Blockchain and distributed technology have been hot topics at Sibos this year, with a raft of announcements from banks and fintechs alike. One of the areas identified as of most promise is trade finance – an area of banking that is rife with paper-based processes.
Standard Chartered Bank has entered into a One Belt One Road (Obor) strategic alliance with China Merchants Bank (CMB) to accelerate the Belt and Road initiative and help promote economic growth and regional cooperation for countries along the Road. Obor is a development strategy and framework that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily […]
Innotribe’s Industry Challenge – the results of which have been just unveiled – was all about blockchain and disruptive technologies. Three star-ups won the challenge to introduce blockchain to the securities sector: SmartContract, Rise and Coin Sciences.
A pilot project to prove the concept of Swift’s Global Payments Innovation (GPI) initiative has been hailed a success and has cleared the way for a go-live of the service in early 2017. Swift has been piloting the GPI with 21 banks, including Nordea, Citi, Bank of China and Intesa Sanpaolo since February – all […]
It is vital that the Swift community learns from cyber attacks and strengthens cooperation, delegates were told yesterday. Chief technology officer (CTO) of Swift, Craig Young, said such attacks were increasing in number and sophistication across all industries. Marco Gercke, director of the Cybercrime Research Institute, said: “The financial industry is lacking co-operation. I know […]
It’s a fintech double as Equiniti has developed a digital banking platform and launched a mobile biometric authentication and identity lifecycle solution.
t’s been a bad month for the payments industry in the state of New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law Sept. 26 imposing restrictions on gift cards and gift certificates sold in the state. The new law comes just weeks after the New York Department of Labor (DOL) issued a final rule regulating the use of payroll cards. The gift card law goes into effect Dec. 25, 2016, as that is 90 days from the governor’s signing.
American Express scored a major legal victory on Sept. 26 when a federal appeals court ruled that Amex had the right to restrict retailers. Specifically, Amex had wanted to prevent Amex-accepting merchants from offering shoppers financial incentives to use other card brands. In its ruling, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit New York tossed out a lower court’s decision that said language barring such “steering” in American Express’ contracts with its merchant clients violated anti-trust laws.
Blockchain, the decentralized transaction-verification system that underpins bitcoin, received a boost Sept. 27, with Microsoft and Bank of America Merrill Lynch saying they will team up to further develop the technology.
With the proliferation of smartphones among consumers, retailers have an opportunity to reach customers in thoughtful and engaging ways that could help influence the decision-making process when it comes to making a purchase. Discover offers tips on what strategies retailers should consider implementing to enhance their mobile marketing campaigns.
Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has gone live with new cash and liquidity reporting software, SmartStream Technologies’ Corona. The bank has taken “a proactive approach to Basel III” – being the first in the region to do so, said the vendor. The new centralised solution will help to monitor and manage cash positions on an intraday basis, throughout the RBI group.
ACI Worldwide and Vocalink have joined forces “to offer a complete end-to-end immediate payments solution to launch a domestic or regional immediate payments network”. The partnership will combine Vocalink’s Immediate Payments System (IPS) offering for central payment infrastructures and ACI’s UP Immediate Payments solution for banks and financial institutions.
Swift has committed to help its members combat the cyber threat “in challenging times”, delegates heard during yesterday’s opening plenary session. Security will be a feature every day of the conference because “the cyber threat is here to stay”, said Swift chief executive, Gottfried Leibbrandt.
The payments industry faces a perfect storm with immediate, open and context-based changes emanating from new technology, regulation and infrastructures set to “transform the landscape”.
The opportunity for traditional banking processes to be transformed that is presented by innovative financial technology (fintech) developers is at risk of being squandered in many cases because of cultural differences between large inflexible enterprise culture and the enthusiastic approach of the start-up developer world.
Banif Bank in Malta has selected the Pelican Transaction Banking platform. The solution will provide end to end automation of both Swift and single euro payments area payments, including integration with over the counter instructions, Banif’s internet banking system and back office.
The European Central Bank has outlined its plans to consolidate the Target2 and Target2Securities (T2S) platforms, introduce a new European-wide instant payments platform by November 2017 and develop a new collateral management system. The Eurosystem’s “Vision 2020” plans were outlined by Yves Mersch, a member of the executive board at the ECB, at Sibos 2016.
Udayan Goyal’s vision for the future of money revolves around seamless, instant micropayments being made continuously between autonomous apps and services all triggered by thoughts and actions of humans as they go about their daily lives.
A FinTech Technical Advisory Group has been established by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) TC68 Financial Services Committee. ISO has also just recently approved a new blockchain committee.
