Royal Bank of Canada has made the first cross-border Renminbi payment on Canada’s new RMB Trading Hub through the hub’s designated clearing bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (Canada).
The UK’s new Payment Systems Regulator looks set to shake up the way the industry is structured, with reviews of the ownership of the infrastructure and of the way that indirect access is managed through sponsoring banks.
The inaugural meeting of the Open Forum on Pan-European Instant Payments drew 77 representatives from 55 payment service providers, technology providers and other stakeholders to Frankfurt this week to kick off discussions about requirements and collaboration on infrastructure services to support instant payments at a pan- European level.
Adoption of innovative technology will be central to the fulfilment of bullish growth predictions of 25% or more for transaction banks in the Middle East, according to a survey of market participants during a recent conference in Dubai.
As international regulators demand more detail from banks on payments to individuals and companies, the first order of business is to ensure compliance with mandates. Migrating Swift MT payment formats to ISO 20022 will allow the industry to shape the transformation of payment messaging standards rather than have others shape it – but there is a need to set timelines for implementation or cede control.
Tungsten Bank can now provide banking services in Germany, France and Italy following approval from the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority
Lloyds Bank plans to invest £1 billion in digital banking capability over the next three years, re-investing a third of the savings it hopes to make in its drive to become ‘simpler and more efficient’.
Arising out of developments in standardised messaging, eBAM is one step towards the future of more accessible, safer banking
Deutsche Bank and Hewlett-Packard have announced a 10-year, multi-billion dollar agreement that will see parts of the bank’s global IT systems rationalised and migrated to HP platforms10
The UK’s Payments Council has selected Swift to build the country’s new central infrastructure platform in preparation for the next phase of SEPA regulation in 2016, through the provision of an automated central infrastructure platform for collection and maintenance of UK-specific SEPA routing data.
Technology consultancy Capgemini has formed a global alliance with First Data to develop payment software based on First Data’s VisionPlus and AccessPlus solutions. The pair say that they expect to begin delivering new solutions in the second quarter of this year.
Lebanese commercial bank Al-Mawarid has begun a bank transformation project focused on mobile and online banking using the FusionBanking Essence Digital software from Misys.
BNY Mellon and State Street have announced a collaboration with Eurex Clearing, the subsidiary of Deutsche Börse Group, to enhance the Eurex service to meet the needs of beneficial owners, and explore expanding its geographic reach into the US.
Jan Verplancke is stepping down as chief information officer and group head of technology and operations at Standard Chartered, as is Richard Goulding, chief risk officer. The news of their departure comes as the banks announced further restructuring, including the closure of its institutional cash equities, equity research and equity capital markets businesses as part of a strategic plan to ditch “non-core or underperforming businesses”.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has made a series of internal promotions in its EMEA Global Transaction Services team.
The replacement of business processes based on paper documents with the exchange of information in electronic form is a highly beneficial global trend, and the competitiveness of Europe’s economic activity will benefit from this migration.
Online payments provider Optimal Payments has launched a new online checkout page, designed to help e-commerce merchants with indemnified alternative payments.
Cross-border low-value payments service provider Earthport, has opened a new payment route into China to support trade payments into the region.
Yantra Financial Technologies, an electronic payment systems developer, has integrated its latest system for risk scoring of payments with the Ripple real-time settlement protocol. The integration means that institutions using the Ripple protocol can analyse transactions in seconds, including what other payments the customer recently made and potential concerns regarding a specific transaction. Risk levels can be assigned to certain transactions based on pre-determined criteria.
RBS has confirmed that it has hired Marion King, formerly president of UK and Ireland at MasterCard, in the newly created role of director of payments in the New Year.
Corporate treasurers are increasingly looking beyond traditional of finance to a wider range of alternative funding options that support their working capital requirements, including supply chain finance, trade receivable securitisation and factoring.
While a great deal of attention has been given to Lloyds Banking Group’s retail operations as its various elements are split up, less has been given to its activities in transaction banking, where it is “one year into a three-year journey” to transform itself and its customer offerings to create“the best global transaction bank in this region”.
Farid Akhundov, chairman of the executive board of PASHA Bank, discusses how the bank is working to achieve its ambitions in corporate banking in the Caucasus region
London and Singapore are fast closing the gap on Hong Kong in the race to become centres for offshore renminbi business and capitalise on Beijing’s ambition to make the RMB a global currency.
Regulatory mandates call for the financial services industry to collaborate and rethink its data supply chain to tackle systemic risk and improve transparency. Looking at how the retail industry manages its supply chain could hold the key.
Barclays plans to offer corporate banking users a new security services based on Hitachi’s Finger Vein Authentication Technology from early next year and is considering introducing it to branches for consumers.
The increased globalisation of business has opened up new challenges – and opportunities – for companies and the banks that serve them. Corporate treasurers and finance professionals face complexities in the payments arena that range from inconsistencies in local payment processing to new regulations, emerging payment clearing systems and the need to manage geopolitical risk in an ever-expanding array of countries. To address these challenges for their clients, and for themselves, global banks need to invest and innovate to make sure they have the solutions to meet business needs today and in the future.
Corporates want easier connection to their financial institutions – is Swift the answer or do other options exist?
As delegates finalise their plans to attend Sibos in Boston this month, Chris Church, chief executive Americas and global head of securities at Swift, discusses what they can expect
Europe now represents 10% of total Renminbi payments in value worldwide and is leading adoption beyond Asian countries, with four European countries in the top 10, excluding China and Hong Kong, according to Swift. Overall, the RMB strengthened its position as the seventh most used global payments currency and accounted for 1.57% of global payments.
From Senegal to the Seychelles, and Botswana to Uganda, new demands and new opportunities are emerging in Africa, but there are still challenges
The UK Government is to examine the potential of digital currencies as positive force in the wider economy and as a means of encouraging innovation in financial services.
Nordic financial services group Nordea has gone live in Frankfurt and London with a web-based trade finance solution, which it says will help to strengthen its international trade finance business.
Essential parts of the UK retail banking sector lack effective competition and do not meet the needs of personal consumers or SMEs, according to government body the Competition and Markets Authority, which is now planning to launch a full investigation that could last 18 months.
The rise of new technologies is drastically redefining both the responsibilities of chief financial officers and the way they work, providing the ability tomake better organisational decisions with faster, accurate and more reliable data.
In a landmark ruling, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the intermediated settlement of financial exchanges is an abstract idea and therefore not patent-eligible. David Puth, chief executive of CLS, which won the case in question. discusses the implications of the ruling.
A lesson learned from the global financial crises was how critical free cash flow can be for corporates, their customers, and their suppliers. As businesses seek to unlock cash flow from day-to-day operations, savvy treasurers have discovered vendor payments as a means to extend payment terms while improving vendor health, writes Chris Bozek, Managing Director, Head of Global Trade and Supply Chain Products Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The work corporates are doing to streamline cash management processes should not end with SEPA implementation, says. Indeed, the principles and ideas underpinning SEPA can inform progress even in the most challenging markets.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has launched a new service that lets corporates manage up to 18 local Chinese bank accounts through a single global electronic banking platform.
Managing cash in stores remains a major challenge for retailers – trapped cash hinders working capital management and is unavailable for investment, debt repayment or business expansion. But new ways are being developed to manage store cash …
