Worldwide


UniRush LLC Offers 4-Month Fee Holiday in Wake of Glitch (Oct. 20, 2015)

UniRush LLC last week disclosed a major service interruption with its RushCard GPR product that resulted in many of its customers experiencing difficulty using their cards and accessing funds over several days, resulting in apologies from RushCard co-founder Russell Simmons and a four-month holiday from card fees that will run Nov. 1, 2015, through Feb. 29, 2016.

Oberthur Planning IPO in Paris (Oct. 20, 2015)

Paris-based global card manufacturer Oberthur Technologies is planning to go public in what its owner, private equity firm Advent International Corp., is saying will be the largest technology IPO in Europe this year, according to reports.

Blockchain: widely discussed but what are the implications?

The fintech revolution is now firmly established, and disruptive technologies are blooming all across the sector. From securities to payments, everyone in the sector is watching to see how the next innovation will affect their business.

CurrentC Pilot Adds Walmart (Oct. 19, 2015)

Walmart this week joins major merchants participating in MCX’s CurrentC mobile payments test underway in Columbus, Ohio, with Exxon Mobil and Shell coming soon, the consortium confirms.

InComm, Scientific Games Partner to Offer Lottery Gift Cards (Oct. 19, 2015)

With the holiday season approaching, consumers will be able to purchase lottery gift cards to give as gifts or for self-use through a partnership with InComm and Scientific Games International. The Atlanta-based prepaid product and technology provider signed a five-year deal with Scientific Games to provide lottery gift cards in North America.

Banking Technology Awards 2015 – shortlist announced

Banks from around the world are among the candidates on the shortlist for the Banking Technology 2015 Awards, announced today, showing the continuing competitive edge regional institutions are gaining over the large international players through technology.

FX industry must act now or face regulation warns LMAX

More transparency is urgently needed to restore trust in the FX industry, according to a new report by foreign exchange MTF LMAX Exchange – but to make that happen, the industry will have to collaborate.

Pay Magazine – Fall 2015

What Glass Ceiling? Women Driving Payments Change; P2P on the Verge; M-Wallet Challengers; Apple Pay Stats; Cards Still Present: Why Plastic Rules; 2015 Paybefore Awards Europe Winners

Will banks suffer casualties in the battle to own the customer experience?

Technology has infiltrated every facet of our lives, fundamentally changing our behaviour patterns and our expectations of what constitutes a good customer experience. The banking sector has not been immune to these changes; the industry has been forced to drastically transform its business processes and services in order to keep up with customers’ expectations. Today, customer satisfaction is judged not by the smile on the face of a cashier, but on the speed with which one can gain mobile access

Is everybody API?

Competition from financial technology companies and regulatory changes are forcing banks to adopt APIs to provide access to client information, which has many implications across the industry.

Lack of data in securities messages creates compliance issues

A lack of information in securities messages creates problems for financial institutions screening them for regulatory compliance. But if the audience in a session yesterday is representative, only around half of them are screening anyway.

Banks jump on the RMB superhighway

Banks have been quick to participate in the China International Payment System (Cips) and Sibos has provided the perfect opportunity for them to boast of their involvement. The payments infrastructure, which was launched on 8 October, was described as a “milestone” by Helen Yun, managing director and head of financial institutions China, Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Speaking during the Developing your transaction business with China session on Tuesday, she said the launch came at the right time, just a few days before Sibos opened.

Asean 5 defy the downturn, ANZ study reveals

While much of the focus at this year’s Sibos has been on China, today’s ‘Asean day’ highlights the emergence of the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). Many had expected the region’s trade integration to falter during the global financial crisis amid falling export demand. However a new report from Australia’s ANZ bank said the region had “defied the detractors and proved a resilient base for a new cohort of international banks”.

It’s not who you know, it’s what you know

Sluggish economic growth in developed nations means attention is still focused on the growth markets of the Brics nations. As intra-regional trade grows, local knowledge is becoming a valued commodity.

Cips ‘not a competitor’ says Swift

Swift was keen to point out that the newly-launched China International Payment System (Cips) is not a competitor. Prior to the launch of the Chinese payments infrastructure, details of the system were scarce. On Tuesday at Sibos, Philippe Dirckx, managing director, head of markets and initiatives, Asia Pacific, at Swift said he wanted to clear up the idea that Cips was a competitor to Swift.

Worrying want for working capital

Working capital and supply chain finance topped the list of concerns for corporate treasurers in an audience poll at The future of corporate banking session yesterday.

Need for fintech innovation

Regulatory pressures, millennial customers demanding different services and the impact of digital giants such as Google and Amazon are making innovation an imperative for banks and financial services organisations. But banks are not very innovative on their own, being risk averse and focused on their balance sheets.

From tiny acorns …

From its tentative early steps to open the Swift network to corporations, Swift has been steadily building its corporate membership. Swift membership is increasingly an option for not only large multinationals, but also medium sized companies. Daily News at Sibos looks at the current status of Swift for Corporates.

Real-time payments can fight disruption …

The rise of real-time payment infrastructures in the UK, Singapore, Poland, Australia and elsewhere in the world can help banks fight the disruption they face from alternative payment service providers (PSPs) and financial technology newcomers

Retailers Continue to Challenge Interchange Fee Settlement

Target Corp., Amazon.com and a host of other retailers continue to challenge MasterCard, Visa and several large banks over the terms of a $7.25 billion settlement reached in 2013. The settlement was supposed to end the retailers’ claims that the banks and MasterCard and Visa artificially inflated interchange fees. Several of the largest retailers, however, […]