Start-ups should first be focused on domestic markets over global ambitions, was one of the messages amidst the hurly-burly of Madrid-based MoneyConf 2016. More than 1,800 people were on hand for the two-day event held at the pleasant venue of La Nave. Part one of our review of the show was on wealth management, while […]
Customer feedback on biometrics is based on how they feel, rather than trust; was one of the messages from MoneyConf 2016 in Madrid. At the stylish venue, La Nave, more than 1,800 people attended the two-day event. Part one of our review of the show looked at wealth management. In the nicely titled “No shoes, […]
Speed is of the essence if firms want to capitalise on opportunities in wealth management, was one theme from MoneyConf 2016 in Madrid. More than 1,800 attendees were at the compact and colourful venue, La Nave, for the two-day event. In a panel on “The next generation of wealth management”, Kim Fournais, CEO and co-founder […]
A host of major banks have adopted Ripple to improve their cross-border payments, the vendor says, and many have completed trial blockchain projects. The latest banks to join Ripple’s network are Santander, UniCredit, UBS, ReiseBank, CIBC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) and ATB Financial. Ripple says its network now includes 12 of the top […]
Commerzbank says it’s the first major bank in Germany to develop this type of digital financing marketplace. Main Funders is aimed at SMEs. Main Funders enables clients of Commerzbank’s Mittelstandsbank (MSB) business division (which caters for SMEs) to present concrete investment projects to potential investors and secure financing. The financing volumes are between €200,000 and […]
Jiffy – the instant mobile payments service developed by SIA – is coming to Italian stores. The person-to-business (P2B) project is piloted in Milan and Bergamo, allowing customers to pay via app at participating retail outlets authorised by UBI Banca. SIA says that “other major Italian banks have expressed interest in offering P2B the service […]
Toronto-based start-up, nanoPay, which acquired the assets of the digital currency business of the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM), MintChip, in early 2016, launches new digital cash. The first commercial application of MintChip is in Toronto’s Liberty Village neighbourhood, where consumers shopping or dining at participating merchants can use MintChip to pay for goods and services. […]
US-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and MasterCard are calling on US start-ups to apply for their Commerce.Innovated accelerator programme. The application process closes on 10th July, and the programme will run September to December. Commerce.Innovated is a four-month, bi-annual virtual accelerator, and this will be the fifth time it is held. Its organisers say it […]
IEX Group has gained approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a stock exchange. IEX will become the 13th official stock exchange in the US. The company has already been operating as a private trading pool, attracting around 1.6% of all daily trading volume recently. Notably, IEX is run by the prominent […]
The Bank of England (BoE) will launch its own fintech accelerator to harness innovation for central banking. Fintech firms will be invited to carry out a proof of concept with the BoE. The bank will then act as a reference site for these companies. The BoE says it “will offer firms the chance to demonstrate […]
Asset management firm Robeco has released its findings and views on the much-discussed subject of blockchain. The overall theme is to be sensible, study the facts and not fall for the hype when it comes to this emerging technology. The report, “Distributed ledger technology for the financial industry. Blockchain administration 3.0”, has been created by […]
Flexibility and transparency are key to the first pan-European instant payments scheme, states Javier Santamaria, chairman of the European Payments Council (EPC). Currently, instant payments in Europe operate only within the borders of individual countries or among customers of the same payment service providers (PSPs). To move away from this fragmentation, the EPC was invited […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! UniCredit and Open Bank Project launch fintech start-up competition Top prize is €50,000 and a contract to work with UniCredit. BBA to merge with three trade associations to create major industry body British Bankers Association (BBA), Council of […]
Berlin-based fintech incubator FinLeap and solarisBank have created the first global banking platform, called Solaris – a Banking-as-a-Platform (BaaP) service. What is it all about and how is it going to make its mark on the fintech industry? Devie Mohan interviews FinLeap’s co-founder, Ramin Niroumand. The solarisBank launch has been in the press quite a […]
India-based uTrade Solutions has launched uClear, a blockchain tech solution for real-time clearing and settlement for financial markets. The first taker is Global Markets Exchange (GMEX) Group. It will integrate uClear next month through its GMEX Technologies subsidiary and with the support of its development partner, Forum Trading Solutions. Hirander Misra, CEO of GMEX Group […]
Standard Chartered has compiled a report questioning whether blockchain could disrupt the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Target2Securities (T2S) project. T2S aims to standardise European cross-border trade settlement by integrating securities and cash accounts onto a single IT platform. Not only blockchain could play a material role in this project, some analysts suggest, but it could […]
SDC has signed a deal with Signicat for the latter’s cloud-based eID digital signing solution to be rolled out by SDC’s banking clients in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Faroe Islands. SDC supplies financial technology and data processing services to 120+ banks in Scandinavia. Signicat, the first and largest identity assurance provider in the world, […]
Call it “innovation”, “transformation” or just “business”, banks are spending time and money in the pursuit of the gear shift that will protect margins and grow revenue in the digital era. The time for big, bold moves is upon us, yet it appears that the biggest move of all is tiny: the trend towards the […]
Corezoid, a US-based provider of a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution to banks, has announced that its product can now be delivered on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Corezoid’s offering is a process engine for banks to create a digital core. It “allows banks to rethink all of their operations as a set of states and […]
Banking software vendor Mambu has joined forces with a number of accelerators and incubators to launch a new fintech start-up programme. Partners comprise Startupbootcamp FinTech, 500 Startups, Ynext Incubator by Envestnet/Yodlee, Techstars and Citi Accelerator – and those start-ups that are part of these accelerators and incubators are invited to participate in Mambu’s new venture and […]
