FinTech


Temenos: moving beyond the core

The extent to which a targeted series of acquisitions over the past few years have moved Temenos from being simply a core banking system vendor to a fully-fledged financial technology specialist became clear at its recent annual user event, this year held in Abu Dhabi.

SEPA: the long and winding road

As the first deadline for implementation of the Single Euro Payments Area approaches in February 2014, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is pretty much all over – or at least will be by October 2016, when the second deadline arrives. Don’t count on it, cautions Ruth Wandhöfer, global head, regulatory & market strategy, Citi Transaction Services.

Taking the pain out of paying in Spain

Spanish banks La Caixa and Santander have partnered with telecoms firm Telefónica to create a joint venture offering mobile payment services and a digital wallet designed to relegate conventional payment methods to the history books.

LSE hires SunGard man as MillenniumIT chief exec

Millennium Information Technologies, the IT subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange has appointed John Mackay “Mack” Gill, as its new chief executive office, taking over from company founder Tony Weeresinghe, who will become non-executive chairman with a global business development role.

Remittances: a window to the future?

The $400 billion global remittances market is moving from cash to account-based transfer, but costs, regulations and new competitors are still the key issues.

Tearing up the financial services value chain

Traditional finance is not as we once knew it. The internet has completely disrupted the financial services value chain. The banks are struggling to keep up with advancing technology. Understanding mobile, cloud computing, social media, big data and how to utilise each capability are key challenges for the banks to overcome.

Identity and mobile figure large at payments and cards event

The themes of security, identity and mobility ran strongly through the Cards and Payments Middle East conference in Dubai this week – and not just because the event itself is sandwiched between related and interlinked events focusing on Mobile and Identity.

Swift Innotribe names Singapore startup challenge finalists

Swift’s innovation-focused spin-off Innotribe has announced the five Singapore finalists for its global startup challenge, which aims to help innovative new companies in financial services to develop their ideas and transform them into working businesses.

Duel in The Sun …

Temenos execs were surprised when a group of attractive young women started approaching delegates outside its annual user conference in Abu Dhabi this week. The delegates – existing and potential bank customers – were being tempted by the offer of cocktails in the adjacent hotel, and the prospect of helicopter rides.

Brazil brings mobile payments home

Brazil is to gain its first ever mobile payment service this month, with the launch of a joint service provided by Spanish and South American telecom firm Telefónica and MasterCard.

Making more of mobile

Mobile banking can be more secure than online banking – but the real challenge is to move from closed circuit payments to a world in which customers of any bank can use any mobile app to send funds to any recipient, according to Hannes van Rensberg, founder and chief executive at mobile payments specialist Fundamo.

Italy’s SIA set to connect to New York as recovery plan bears fruit

Milan-based financial technology firm SIA is expanding its reach to New York later this year in a move that caps the latest-phase of a three-year recovery plan for the firm. The extension of SIA’s Financial Ring to New York follows that activation of a hub in Frankfurt is the third cornerstone, after Milan and London, […]

Java start-up Waratek inks deal with Intralink for Asia push

Java virtualisation specialist Waratek, one of the finalists in the Swift-backed Innotribe Challenge at this year’s Sibos in Dubai, has formed a partnership with Asia market access specialist Intralink to expand into Asia Pacific. As well as the Innotribe final, the Waratek CloudVM for Java offering has been selected for the Fintech Innovation Lab, based […]

Banks should prepare for NFC says Celent

NFC is gradually beginning to overcome the obstacles that have held back development. Banks should prepare for the coming upswing in usage, according to a new report by financial research firm Celent.

Say goodbye to the IT crowd

The whole concept of internal software development within banks and other financial institutions could soon be replaced by small ad hoc teams constructing applications using off-the-shelf apps or downloadable modules, according to Michael Harte, chief information officer at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Rabobank’s Inneke Bussemaker at IPS 2013

Rabobank’s Inneke Bussemaker talks about The Brave New World of Payments session she chaired at IPS 2013, taking a critical look at the future of how payments work in a world where corporates will have to adapt to a consumer-driven agenda.

Mobile is there for the taking …

Financial institutions have owned the commercial payment space for centuries, but are now seeing a threat to their incumbency from new technologies that have opened up the industry to other business sectors. Mobile transactions in particular are shaking-up banking.

Swift sees expanding role as facilitator for industry collaboration

As delegates gather for the third Business Forum organised by Swift in London this week, issues on the global impact of regulation and the banking industry’s response to it are more pressing than ever Perhaps equally pertinent to the conference – the largest event Swift organises aside from the annual Sibos conference and exhibition, with […]

Otkritie to roll out Calypso in London and Moscow

Russian broker Otkritie has gone live with the first phase of a new project to bolster its London and Moscow front and back office operations, including collateral management, replacing in-house systems with Calypso platforms.

Mobile account takeover: when device ID isn’t enough

Protect your transactions! Protect your login! Protect your mobile channel! Protect your end users! A layered security architecture is now standard for most organisations. The problem, however, with many of today’s layered security solutions is that they do not correlate information between the various layers (security risks, suspicious events, fraud indicators etc.) and thus fail to see the big picture.

Immediate mobile payments come to Europe, M-Pesa to India

Payment processing firm Visa Europe has introduced a service allowing consumers to make mobile payments across the region immediately and using any European currency. Meanwhile in India, popular money transfer and payment service M-Pesa has now been fully launched. Visa Europe’s Personal Payments service enables Visa credit, debit or prepaid card users to accept payments […]

Mobile money to transform Turkish transport and US retail

Turkish operator Turkcell and SIM card and mobile security solutions provider Gemalto have each found themselves at the hearts of two mobile payment projects that promise to transform the transport and retail sectors in Turkey and the USA respectively.

Spain: the next generation of payment technology?

The world is embracing digital technology in every area of economic and social activity, including those that appeared impossible to convert to a digital format completely, such as payments.

Banks opt for hosted mobile services says Celent

As Banking 3.0 continues its inexorable rise, banks are increasingly turning to hosted mobile services developed with vendors – but there is still more work to be done before mobile banking becomes mainstream, according to a new report by analyst firm Celent.

The limits of the mobile revolution

Senior financial executives have clashed over the extent to which mobile payments technology has failed to reach its potential – and the best way to fix it.

Mobile opportunities for banks

The emergence of alternative payments providers such as PayPal and the growth of mobile payments systems such as M-Pesa should be seen as a major opportunity for banks, not a threat, according to Ron van Wezel, global head of emerging payment streams at Deutsche Bank.

Kalixa Group unveils “disruptive” payments tools

Payments company Kalixa Group has launched a set of tools including an mPOS, e-wallet and acceptance kit, which it says will disrupt the global payments market in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

Mobile will kill the traditional bank branch says Brett King

Disruptive digital technologies such as mobile and the internet will destroy the established retail banking business models by removing the physical product and replacing it with a digitised bank account, according to Brett King, speaking at the IPS show in London today. “In the old days there was a physical product, and a physical store,” […]

State banking

Banking is too important to be left to banks – can governments do any better Also in this issue: Profile: Grand designs – Arun Jain, founder of Polaris Financial Technologies Same day, same settlement: same day payments are being adopted worldwide. What does that mean for D+1 settlement in Europe? Riding the OTC rollercoaster: new […]