Artificial intelligence (AI) will be baked into nearly every new software product and service by 2020, but the rush to claim AI integration today is causing confusion, according to a new report from analyst firm Gartner. Light Reading (Banking Technology’s sister publication) reports that while virtually every company across industry verticals is busy today figuring out […]
UK-based innovation foundation Nesta has revealed the 20 fintech firms who will participate in its Open Up Challenge as it looks for services, apps and tools for SMEs – with a £5 million prize fund on offer. As reported in March, Nesta launched its challenge – open to entries from anywhere in the world that […]
Italy’s only stock exchange Borsa Italiana, part of London Stock Exchange Group, and IBM are building a blockchain solution to digitise the issuance of securities for unlisted small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe. The aim is to simplify the tracking and management of shareholding information, and create a distributed shared registry containing a record […]
Aditya Challa of IMImobile takes a look at some current and future applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for customer experience in the financial and banking sector, as well as the challenges that still need to be overcome. Beyond the current race to build chatbots, he predicts that voice-driven AI services will ultimately become the main […]
For financial institutions lacking the deep pockets of the biggest competitors, investing their limited resources to develop disruptive payments solutions isn’t a viable option. Stated simply, you can never outspend the big guys. What you really need is a more effective weapon to level the playing field.
German fintech incubator FinLeap has a spring in its step with new capital, new partners and a new HQ. The company has raised around €39 million from several investors, including the German Insurer Signal Iduna, SBI Group from Japan and the Dutch NIBC bank. Furthermore, the reinsurer Hannover Re, as a “big institutional investor”, raised […]
IBM has unveiled IBM Z, a new transaction system, capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day and designed for use in the cloud. The firm is looking to address data breaches, which it reckons are a major factor in the $2 trillion cybercrime impact on the global economy by 2019. IBM […]
The financial services industry is already embracing the internet of things (IoT), using devices to collect data that needs to be analysed in real time and stored for historical analysis.
In 1957 the US market researcher James Vicary claimed he could get moviegoers to “drink Coca-Cola” and “eat popcorn” by flashing messages onscreen for such a short time that viewers were unaware they had seen them. The term “subliminal advertising” was coined to describe this unnerving practice and it was subsequently banned in many countries.
From a mystery to a European duet. Our latest blockchain and Bitcoin round-up features the secretive SafeToken, China’s Asset Collection Chain, Swissquote and Bitstamp. A former (and anonymous) Goldman Sachs employee has launched the first “anti-bubble” derivative for Bitcoin. They didn’t reveal their name in their email or on the website. A search around hasn’t […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Aktia Bank finally live with Temenos T24 core banking system “Some system repairs will be carried out during the following weeks.” HSBC and Barclays pilot banking without borders Testing use of a citizen’s national digital identity. ANZ, Westpac […]
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) are partnering with New York-based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) for business development and tech innovation. According to Sumitomo Mitsui, ERA is New York’s largest and oldest tech accelerator, with 140 portfolio companies involved in a variety of markets. These firms have a combined market […]
Allfunds Bank Group is all for APIs with the launch of a new platform targetting the wealth management industry. The platform offers a “fully digitised way” of accessing Allfunds services by providing access to third party applications using standardised APIs which it says comply with emerging regulatory norms such as MiFiD II. Like many other […]
It’s a double development delight in Australia with Sydney and Melbourne unveiling fintech start-up hubs for innovation across the nation. Industry body FinTech Australia says Sydney’s proposed new 11-floor start-up hub – set to be the largest in the southern hemisphere – “should help build even stronger links between the Australian fintech industry and global […]
And the money keeps rolling in for fintech! Features Revolut, Curve, Pixoneye and Gridspace. Banking Technology’s sister publication Paybefore reports. UK challenger bank Revolut announced a $66 million investment from Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and Ribbit Capital, which the company will use to introduce new features and expand globally, starting with Asia and North America. […]
The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has got approval from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for its plan for the consolidation of the operators of three payment systems. As first reported in May, the PSR aimed to get Bacs Payment Schemes (BPSL), Cheque and Credit Clearing Company (C&CCC) and the Faster Payments Scheme (FPSL) […]
Falcon is the “first” Swiss private bank to provide blockchain asset management solutions for its clients through a new co-operation with crypto financial broker Bitcoin Suisse. The bank’s clients can exchange and hold Bitcoins via Falcon using their cash holdings. Additionally, a Bitcoin ATM has been installed in the lobby of the bank’s headquarters in […]
Google has launched a new initiative, Gradient Ventures, its own VC arm to seek out artificial intelligence (AI) talent and invest in start-ups, reports Telecoms.com (Banking Technology’s sister publication). The initiative itself is a simple one. Google will provide funds and access to experienced engineers to help the start-ups develop to the next level. AI […]
Mothership, a digital asset exchange, has launched offering a cloud hosting platform and wallet for blockchain financial services around the Estonian e-residency programme. The start-up is the “first company of its kind” to integrate with e-residency. As reported in May, the Baltic state unveiled this programme to let anyone apply to join its new digital […]
Enterprise software firm R3 is working with Intel to beef up its data privacy and security for Corda, its distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. R3, which used to call itself a blockchain consortium, says Corda only sends data to those who have a “need to know”. According to the company, this feature emerged from the […]
Australia-based start-up Tic:Toc has launched an online home loan platform, offering customers approval in 22 minutes, instead of 22 days. The firm is backed by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, as well as the State Government in South Australia, which approved a $900,000 grant to Tic:Toc through its Investment Attraction Agency’s (IASA) Economic Investment Fund. Tic:Toc’s […]
FitPay Inc, a US-based provider of payment, credential management and authentication platform services, is planning to offer prepaid capabilities on wearable and other devices connected to its FitPay Payment Platform.
