Digital


Nationwide selects Tech Mahindra for network and infrastructure revamp

Nationwide Building Society has chosen Tech Mahindra, an Indian IT services company, to provide network and infrastructure services in a five-year partnership agreement. The building society’s ambition is to connect its UK retail operations, comprising around 700 branches to more than 15 million customers. It also plans new services in its branches, such as Nationwide […]

Net Element enters Azerbaijan’s mobile payments market

Florida-based Net Element has launched its mobile payments platform, Digital Provider, in Azerbaijan. The venture is done via the company’s Russian subsidiary, OOO Digital Provider. The company says the new integration allows content providers and aggregators access to all “major” mobile operators in the country. It has also signed a contract with a national television […]

Veridian Credit Union revamps digital channels with Alkami Technology’s ORB platform

Veridian Credit Union, a $2.95 billion credit union in Iowa, is implementing Alkami Technology’s ORB platform for digital channels. The new solution will replace a legacy set-up, which includes a mobile banking offering from another US provider, Clairmail (now part of Monitise). Clairmail was selected by Veridian back in 2009. In 2012, the vendor was […]

CopSonic and Natixis join forces for SwipeSonic ultrasound payments

Natixis Payment Solutions has teamed up with French start-up CopSonic to create SwipeSonic, an ultrasound payment solution for online shopping transactions. CopSonic’s technology uses ultrasound to encrypt information within music and voice, or transmit data “entirely inaudibly to the human ear”. Emmanuel Ruiz, CEO of CopSonic, says: “Sound is the easiest and most effective technology […]

Barclays and BlackBerry bringing BBM to Pingit mobile payments

Barclays and BlackBerry are bringing BBM, the mobile instant messaging service, to Pingit money transfers in the UK. BBM users can now make mobile payments to each other using Barclays’ mobile payment app Pingit. Matthew Talbot, SVP, BBM at BlackBerry, says to “exchange money was a logical extension” of BBM’s functions. Once a user has […]

ICICI Bank launches mobile banking app competition with Visa

India’s ICICI Bank has launched an ‘ICICI Appathon’ as it looks for innovations in mobile banking apps. The bank wants participants in India to create new APIs in five different categories – retail banking, corporate banking, treasury, ‘ICICI Group’ (such as insurance and securities), and ‘Partner APIs’. The latter comprises Visa and National Payments Corporation […]

Dallas Capital Bank builds mobile and digital banking with FIS

Dallas Capital Bank, a local, independent bank is adding mobile banking, digital banking and electronic payments to its customer service functions. The firm has begun integrating its bank’s new digital services with its existing FIS backend core and payments systems. It is also adding a suite of digital banking systems, from digital account origination to […]

Fifth Third Bank fingerprints iPhone banking

Fifth Third Bank is introducing Touch ID biometric capabilities to its mobile banking app for the iPhone. Touch ID allows fingerprint authentication for enabled devices, letting customers log into their Fifth Third app with their fingers or thumbs instead of a password. The Bank’s fast mobile app allows people to check balances, transfer funds and […]

NAB Pay rolls out on Android smart phones

NAB has launched its new mobile payment service NAB Pay, designed to enable customers to use their mobile phone to make purchases, without the need for a physical card. Customers with a compatible Android mobile device and a NAB Visa Debit Card have been able to start using NAB Pay from 25 January, available as […]

Electronic payment volumes and security fears rocket

A survey of more than 3,700 IT security practitioners from more than a dozen major industry sectors found 54% of those firms surveyed had a security or data breach involving payment data, on average four times in past two years.​ The research, independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of digital security firm Gemalto, also […]

Orange to launch mobile-only bank in 2017

French telecoms firm Orange is to create a new bank called Orange Bank together with French insurer Groupama, in a move the two firms say will help to break open the banking market using mobile phone technology.

Helping millennials chart today’s financial waters

Millennials – those highly sophisticated, tech-savvy men and women born between 1980 and 2000 – present enormous opportunities for banks and other financial institutions. Yet to be successful, these businesses must understand and meet the needs of a generation that grew up having it all, seeing it all, and being exposed to it all since early childhood – and that is no easy task.

Getting to grips with mobile security

The sensors built into mobile devices offer a whole new way of identifying their users though biometric techniques, according to security expert Uri Rivner. 

