A young woman has made plans to join a friend for dinner at a restaurant across town, and with a few clicks on a mobile device she sets her night in motion. Her go-to ride-sharing service has sent a car, she’s ordered a cappuccino from her favorite coffee shop – this one is free because she’s a loyalty member – and her social app pings her friend to let him know her ETA.
With ten years in fintech under my belt, I have seen the creation of the word itself. I have also seen the rise of various hypes, adoption of buzzwords, sky-high funding rounds, epic failures and a surprising knowledge gap in what is the world’s biggest industry.
Watching the recent of smartphone launches, I am taken aback by just how much smartphone manufacturers have led to the normalisation and acceptance of biometrics by consumers.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been sharing some extracts from a new crime thriller, Trading Down, by Stephen Norman, long serving CIO/CTO of RBS Global Markets. Here, in the third and final extract, we return to the action at the Hamilton Datacentre crisis.
Cyber risks have evolved significantly over the last couple of years across industry sectors. The financial services industry, in particular, has become the target of choice with malicious actors exploring every avenue they can in order to identify areas of vulnerability.
Clearing houses and central clearing counterparties (CCPs) play a pivotal role in managing collateral and counterparty risk, in increasing standardisation and transparency of financial markets, and in the credit enhancement process for clearing banks. For such systemically critical functions, how appropriate are innovative new technologies such as distributed ledger technology (DLT)?
A report released last year by EY and major Singaporean bank DBS declared China the “undoubted centre of global fintech innovation and adoption”. And China isn’t the only Asian country making waves in the fintech sphere. Overall fintech investments in the Asia-Pacific region reached $10.5 billion in 2016 – the highest amount witnessed to date since 2010, according to CB Insights data.
Trick or treat! It’s Halloween and brands everywhere are using spooky season as a way to have some fun with customers. However, any ghoulish behaviour belongs firmly in the land of fun, and should not creep into everyday customer interactions
Here’s a second extract from Trading Down, by Stephen Norman, which continues the drama in the Hamilton Datacentre.
Banks need to innovate to stay competitive, here’s how.
Building loyalty means delivering convenience. But this means more than just delivering more sophisticated digital services. It means delivering a superior customer experience in every way the consumer interacts with your business.
Paul Taylor of Swift’s Financial Crime Compliance Services Division discusses the evolving compliance landscape and the critical role of technology in helping the industry come together as a whole to combat financial crime.
Customers trust financial firms with their details, so to protect the highly-sensitive information organisations must adhere to security and compliance standards. However, this can be challenging for employees as the processes can interfere with day-to-day operations.
A sneak preview of a debut novel by Stephen Norman, long serving CIO/CTO of RBS Global Markets and previously Merrill Lynch. A fast-paced crime thriller – published on 9 November 2017.
Prepaid International Forum (PIF) recently interviewed Suresh Vaghjiani, Managing Director of Global Processing Services (GPS), about the current state of the fintech sector.
Few ideas have captivated the modern payments and financial services industries like blockchain. Since Bitcoin officially launched in 2008, the noise around the potential of distributed ledgers and blockchain in particular has been incessant, particularly in the last two years.
The disruptive threats that banks face today are well documented: fintechs, decentralised cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology and now the tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Apple, to name a few. These players are all now placing themselves between retail banks and their customers, meaning that banks are not just competing with other banks anymore.
I have had it with the stream of articles about what artificial intelligence (AI) can do. Yes, machine learning works. It is possible to analyse key words, correlate them with other key words, do a massive amount of statistics, and find out some stuff. People cannot do that and computers can. Is this AI?
Know this feeling when you are asked by a check-in clerk where you’d like to sit on a plane? A torrent of thoughts rushes through your head: being able to see the actual seat map with available options would make your choice much easier. Otherwise it’s kind of like a child describing his/her favourite movie.
It’s been over a year since I first blogged on the subject of open banking and it is fair to say, mainly driven through the regulatory pressures of PSD2 and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) led UK Open Banking initiative, that across Europe, much progress has been made in moving the banking industry to adopt APIs.
Michael Parlotto, VP, Emerging Technologies, InComm, gives the lowdown to Paybefore on the evolution of prepaid and what the future might hold for the industry.
Recent business surveys together with published industry trends suggest that ATMs aren’t going to disappear from the landscape quite yet even as the rate of bank branch closures will not take place as rapidly as could have been expected just a short time ago. What’s happening?
This is a moment to celebrate 20 years of independence during which the Bank of England has been a stabilising force for the UK economy, inspiring others in the world of central banking.
In trying to balance its budget, the Illinois legislature has taken aim at the wallets of the poor. Two changes by the state government will make it harder for low-income people to manage their financial lives by reducing the usefulness of prepaid cards and increasing the expense of cashing a check.
The high risk of cybercrime for financial institutions means that they are generally quick to adopt new technologies which may alleviate the risk of a breach. However, banking institutions can often be held back by legacy infrastructure and applications, due to the sheer scale of their IT operations, which can prove costly to upgrade.
The Center for Financial Services Innovation recently released its 2017 FinLab Snapshot paper. And, if you think you know fintech, what we found may surprise you.
Mobile banking is nothing without mobiles, and as Apple leads the way in innovation it provides opportunities for banks to do things differently too. So, with the launch of the iPhone X, what is next for mobile banking in a world that can’t get enough of phone upgrades?
Robo-advisors are software programmes that provide financial advice with minimal human intervention. Software has been providing advice for half a century, from portfolio management to trading strategies to currency management, and more. The novelty is providing robo-advice direct to consumers. Robo-advice costs less than “bricks & mortar & human” services, hopefully harvesting a bigger market. […]
The EBA has to move out of London because of Brexit. With an influx of tech, startups and financial services providers, Ireland is making a case for Dublin.
For those in employed in financial services, technology has always been important – integrated systems for operations and execution have been with us for decades. But to the banking customer at a High Street branch the advances in technology may not be obvious. However, slowly and surely innovations from the fintech sector are filtering down to the mass-market.
Following testing by Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, to deliver cash to clients using a custom-made drone, the arrival of more frequent cash deliveries by drones look to be just around the corner, with reports suggesting as early as the end of 2017.
What will make or break bank risk management? Victoria Chatterton, strategic director of RiskMinds, gives the lowdown.
Cut through the noise and examine the payment trends most likely to affect your bottom line.
With increasingly demanding customers, and competition from fast-growing fintech companies, banks are facing new pressures to digitise their offerings. Developing new software is key, but finding a reliable means to quantify the productivity of software teams and quality of code is increasingly difficult. How can banks be sure they are getting a reasonable output from the large investments they make in software engineering?
When was the last time you visited a bank branch? While the rise of the internet, banking shifted the customer interaction from the branch to the web, the business was still owned and run end-to-end by the bank and at lower cost. For a few years now, the landscape has altered significantly bringing Kodak to […]
For the millennial generation, paying for a latte using a contactless card, transferring money to a family member or friend online or buying a pair of trainers with “one click” has become the norm. This generation has not only shaped and driven the payments revolution, but is also playing an active role in developing a lot of the payment technologies emerging today.
Adding a pair of discussion days to Finovate’s traditional demo days format, has made it that much easier for FinovateFall attendees to answer the question perennial post-conference question: “So. What did you think?”
Payments experts weigh in on the analysis and offer their own two cents on fintech, innovation, regulation and risk.
Fintech investments in Asia-Pacific reached $10.5 billion in 2016—the highest amount to date since 2010, according to CB Insights data. See what’s behind the boom and why it matters.
Could Australia give the UK a run for its money? Wayne Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Encompass Corporation, explores.