Hello all and apologies it’s taken a little while to get to the third instalment of the series about “pet peeve statements”. For those who are new, I am talking about those bold, declaratory statements that puff up the chest and make people feel awfully progressive and far sighted – and as I have said before, all sound and fury, signifying stormy waters ahead!
Data aggregation provider Finicity has signed an agreement with JP Morgan Chase to let the bank’s customers choose data to share with apps. The companies will use a direct API to allow Chase customers to share information with the apps and services that Finicity supports. According to the firms, this tokenised access will eliminate the […]
Core banking software provider Finxact has made its Open Core API available through its sandbox for fun times in innovation. The firm says its API is transparent and granular, enabling banks to have full access to their customer data. Finxact adds that it is the first core banking provider to join the Open API Initiative. […]
A consortium of European private and public sector organisations are testing out the use of a citizen’s national digital identity from France to open a bank account in the UK. The group comprises HSBC, Barclays, the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), Orange, OT-Morpho and the Open Identity Exchange (OIX UK). The project is co-financed by […]
The Bank of England’s (BoE) fintech accelerator has kept good speed and completed the third round of various proofs of concept (PoCs). As reported last year, BoE launched its own accelerator to harness innovation for central banking. The latest PoCs covered four areas of the bank’s work: analysing large-scale supervisory data sets; executing high-value payments […]
Nelson Holzner, newly appointed CEO of AEVI, talks to Banking Technology about the importance of innovation and simplification, and addressing real-life problems with working solutions. “Do more” is AEVI’s motto.
Australia and New Zealand-based banking group, ANZ, and Westpac have teamed with IBM and shopping centre operator Scentre Group to use blockchain to digitise the bank guarantee process for commercial property leasing. The trial used distributed ledger technology (DLT) to eliminate the need for current paper-based bank guarantee documents, resulting in a “single source of […]
Challenger Banco BNI Europa (BNI) has unveiled “Puzzle”, a digital and real-time credit approval process for the Portuguese market. Don’t be confused by the name, the bank says Puzzle is “simple, and non-bureaucratic”; and it even cites the Lending Club in the US, or Zopa in the UK by way of comparison. Puzzle offers credit […]
Nordea has chosen Estonian start-up Feelingstream’s artificial intelligence (AI) software to speed up response times for customers. Feelingstream’s AI solution analyses and categorises messages sent by customers so they can be forwarded automatically to the right person or unit in Nordea for further processing. The software can analyse hundreds of messages per second. The solution […]
Mizuho Financial Group, Mizuho Bank, trading and investment firm Marubeni Corporation, and Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance have completed a trade transaction between Australia and Japan using blockchain. The participants say all trade-related processes, from issuing the letter of credit to delivering documents, were completed entirely via a digital platform in this project. (See image below […]
India-based Infosys plans to open its next technology and innovation hub in North Carolina and hire 2,000 “American” workers in the state by 2021 – which is a dream within a bigger dream. This investment is part of its ambitions, revealed in May, to open four US hubs in the US and hire 10,000 “American” […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
A wide range of technology-driven sectors will be affected by the advent of universal quantum computing many experts say will happen by 2026, but the financial industry has particular reason to be concerned.
The Financial Services Agency of Japan (JFSA) is setting up a hub for fintech start-ups to test new services, according to Nikkei. The hub will help “identify legal complications and risks standing in the way of industry’s growth” and is seen as a precursor to a regulatory sandbox. Nikkei says the sandbox could be in […]
If Nvidia is looking to make a splash in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) it’s going about it in the right way, announcing a partnership with Baidu, one of the world’s largest internet companies. Banking Technology‘s sister publication Telecoms.com reports that cracking the Chinese market is an ambition which almost every technology company around the […]
Prepare for cybersecurity impact! IT services corporation Atos has launched the “world’s first commercially available” machine-system capable of simulating up to 40 quantum bits (Qubits). The simulator, named Atos Quantum Learning Machine (Atos QLM), is powered by an ultra-compact supercomputer and a universal programming language. Its uses naturally extend far beyond fintech, such as for […]
Swift has revealed that 22 additional banks have joined its blockchain proof of concept (PoC), designed to validate whether the technology can help banks reconcile their international nostro accounts in real time. The PoC is part of the Swift gpi (global payments innovation) service, its new standard for cross-border payments. As reported previously, gpi has […]
BNP Paribas Securities Services and SmartAngels have developed a share register management tool using blockchain. The platform enables unlisted companies to digitalise their financial securities and to manage their shareholder register using a decentralised, distributed ledger. It was developed as part of their partnership formed last year. During testing, BNP Paribas Securities Services and SmartAngels […]