Italy’s TAS Group and targit GmbH Austria have signed a deal to collaborate on bringing a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model for liquidity risk management and reporting within reach of tier two and three banks throughout Central and Eastern Europe, including Austria and Germany.
A central securities depositories (CSDs) consortium has been founded to help emerging market CSDs investigate and take advantage of new technologies such as blockchain. Led by Russia’s CSD, National Settlement Depository (NSD) and South Africa’s Strate, the consortium will initially focus on working with CSDs in Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia.
The CFPB has filed a federal lawsuit against a credit repair company over what the consumer protection agency called “a series of illegal advance fees” and misrepresentations of the cost and effectiveness of the company’s services.
The amount of money U.S. consumers are loading onto their open-loop prepaid cards continues to increase, and more consumers are buying open- and closed-loop gift cards for self-use, according to two separate studies by Mercator Advisory Group.
Global consumer card payments will surpass cash payments for the first time this year, reaching $23.1 trillion worldwide, according to new data from Euromonitor International. Cash transactions are projected at $22.6 trillion for the year, according to the research firm.
Global non-cash transactions grew 8.9 percent year-over-year in 2014 to reach 387.3 billion transactions, according to the 2016 “World Payments Report” from Capgemini and BNP Paribas. The report said that “developing markets drove this growth, recording a 16.7 percent increase in 2014 while mature markets grew by 6.0 percent.”
Join the consortium. PayCommerce, an open cross-border payments network, has launched an instant cross-border payment, clearing and integrated settlement programme for global banks.
Start-up Form3 Financial Cloud will offer payment and core banking solutions through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model. These are the Dovetail payments system and a new core banking system recently launched by Thought Machine.
Custodians are being urged to adopt a standardised utility model for the management of standing settlement instructions (SSIs) to resolve ongoing challenges such as high costs and risks for buy-side firms.
Ripple has created the “first” interbank group for global payments based on distributed financial technology – aka blockchain. Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), Santander, UniCredit, Standard Chartered, Westpac Banking Corporation, and Royal Bank of Canada are the founding members of the network, known as the Global Payments Steering Group (GPSG). CIBC will also join […]
Nordic payments firm Nets has successfully IPO-ed on Nasdaq Copenhagen Exchange the tune of DKK 30 billion ($4.5 billion).
National Australia Bank (NAB) says it has successfully transferred AU$10 ($7.6) – using Ripple’s blockchain tech – from Australia to Canada. It took ten seconds to process.
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Harrods Bank in search of new core banking system EXCLUSIVE. The FIS Profile project is dead. Long live a new project! Deutsche Bank GTB builds new payments platform EXCLUSIVE. Dovetail to deliver? Misys unveils Platform-as-a-Service strategy Opens up […]
Sibos 2016 will be held in Geneva on 26-29 September. What to do in the city, where to eat and drink, and, importantly, how to get to and from the airport and around Geneva – Banking Technology has it all summed up for you. Useful links, contact details and to-the-point reviews. See you there! A conventional city […]
We are pleased to unveil our Readers’ Choice Awards shortlist, as voted by our broad international audience of bankers and financial services professionals.
Too many words can be absurd. A round-up of some key events in fintech funding. UK payments start-up Curve has announced a further tranche of fundraising taking its total investment to $5 million. The firm says this puts it on a “trajectory for a sizeable” Series A round by the end of December ahead of […]
Enhancements are coming to Visa’s Verified by Visa (VbV) online authentication service, and the 3-D Secure messaging protocol on which it’s based, the payment network announced Sept. 20.
Singapore-based ride-hailing platform Grab has raised U.S. $750 million in financing, increasing its total capital to more than $1 billion, and will use the funds to expand its transportation services throughout Southeast Asia, the company announced Sept. 20. Grab, which offers private car, motorbike, taxi and carpooling services in six countries and 31 cities in Southeast Asia, also will also use the capital to invest in its GrabPay mobile payments platform.
One of the U.K.’s first-ever class action lawsuits is targeting Mastercard, providing a potential preview of future class actions in the country. The case stems from a 2007 finding by the European Union (EU) Commission that the network’s interchange fees were too high, in breach of EU rules.
Samsung wants to enable consumers to pay with their eyes. The latest update to the company’s Samsung Pay mobile wallet will include a feature that will allow payments via iris scans of consumers’ eyes, according to a Samsung spokesman.
Contactless POS terminal transactions made in-store using cards, mobile devices or wearables will total approximately $500 billion annually by next year, an increase from roughly $321 billion in 2016, according to a recent study by Juniper Research.
