According to the UK Cards Association, a trade body for the country’s card payments industry, a quarter of all card transactions are now made via contactless in the UK. 325 million purchases, altogether worth £2.9 billion, were made using contactless debit and credit cards in November 2016.
Target Group, a UK-based business process outsourcing (BPO) and software vendor, has purchased the operating business of Commercial First, a provider of commercial and residential mortgage servicing, due diligence and property valuations. Commercial First, also based in the UK, provides clients with services in the real estate lending market ranging from loan administration through to […]
The bustling UK challenger bank scene has grown by another addition, ClearBank. It is a brainchild of Nick Ogden, founder and former CEO of WorldPay.
Mobile-only challenger bank Monzo has revealed some witty conversations between its banking customer support team and customers. In an amusing blog post, the bank says its customer support team of around 17 people manage hundreds of queries on a daily basis in as “close to real-time as possible”. Some of these conversations struck a chord […]
Virgin Money plans to launch a digital bank – VMDB – and is now recruiting for a head of customer experience. As Banking Technology reported in November, 10x Future Technologies, the start-up founded by former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins, is building a digital core banking platform for Virgin Money. The latter also signed a long-term […]
Look back at some of the top-read feature articles on all matters fintech published by Banking Technology in 2016.
Monese, a mobile-only bank founded by Norris Koppel, an Estonian expat in London, has raised $10 million in Series A funding round as it looks to go pan-European.
A UK-based challenger bank, Tandem, will start offering financial solutions to customers of retailer House of Fraser in 2017. As part of the collaboration agreement between the two companies, House of Fraser will invest up to £35 million in Tandem.
We are constantly connected to the cloud (iPhone, DropBox, Google Drive just to name a few) and yet, in financial services, the adoption has been tremendously slow. In part, this is due to a lack of guidance from regulators, especially where cloud-based regulation technology is concerned. But finally there is forward progress.
Jargon Bank has launched in the UK offering “compelling and innovative” products that have left journalists diving for cover… usually to the nearest pubs. In a press release, that ideally shouldn’t have been sent, the hipster-friendly bank decided that wishy-washy and generic statements would somehow garner the respect of fintech publications across the world. Serial […]
Credit card firm MBNA is to be taken over by Lloyds. The firm’s current owner, Bank of America, has agreed to sell it for £1.9 billion. The deal is expected to close in H1 2017.
Central securities depositary Euroclear and blockchain firm Paxos have completed the first pilot for Euroclear Bankchain, a new blockchain settlement service for London bullion due to go live in 2017. Over 600 OTC test bullion trades were settled on the Euroclear Bankchain platform over the course of the two-week pilot. Angus Scott, director, product strategy […]
Pay @ Pump is a self-service beer pump that you can pay for contactlessly with your phone, enabling punters to get drunk more quickly than ever before, reports Scott Bicheno at Telecoms.com. The innovation was inspired by Barclaycard’s empathy for UK boozers who often have to wait for minutes for their next fix of lovely, […]
UK challenger bank Starling talks about finding its niche and how it intends to prosper in an increasingly competitive space – all in preparation for its 2017 launch.
The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has started a co-ordinated industry-wide effort to tackle payment scams. The regulator today (16 December) published its response to a super-complaint issued by consumer watchdog Which?, about protection for people making authorised “push” payments. In its response the PSR outlines an approach that “will see regulators and industry commit […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
Fintech start-up Taplend has launched in the UK offering a combination of peer-to-peer (P2P) and payday lending. Viktor Ihnatiuk, CEO and co-founder of Taplend, says: “This was a very long, hard and interesting year. We made three iterations of the product, tried to enter the US market twice and failed. We didn’t give up, switched […]
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a new availability zone in London which indicates all is not well in the UK following Brexit, reports Jamie Davies at Telecoms.com. The new data centre creates the 16th availability zone worldwide for the public cloud leader, and is the first available in the UK. To date, customers in the […]
UK-based International Property Securities Exchange (IPSX) is waiting for approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and has signed for new trading tech from Cinnober. IPSX describes itself as “the world’s first regulated stock exchange dedicated to trading of commercial property securities”. It needs a recognised investment exchange (RIE) licence from FCA to be able […]
Innovate Finance, a UK-based fintech membership association, has unveiled its first ever start-up competition, Pitch360. Open to applicants from around the world, Pitch360 offers a 360-second (six minute) pitch of a new business and product in front of a live audience of influencers, investors and media professionals as well as access to Innovate Finance’s member […]
UK-based challenger bank Metro Bank has moved its IT infrastructure to a Rackspace managed cloud solution. Rackspace says this has reduced the bank’s close-of-business processing time by 50% and report production time by two-thirds.