As technology continues to proliferate in the world around us, banks are no exception. Digitalisation is revolutionising the way consumers interact with everything – companies such as Amazon, Apple, Airbnb, Netflix and Uber have transformed customer expectations and created a ripple effect across all industries. We cannot ignore the forces at work today. Across demographics, banking […]
This truly has been the time of regulators announcing fintech sandboxes – what better thing to write about on my first fintech column here, than the ways regulators and fintechs can work together! There were three announcements in the past couple of weeks around regulatory sandboxes – the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) announced […]
UniCredit and Open Bank Project, an open source API and app store for banks, invite fintech developers and start-ups to take part in its Appathon competition. The 2016 Appathon is driven by the Open Bank Project API, developed by the Berlin-based Tesobe Ltd/Open Bank Project. Ten companies will be selected to demo their products in […]
Since 2015 the fintech market has changed dramatically but even bigger changes are yet to come in 2016 affecting financial services big time, believes Francisco Lorca, MD of a London-based fintech accelerator programme, Startupbootcamp. Tech is coming for banking as more fintech start-ups are springing up. There still huge gap between the collaboration of these two but […]
Two former Merrill Lynch directors, Paul Richards and Giles Hutson, have unveiled a new fintech venture, Insignis Asset Management. Insignis, a cash management company, is set “to revolutionise how clients manage their cash deposits”, the founders say. The Insignis Digital Banking Network will enable clients to deposit cash, starting from £100,000, into a hub account, […]
Visa Europe and its innovation hub, Visa Europe Collab, have teamed up with visual discovery and augmented reality app Blippar to bring augmented reality to payments. The new e-commerce solution, unveiled at a recent fashion show in London, enables designer garments to be instantly purchased straight off the backs of models. The pilot fashion brand […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Goldman Sachs to underpin new digital bank with Infosys tech It’ll be the e-Finacle digital banking platform, Banking Technology understands. Infographics: The Euro 2016 guide to e-commerce In the spirit of that football tournament that starts today, we’ve got an e-commerce […]
FIS has published its third annual report, Flavors of Fast, which shows via infographics the growth in the number of real-time payment initatives and usage volumes. Warren Gardiner, VP strategy enterprise payments, FIS, says: “Context is everything: speed without context is just faster; creating context without open data mining is merely an improvement. Speed, context […]
Penta Bank is a new digital banking player in Germany working towards a spring 2017 launch. Penta’s initial target market will be German and French SMEs. “Our target businesses are funded start-ups and SMEs that are cashless,” says Luka Ivicev, Penta’s head of product. Penta has been in the making since February this year. Usability […]
US-based Swirlds has launched its hashgraph distributed consensus platform, an alternative to blockchain, and free for public download and use by developers. Swirlds says it has “emerged from stealth” with the launch and says its hashgraph “goes beyond blockchain”. Dr. Leemon Baird, founder and CEO of Swirlds, says: “Current stock markets are fair in matching […]
Former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins has set up a fintech firm called 10X Future Technologies. Jenkins, who was sacked by Barclays in summer 2015 for failing to transform the bank quickly enough, has appointed himself as the sole director of 10X Future Technologies. He has refused to comment on what he plans to do with […]
Volante Technologies has launched a new solution – as part of its VolPay Foundation payments platform – for integration with Ripple’s distributed ledger technology. Volante’s software has been Ripple-ready since last autumn, says the vendor, and following “close engagement with Ripple” it has now brought to market an “integration solution wholly designed to simplify the […]
Emirates NBD is planning to launch the UAE’s “first” digital bank targeted at millennials. The new bank is part of its three-year AED 500 million ($136 million) strategy to improve its processes, products and services. Shayne Nelson, group CEO of Emirates NBD, says this “digital transformation plan” is its “commitment to the future”. The bank’s […]
Nymbus, a US-based core banking software vendor, has acquired fellow supplier R. C. Olmstead (RCO), to gain a foothold in the Midwest credit union market. RCO comes with 46 customers, all in the low-tier segment. These include Wilkes-Barre City Employees CU, Dover-Phila FCU, McDonald Community FCU, Toledo Metro FCU and Yorkville Community FCU. RCO has […]
“Youth is wasted on the young,” so said George Bernard Shaw. Only recently I read that this wasn’t exactly the quote he gave. To the question of what is the most beautiful thing, the Irishman responded: “Youth is the most beautiful thing in this world—and what a pity that it has to be wasted on […]
National Australia Bank (NAB) and telco firm Telstra have partnered for an SME digital marketplace called Proquo. Proquo will offer more than two million Australian small businesses an online platform to network, trade or swap services with each other. Leigh O’Neill, NAB executive general manager micro and small business, says: “Small business is the backbone […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! ECB goes to tender for new treasury management system After many years it’s time for a change. Microsoft unveils blockchain-based identity system Inspired by the United Nations’ ID2020 Summit on Identity. Student Loans Company puts IT contract with […]
The latest edition of our flagship magazine – Banking Technology – is out now, packed with news, analysis and insights, case studies, research and expert commentary.
ING Belgium has acquired the rights to rebrand Finnish fintech start-up Zervant’s invoicing software across Europe. The software will be marketed as ING invoice solutions and will be sold via its own channels to SMEs and entrepreneurs. During the first phase, ING Belgium will have the rights to sell the tool in Belgium, with a […]
PayPal has filed a US patent application for a modular payment module that accepts Bitcoin and other digital currencies. The application names Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin; and sets out the physical characteristics of the module. It says: “The module includes a chassis which has a modular device connector. A payment database in the chassis stores […]
