Industry Comment


The brave new world of mobile banking

The digital era is changing your bank rapidly. Is your mobile testing & assurance practice ready? P Venkatesh, director of the product division, and Srivatsan TT, vice president of the solutions group, at Maveric Systems discuss the issues

The mobile movement driving multi-channel banking

Despite the significant challenges faced by the UK’s banking sector over the last decade, there has been a dramatic evolution in the customer experience following the introduction of online, telephone and mobile banking. While the branch remains an important channel, especially for older customers, mobile technology is rapidly redefining how customers interact with their banks.

Getting ready for mobile payments

With the penetration of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets constantly growing, attention is increasingly turning to mobile marketing, mobile commerce and mobile payments. It is still the case, however, that these trends are largely played out in specialised media, and do not influence the actual behaviour of consumers. This is especially true for mobile payments, with consumers very sceptical about this concept

As global commerce expands, so does payments complexity: How should banks respond?

The increased globalisation of business has opened up new challenges – and opportunities – for companies and the banks that serve them. Corporate treasurers and finance professionals face complexities in the payments arena that range from inconsistencies in local payment processing to new regulations, emerging payment clearing systems and the need to manage geopolitical risk in an ever-expanding array of countries. To address these challenges for their clients, and for themselves, global banks need to invest and innovate to make sure they have the solutions to meet business needs today and in the future.

Moral hazard: the ghost of bail-outs past

The bailout of Espirito Santo Bank brings back unwelcome memories of the events of the last financial crisis and raises the spectre of moral hazard returning to the financial services industry both in the UK and abroad. But how far have we really come since those dark days of 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and how far do we still have to go? A quick look at recent events gives us a good indication.

Should banks consider domestic payments schemes?

Domestic card schemes have traditionally partnered with MasterCard and/or Visa in an arrangement that leaves the domestic player handling the local transactions and their international partner facilitating and controlling the international business. Should banks work with both or just partner with one of the international schemes?

Viewpoint: The Case for Gift Card Exchange

Gift card exchanges play a key role in connecting motivated shoppers with retailers and driving incremental sales, according to survey data from Blackhawk Network. Consumers say they’d like to see more retail locations add gift card exchanges.

Blog: Emerging Trends in Prepaid Card Fraud

Fraudsters are ingenious at finding cracks in the bulwark against prepaid card fraud, but industry cooperation can blunt their effect with strategic practices that are surprisingly easy to implement.

Trading automation, regulations, and systemic risk

The financial services industry has always pursued technical supremacy. But after years of financial crisis and attempted reforms to improve the transparency and understanding of risk exposure in financial services, we seem as much in the dark as ever …

Don’t drown in over-regulation

It should be no shock that the risk for banks of being caught-out for non-compliant activity has soared in recent years in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. Banks are being monitored more closely now than ever before and it’s been difficult to escape without scrutiny or a heavy reputational impact.

Viewpoint: Why HCE is an Acronym You Need to Know

HCE moves payments credentials to the cloud, which could radically speed up mobile payments development. Analyst Sarah Grotta believes HCE also offers compelling leadership opportunities for prepaid card issuers.

Viewpoint: Jack Ma and the Discovery of Billions

Alibaba Group’s $7.5 billion empire lurks like a crocodile waiting to strike its next opportunity. What does the Chinese giant’s appetite mean for the worldwide payments industry?

Entering the Banking Technology Awards – guidelines from the editor

Entries for the Banking Technology Awards 2014 have been open for a while now, but as we move into the last few weeks, this is always a time when we are flooded with questions about the process. By way of response, here are some guidelines based on my experience chairing the judging panel over the past 11 years.

Financial institutions and Cybercrime: It’s only just begun

A recent bout of high profile cyber-attacks on financial institutions across the UK, US and Canada has put the spotlight back on the importance of data security and the need to be diligent when it comes to cybersecurity within the banking industry

Banks’ cyber resilience requires ongoing review against escalating threats

The news last month (June) that the Luuuk malware had snared its first victim, an unnamed European bank, has again highlighted the magnitude of the challenge facing the banking sector. While the reported theft of €500,000 during the course of a week certainly does not break any records, the discovery of what is believed to be a variant of the feared Zeus malware, is just the latest in a line of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks

HCE and NFC: threat or opportunity?

Mobile NFC services continued to expand in 2013 but the big question is, will this be amplified or disrupted by the introduction of host-based card emulation (HCE) into mainstream operating systems?

New legs for legacy systems

Unlike manufacturing companies, which run their operations on a single predominant ERP system supported by a few auxiliary solutions, banks have added layer upon layer of technology, ending up with an unmanageable snarl of systems and applications. Just to put things in perspective, it is estimated that on average global banks have more than 5,000 applications.

Back-office legacy still holding back banks

Setting up a bank in the UK is costly, time-consuming, heavily regulated and not easy. As a result, the dynamic, start-up culture that drives innovation in many other sectors is less prevalent within banking and financial services.

The Rise of the Cyborg Financial Officer

The rise of new technologies is drastically redefining both the responsibilities of chief financial officers and the way they work, providing the ability tomake better organisational decisions with faster, accurate and more reliable data.

T2S: Doing nothing is not an option

As the implementation of T2S approaches, there is still a gap between the readiness levels of different types of market participant, new Celent research finds. But a ‘wait and see’ approach can only take some firms so far, argues Isabelle Olivier, head of clearing and settlement EMEA at Swift

Dispelling the myths surrounding voice biometrics

With passwords continuing to attract widespread derision from consumers it seems that businesses are starting to listen to their customers and in recent weeks voice biometrics has been hitting the headlines, as the technology is set to replace the bane of so many people’s lives.

The future of digital banking: sustenance or disruption?

Banks should not be blind-sided by sustaining innovation: a large part of their digital initiatives look at delivering existing services cheaper, faster and (sometimes) better – but true disruption occurs when addressing customer needs better, faster and maybe, cheaper.

CLS: Supreme Court ruling removes threat to financial infrastructure

In a landmark ruling, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the intermediated settlement of financial exchanges is an abstract idea and therefore not patent-eligible. David Puth, chief executive of CLS, which won the case in question. discusses the implications of the ruling.

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