores the possibilities that voice-based personal assistants such as Amazon’s Echo and Microsoft’s Cortana can bring to banking. Symitar’s Episys core processing system is being integrated with these […]

Challenger banks battle cry with AI

Challenger banks have turned their attention to artificial intelligence (AI) as they seek to provide a more personalised approach to banking. German digital bank Number26 has launched Pulse26, a new app that uses AI to provide updates based on the customer’s personal banking history. Number26 says the more a customer uses their account, the “more […]

Novabase builds customer onboarding platform for Banco CTT

Banco CTT, a new bank recently launched by CTT Correios de Portugal, the Portuguese post office, has developed a new customer onboarding platform. The platform promises to complete the opening of a new account at Banco CTT in just 20 minutes online. It has been developed together with a local software specialist, Novabase. It is […]

Canada to Germany Ripple bank transfer breakthrough for banking industry

Canada’s ATB Financial sent €666.67 to ReiseBank in Germany using Ripple technology, with the transaction completing in eight seconds. The participants say this is the world’s first bank transfer using blockchain. SAP, which provides ATB with its core banking software, and Accenture (SAP’s partner and system integrator at ATB) were also involved in the project. […]

Fiserv launches real-time alerts solution for bank customers, Notifi

Fiserv has launched Notifi, a platform for the delivery of real-time alerts for retail and SME bank customers. Home Federal Bank and C&F Bank are among the first takers. The solution consolidates information from across a financial institution’s systems – including core account processing, online banking and mobile banking, lending software, debit and credit cards […]

Openfunds launches global standard for fund data interchange

Zurich-based non-profit organisation, openfunds, has created a global standard for the characterisation of investment funds. The goal of the new standard is to improve efficiency, transparency and reliability by eliminating potential sources of error and ambiguity during fund data interchange. Openfunds is now calling for a global adoption of the standard. The standard is published […]

Taking advantage of open source

The technology world is evolving from a cathedral-like structure dominated by major technology vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, to a bazaar-like ecosystem where new paradigms, platforms and tools emerge constantly and are adopted quickly. Though it is a cliché to say that the pace of change is accelerating in IT, it is also […]

Interview: Matteo Cassina, Saxo Bank

During the two-day MoneyConf event in Madrid, there was an exclusive Banking Technology interview with Matteo Cassina, member of the global executive committee at Saxo Bank. Deputy editor Antony Peyton spoke to him about his opinions on the show and the industry. In terms of MoneyConf 2016, Cassina says: “I do believe there are a […]

U.K. Votes to Exit EU; Payments Industry Faces Uncertainty

The people have decided and the U.K. is splitting from the European Union, raising serious concerns for the payments industry. Among those concerns is how passporting will work when the U.K. is no longer part of the EU since the majority of European e-money issuers have licenses in the U.K. that they passport elsewhere. Fifty-two percent of voters opted to bow out, or “Brexit,” as it’s commonly called.

Top fintech stories this week – 24 June 2016

Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Visa Inc completes acquisition of Visa Europe Together again. Virgin Money UK in new banking software search Another one of Branson’s ventures. BIL embarks on major technology overhaul with Temenos Second time lucky? MoneyConf 2016: Woe to the […]

Profile Software gains new IMSplus taker, T.C.R. International

Cyprus-based wealth and fund manager Total Capital Resources (T.C.R.) International is automating its ops with the IMSplus system, supplied by Profile Software. T.C.R. provides fund set-up, administration and management, portfolio management and brokerage services, with access to all major exchanges, OTC markets and non-listed instruments. Profile’s flagship investment management platform, IMSplus, was selected “following an […]

Payments Industry Braces for ‘Brexit’ Results

As voters head to polling places today to decide whether the U.K. should split from the European Union, the referendum is top of mind for members of the payments industry around the world. Several issues for the industry would be in flux should the U.K. decide to bow out, or “Brexit,” as it’s commonly called.