Pan-African banking conglomerate Ecobank has launched a fintech challenge for start-ups. The event, open to Africa’s entrepreneurs, innovators and developers, provides an opportunity to win $500,000 in funding as well as partner with Ecobank and roll out services across 36 countries.
While many traditional tech giants have been struggling to come to terms with the connected economy, SAP’s latest earnings indicate it is adapting well to the world of cloud computing.
Citi’s global perspectives and solutions team has issued a 100-page report on digital disruption in the fintech industry. It has analysed venture capital (VC) investments in the fintech industry between 2010 and 2016, as well as the emerging technologies across the globe.
As with any revolution, open banking will have winners and losers. How to stay competitive in the digital era?
Luxembourg-based Rakuten Europe Bank, a subsidiary of Japan’s e-commerce and internet company, Rakuten, has gone live with Temenos’ T24 core banking system and Temenos Connect for digital channels.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has issued a cryptobond for Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC) using its capital markets blockchain platform. CBA says it is “the first blockchain bond issuance by a government entity both in Australia and in the world”.
Fintech start-up Railsbank has signed its first partner, Arkéa Banking Services (Credit Mutuel Arkéa’s subsidiary), to use its platform to deliver SEPA payment services and IBANs across Europe.
Austria’s Erste Bank und Sparkassen can now verify new customers’ IDs via video. The functionality has been developed with specialist provider IDnow and introduced just a few weeks following the approval by the country’s Financial Market Authority (FMA).
HSBC plans the closure of 62 of its UK branches in 2017, with the loss of up to 180 jobs. This will bring the number of branches it has in the country to 625 by the end of 2017. It says it has no intention to close any further branches in 2017 and this marks […]
Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) intends to invest about THB 40 billion ($1.1 billion) in creating, acquiring and developing its technology infrastructure over the next three years. The Thailand-based bank says this investment will help it provide products and services that are better suited to serving its younger and more affluent clients. SCB’s innovation-focused subsidiary, Digital […]
Hellenic Bank, the second largest bank in Cyprus, has chosen the Backbase Omnichannel Banking Platform for its banking systems upgrade. The revamp will start with the public domain landing pages and web content projects, followed by mobile banking. In fact, its mobile banking app was “highly commended” in the Banking Technology Awards 2016. Natasha Kyprianides, […]
UK-based Starling Bank has become the “first of the digital-only challengers” to join Faster Payments this week. It is the 13th direct participant of the Faster Payments Scheme, and Starling says its customers will be able to see where their money is flowing and when in real-time, 24/7. Joining the board of Faster Payments, Julian […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) on its own isn’t enough to compete – companies need industry-specific solutions to business problems. So said Martin Schroeter, IBM’s senior vice-president and chief financial officer, on the company’s quarterly earnings call.
Customers of Lloyds, Halifax and TSB are unable to access their online accounts after a major outage. Based on Twitter feeds and the website monitoring service, Down Detector, there are problems across the UK. Many Twitter users, no strangers to tedious whinging at the best of times, are saying they can’t access accounts online or […]
Pakistan-based Samba Bank has signed for BenchMatrix’s retail loan origination system, RiskNucleus LOS. The solution will automate the bank’s consumer lending processes across its entire network of 37 branches and facilitate “moving towards a fully paperless environment”, BenchMatrix says.
POSB, one of Singapore’s oldest banks and part of the DBS Banking Group, has launched an online virtual assistant. It is powered by the KAI conversational bot/AI platform from a New York-based fintech start-up, Kasisto.
FairFX, a London-based multicurrency payments service, has acquired Q Money and its e-money licence.
Hong Kong-based tech accelerator Blueprint is calling out to the region and the world for start-up applicants.
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
Philippines-based Ayannah, a provider of financial services to migrants and the unbanked, was the overall start-up winner in the Next Money Fintech Finals 2017 in Hong Kong.
Accenture and operations benchmarking consultancy firm McLagan evaluate the applications of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in investment banking operations in the “Banking on Blockchain” report.
Rabobank is implementing ACI Worldwide’s UP Immediate Payments solution to support SEPA instant payments.
Thesys Technologies, trading technologies and analytics software specialist, has won the contract to build a new system for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to track and store all stock and options orders and transactions.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK has accepted undertakings from the Bacs payment scheme that commit it to delivering the improvements required by the CMA retail banking market investigation within a year.
De Surinaamsche Bank (DSB), the largest commercial bank in Suriname, is implementing the latest version of Fiserv’s Signature core banking system and DigitalAccess for digital banking capabilities.
Global asset manager Schroders has selected Capriza’s enterprise mobility platform “to power its drive to digitisation”, according to the vendor.
HSBC has appointed a technology advisory board of top-level specialists from around the globe as the banking giant is keen to capitalise on opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI), biometrics, blockchain and data science, combat cybercrime and leverage its global infrastructure.
Private equity firm AnaCap Financial Partners is taking over a controlling stake in Heidelpay, an online payment service provider (PSP) in Germany. Heidelpay’s co-founders and existing management will retain a minority stake in the business.
Hong Kong is telling its citizens and the world that fintech start-ups are welcome to do business and capitalise on the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit.
Smooth Commerce and Visa have completed the first integration of Visa’s Developer Programme in Canada and brought to market “a first of its kind innovation” in the mobile commerce space.
First Oklahoma Federal Credit Union, the oldest credit union in the state, has embarked on a major tech overhaul. It will implement Fiserv’s Portico core processing system and a suite of digital solutions.
Business automation software vendor Automic Software has inked a deal with Temenos to make its Automic Workload Automation available on the Temenos MarketPlace store.
They said it. We read it. We edited. A round-up of the latest funding efforts in the fintech and payments space. Featuring Kasisto, BillGO, Gumption Labs and Fraugster.
Our dazzling event gathered together over 260 banking and financial technology specialists from all over the world – recognising the excellence and innovation in the use of IT in financial services, and of course the people that make it happen! Join us at the 2017 awards, which will be held at a 5-star venue in London in Q4 this year.
RosEvroBank, a top-50 bank in Russia, has created a prototype of a blockchain-based system that enables remote verification of customers for other financial institutions. The decentralised system is built on the Microsoft’s Ethereum Consortium Blockchain infrastructure.
Munnypot, a new robo-advice and investment service in the UK, has fully launched with tech support from a number of partners.
The Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), set up by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has recently issued a whitepaper, “Applications of Blockchain Technology to Banking and Financial Sector in India”. We summarise the report and highlight the key findings.
The National Economic Council (NEC) of the US, part of the Office of White House Policy, has published a whitepaper, “A Framework for Fintech”.
According to the UK Cards Association, a trade body for the country’s card payments industry, a quarter of all card transactions are now made via contactless in the UK. 325 million purchases, altogether worth £2.9 billion, were made using contactless debit and credit cards in November 2016.
Seven European banks – Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Natixis, KBC, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit – have agreed in principle to develop a blockchain-based shared platform for domestic and international commerce for SMEs.