Wyelands Bank (formerly Tungsten Bank) is relaunching in 2017 with a new core banking system.
Cater Allen, a London-based private bank and a subsidiary of Santander, has completed “the discovery phase” of the project with Temenos to overhaul its core banking software.
UK-based Coventry Building Society is believed to have embarked on a tech modernisation project and is looking for a new core system.
India-based core banking tech provider TCS Financial Solutions has gained its third live site among the UK credit unions for its Bancs core banking system, London Mutual Credit Union.
Private & Commercial Finance Group (PCFG) has received its banking licence from the UK regulators. It is now authorised with restrictions as a bank and enters into a mobilisation period of up to 12 months.
A UK-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform, Folk2Folk, has received full authorisation from Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
UK-based Metro Bank says it has become the first high street bank to join the Faster Payments Scheme (FPS) since its launch.
LandlordInvest, a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform for buy-to-let and bridging loans, has gained full authorisation from the UK regulator, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
Mastercard has teamed with Verifone to roll out a new instalment pay application at retailers across the UK. Called Mastercard Instalments, it is designed for shopping online or in-store, and cardholders can choose their instalment option upon checking out. For example, when purchasing a new TV or flight, customers could repay it in fixed instalments. […]
The UK’s Royal Mint will issue Royal Mint Gold (RMG) in mid-2017, a blockchain based digital record of ownership for gold stored at its bullion vault storage facility. CME Group, a derivatives marketplace, will develop, implement and operate the product’s digital trading platform which will see gold traded on an exchange using blockchain. The Royal […]
Virgin Money has signed a long-term deal with TSYS for debit card processing in the UK. The bank is already using the payments vendor’s TS2 solution for its credit card operations.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has failed a Bank of England (BoE) stress test on how it would cope with another financial crisis. Two other banks – Barclays and Standard Chartered – also failed on some measures but do not have to submit revised capital raising plans. The tests were put in place by BoE […]
Payments Strategy Forum, the first industry-wide initiative of its kind in the UK, has unveiled a new strategy for the country’s payments industry. The Forum was created by the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) in March 2015 and is tasked with planning the future of the payments sector. Last year, the current UK payment systems […]
New UK retail challenger bank, Masthaven, has launched – offering savings and lending products. As Banking Technology reported in April, Masthaven got its UK banking licence and implemented a new core system. A domestic vendor, DPR Consulting, is providing its front-to-back office retail banking platform. The software itself is a new development, with Masthaven being […]
Barclays has unveiled a new online direct investing service to let its customers view their investments, savings and current accounts in one place through a single log-in. The bank says it has introduced a new fee structure, which is “free from hidden charges”. There is one fee and one transaction charge – and common charges […]
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is calling for the second group of applicants to its regulatory sandbox. As Banking Technology reported last year, the sandbox allows businesses to test out new products and services without “incurring the normal regulatory consequences”. The move is part of the FCA’s Project Innovate, which aims to boost competition […]
The UK Chancellor Philip Hammond has announced a plan to invest £400 million of venture capital funds into the British Business Bank, a government vehicle to lend money to British businesses. The idea is to support the home-grown business sector – including fintech firms – and to prevent them from being snapped up by international companies.
Startupbootcamp FinTech London will host its Demo Day on 1 December for the third year with ten firms lined up for action. The ten companies taking the stage will showcase their fintech, ranging from SME banking, regtech, chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain. Francisco Lorca, MD of Startupbootcamp FinTech London, says the variety of the […]
