Standard Bank of South Africa has launched a major expansion drive in West Africa, starting with the opening of a new representative office in the Côte d’Ivoire. The bank plans to use the Abidjan office to become familiar with the region and identify further opportunities within it.
MasterCard has formed a deal with electronic payments processing company Emerging Markets Payments to sponsor issuers in Egypt and other African markets, in a move intended to help small issuers reach the region’s unbanked population.
Mobile banking may be on the rise around the world but the bank branch is not dead, according to new research by IT firm GFT Technologies.
Cover story: Who are you? Identity in a mobile world Biometric technologies are becoming mainstream in for ID, with voice recognition taking a fundamental role. Also in this issue: Going Mobile: FIS’s plans for mobile technology. Bargain: investing in customer loyalty Anyway, Anywhere, Anyhow: Will mobile money kill the cash machine? Join Together: Big banks, Bitcoin, […]
South Africa’s Nedbank has opened a bank branch powered entirely by renewable energy, a move that it claims is the first of its kind in Africa.
India’s first all-female bank, Bharatiya Mahila Bank, plans to open on 19 November, the birthday of former Indian female Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depositos bank is planning to grow its trading business in Brazil, using a hosted service provided by SunGard.
Uganda’s Crane Bank has chosen a core banking system from Temenos, together with various add-on systems, to support the bank’s Uganda head office as well as its expansion into neighbouring Rwanda.
China’s miraculous economic catch up since reform and opening up has created an unprecedented generation of consumers. The way this generation has adopted the on-line world in China is very different from that in the West.
Furness Building Society has chosen a mortgage and savings suite from vendor Sopra Banking Software, to act as the society’s core banking platform. The new system is intended to help the society become more flexible and develop new products, especially online products.
Cloud computing company SAP has signed a deal with Citibank for a major new cloud platform that promises to simplify corporate to bank connectivity for some of the world’s largest banks, Banking Technology has learned.
Standard Chartered has completed the rollout of its corporate actions platform across 39 countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, which the bank says will help clients cut costs and reduce their corporate actions risk exposure.
Cooperative Bank of Kenya has implemented Misys BankFusion, a core banking platform which the bank says has helped it increase its transaction processing by double and end of day processing by 40%.
HSBC Bank China has completed its first electronic tax payment for a corporate client in Shanghai, in a move that the bank says is the first among all foreign banks I the city. The new tax payment service deducts funds in real time and enables customers to complete tax reports and process payments on the government’s tax system terminal from any location.
Pan-European clearing houses EMCF and EuroCCP have received approval from the UK consumer authority the Office of Fair Trading to go ahead with their planned merger, announced in July.
The number of UK consumers who switched their current account during the last month increased by 11% compared to the same period last year, giving hope to the UK Payments Council that its new seven-day account switching service which launched on 16 September may be beginning to work.
Banco Itaú Suisse, the Swiss business of Latin American bank Itaú Unibanco, has chosen a private banking business system from software vendor ERI as part of a drive to make the Swiss unit a central hub for the Group’s European private banking business.
An ex-Coca Cola chief executive was once quoted talking to staff about the work-life balance – juggling careers, family, health, friends and spirit. In the financial services industry today, work life itself is quite a balancing act.
The average bank now typically views web portals such as Google as the biggest threat to its business, according to a new report by French retail banking association Efma and business IT firm Infosys. Yet banks also report rising levels of innovation within their firms.
Swift has completed network acceptance testing for its connectivity service for T2S, the EU project to reform Europe’s post-trade infrastructure.
The constantly changing tide of national, European and global regulatory change is making life difficult for Britain’s building societies and banks to keep pace, according to Mark Smith, head of ALM at Yorkshire Building Society.
Large retail banks sometimes find it hard to change because they have assimilated many smaller banks through acquisition, each of which is running on a payments engine that has different features and may be very old. That can make it difficult to offer new services, but there is a solution according to Paul Thomalla, head of EMEA at US-based payments and technology firm ACI Worldwide.
Geopolitical shifts and increasing protectionism among nations will mean that the universal banking model is no longer sustainable – and there is little that anyone can do, according to Bill Michael, EMA head of financial services at KPMG. “The future shape of banking is beyond the control of boards, individual regulators or countries alone,” Michael […]
The UK Payments Council’s seven-day account switching service has been attacked as a “complete waste of time” by participants at a panel discussion in London on Wednesday – an allegation that was vigorously denied by representatives of the Council and the UK retail banking sector.
Sell-side only block trading network Squawker has completed its pan-European rollout, connecting 70 sell-side firms to the new venue, which promises ‘algorithm-free’ trading in 13 European countries.
Polish IT specialist Comarch has launched a mobile business banking solution aimed at banks that want to give corporates, SMEs and micro business customers a mobile offering.
Citi has expanded its electronic bank account management service to 55 countries, in a move that the bank says will help corporate treasurers to better manage risk. The bank also expanded its cross-border WorldLink payment service into new emerging markets.
Cover story: Trade Finance – keeping the wheels of commerce turning Economic expansion in Asia, Africa and the Middle East is creating new trade corridors, and new opportunities for banks Also in this issue: Ready or not, here it comes: The first wave of full SEPA compliance is set for February 2014 . Keeping the […]
Nasdaq OMX is planning to launch a test facility for algo trading early next year. The Algo Test Facility will be developed jointly with Thesys Technologies, a subsidiary of Tradeworx,
Tanzania’s CRDB Bank has migrated its Burundi subsidiary to software provider CR2’s BankWorld platform, in a bid to bring self-service banking to customers across the East African country.
One may speculate that with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party having secured a quite remarkable third term in office, the last in a long line of potential hurdles for the advocates of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) in Europe has been overcome
Coming to the US to tell an audience of payments specialists about how the UK has transformed its national infrastructure over the past five years with the introduction of an effectively real-time payment system might have been considered a rough assignment – what can the Brits teach the wider world, particularly the US, about payments […]
Formed earlier this year, Zapp expects to launch next year with the backing of most of the major UK retail banks, Peter Keenan, chief executive of the venture, says that at the time of launch the Pay by Zapp service will be available to 40% of UK current account holders, and it will have the backing of 50% of the nation’s online and mobile retailers – including well-known brands.
The overwhelming majority of US consumers would not use a mobile wallet, according to a survey carried out by consultancy Consult Hyperion during September.
Trading firms need to upgrade their technology as often as every three months or face getting left behind by the ferocious pace of competition, according to specialists behind the HFT industry’s breakneck expansion into the world’s emerging markets and untamed asset classes.
Understanding and embracing cross-channel communication behaviours will become increasingly critical to success in the banking industry, writes Steve Dille, SVP of global marketing at Maryland USA based communications firm Message Systems.
Bitcoin is here to stay and will continue to grow, according to experts speaking on separate panels at Money2020 in Las Vegas.
Financial information services company Markit is aiming to create the largest financial markets messaging community and remove barriers to cross-market communication through its open messaging initiative and supporting technology, Markit Collaboration Services.
US banking and payments technology specialist FIS has launched a cloud-based real time core banking utility aimed at mid-tier banks in central and eastern Europe, which it says will help client to roll out new products faster and cheaper than ever before.
Leeds Building Society has joined the shared services alliance founded by HP Enterprise Services and the Yorkshire Building Society in September, in a deal that will see the society move its core application for mortgages and savings to the cloud. The deal also marks a growing recognition among the UK’s mid-tier institutions of the power of cloud to help them move with the times.