Banks warned: digitise or die …

Retail banks often claim that customer service is their primary focus, but 75% of banks believe they haven’t concentrated efforts on improving it. Instead, annual reports focus on the financial results. Whether these two stories can become one remains to be seen, according to a new whitepaper by bank technology vendor Misys.

SIA sets sights on German P2P mobile payments market

Italian payments company SIA is expanding its P2P service Jiffy into Germany, together with IT firm GFT Technologies. The move is part of SIA’s plan to roll out real time money transfer via mobile phone to 400 million European current account holders.

Mobile banking customers demand new features

One in three retail banking customers feel their mobile banking app is not as good as online banking through a browser, according to a new study by ecommerce company First Data in the UK. The figures also revealed that more than half still have yet to use a mobile banking app – suggesting that there may be both an unmet demand for more functionality in mobile apps, and a need to convince the remaining consumers of their value.

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

Italy live on T2S (at last)

Target2-Securities, the European Central Bank project to harmonise Europe’s post trade infrastructure, has finally gone live in Italy – three months after Italy’s last-minute decision to drop out of the first wave earlier this summer.

Mobile to take lead in payments over the next five years

Mobile phones will take an increasingly leading role in the payments space over the next five years as a result of technologies that allow safe storage of payment details in smartphones, according to a report prepared by the Consult Hyperion on behalf of Payments UK.

Wide application for wearables in financial services industry

There has been hype around wearable technology for some time now but only now is it reaching market maturity with the introduction and subsequent adoption by consumers of smart watches and wristbands. Just as we saw with smart phones and tablets, consumer technology, in this case wearables, has the potential to have a huge impact on the business world. The implications for the financial services industry are significant

MasterCard and Samsung prepare Samsung Pay Europe launch

Samsung is set to launch its upcoming payments service Samsung Pay in Europe within months, following a deal with MasterCard which will see Samsung Pay rolled out across the region through MasterCard’s Digital Enablement Service.

Apple mops up mobile payments market

iPhone devices account for more than one in three mobile transactions, and are used for 10% of all global online transactions, according to new figures published by payment specialist Adyen.

Visa Europe sees contactless payments top 1 billion in past year

Visa Europe says that uptake of contactless payments in Europe continues to climb with more than one billion transactions made in the last year. Visa cardholders spent €1.6 billion in March 2015 alone – a three-fold increase over the same period in 2014.

Atom Bank granted UK banking licence ahead of 2015 launch

Challenger UK retail bank Atom has received its licence from the Bank of England, meaning it will now be able to go ahead with plans to launch later this year. The bank will add competition to the UK retail banking sector, which until 2010 had not seen a single new entrant for 150 years.

HSBC sees boom in use of mobile among corporate customers

Corporate users are increasingly adopting mobile payments, according to figures from HSBC, which expects usage of its HSBCnet Mobile corporate banking platform to double over the next 18 months, reaching $100 billion in payments.

Apple Pay comes to UK next month

Apple Pay will be available in the UK from next month, with eight of the UK’s most established banks and the major credit and debit card networks supporting it – along with Transport for London.

Banks should know their customers’ digital skills says new report

As consumer adoption of mobile devices and social media increases, banks can’t really rely on standard details such as income, age and geography to serve customers better than their competitors, according to a new report by payments company TSYS and software firm FICO. Instead, they may need to recognise the different kinds of customers based on how they interact with digital technology and tailor their services accordingly.

Mobile banking: what consumers really want

The growth of mobile money has been a steep upward curve and looks set to continue – Juniper Research predicts that there will be one billion mobile banking users worldwide by the end of 2017, up from 590 million in 2013. A recent Forrester report predicted that purchases on mobile devices would double by 2018, as even more people become comfortable buying online and retailers create more user-friendly mobile experiences

Mobile banking users to double by 2020

On the background of a recent study revealing that UK mobile banking users are set to double to 32.5 million by 2020, banks need to tailor their customer experience models heavily towards mobile devices, with the fundamental focus on creating a “mobile-first” strategy, if not the more radical “mobile-only” strategy

Indian bank launches WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter mobile payments

India’s Axis Bank has released a mobile payments service called Ping Pay, which allows customers to send money to each other using Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, email or phone number. The bank says the service will help it to reach young consumers and smartphone users.