Republican legislators and business associations, emboldened by Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid, have set their sights on the CFPB, an agency that’s been in Republicans’ crosshairs since the day it was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act. Meanwhile, retailers are calling on Congress to steer clear of introducing legislation that would repeal financial services reforms they say are critical to U.S. businesses and consumers.
The size of the financially underserved market in the U.S. increased by nearly 6 percent in 2015, reaching an estimated $140.7 billion, according to a just-released study from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and Core Innovation Capital.
With a growing number of products and services available to help consumers manage their finances electronically, being able to do so means sharing their digital financial records.
Now that Visa’s EMV debit card routing has come under Federal Trade Commission investigation, eight U.S. retail trade groups are pressing the payments network to say how it will fix the problem.
The Payment Services Directive (PSD2) still leaves some in the payments industry confused as to where the risks and opportunities lie. This was one of the opinions from Payments International in London – a four-day conference of panel debates, polls and Q&A – that runs 15-18 November. At yesterday’s (16 November) sessions, Banking Technology’s first […]
The European Commission (EC) has set up a fintech task force as it looks to boost innovation in the region. Called the Financial Technology Task Force (FTTF), it brings together services responsible for financial regulation and for the “digital single market”, along with others dealing with competition and consumer protection policy. FTTF will be co-chaired […]
The “world’s first” peer-to-peer lender Zopa plans to launch a new digital-only bank in the UK. The application for a banking licence will be made to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The firm says the regulatory application process should take about 15-24 months. Jaidev Janardana, CEO of Zopa, says […]
Nigeria-based Sterling Bank has gone live with a new core banking system – Temenos’ T24 – in a “big-bang” switchover. The new platform was rolled out across the entire branch network of Sterling – 185 locations. The platform is used to support all main retail and corporate operations of the bank. Temenos refers to the […]
Banks need to show courage and radically change their traditional mindsets about payments if they are to deal with start-ups threatening to snatch a share of the spoils. This was one of the messages from Payments International in London – a four-day conference of panel debates, Q&A and presentations – that runs 15-18 November. It’s […]
Mobile commerce is on the rise—and as the busy holiday shopping season nears, now is a key time for retailers to examine how they can improve their brand’s efforts around m-commerce. Discover offers insights into how retailers can use the mobile channel to market their offerings and drive engagement and sales.
More than 3.6 million personal records, including card data, are stolen every day, according to the Breach Level Index, and fraudsters are hard at work to use that data to their advantage. The latest report from IDology highlights fraud trends, while InComm, Tender Armor and Intellicheck have announced initiatives to keep the fraudsters at bay.
Plastic will stand as the gift of choice for many consumers this holiday season, with 81 percent of shoppers saying that up to half their gifts this year could be gift cards, according to a new survey from Blackhawk Network, one of two recent reports that paints a picture of how consumers are likely to spend in the all-important fourth quarter.
With India’s recent abolition of some high-denomination paper currency already driving an uptick in electronic payments, Mastercard is bringing a QR code-based version of its Masterpass mobile payments service to the country. Launched in partnership with Ratnakar Bank Limited (RBL), Masterpass QR enables users to make in-store payments via scan of a QR code displayed on a smartphone.
Kathleen Campbell, quality manager for card marketing and production firm Arroweye Solutions, has passed the International Card Manufacturers Associations’ (ICMA) ACE-P certification. Campbell joins Marce Rose, Arroweye’s operations manager, who recently received both the ACE-P and ACE-M certifications.
OP Bank, Nordea and Danske Bank have launched a new real-time, multibank mobile payments platform in Finland. The platform was built by Tieto and Automatia (the latter operates the three banks’ shared ATM network).
Purchasing intelligence and marketing firm Cardlytics has named Peter Gleason as the company’s new president of international operations.
Private equity firm Finstar Financial has appointed Mark Ruddock to oversee a new corporate venture group that will look for opportunities in the fintech space.
Danielle Piro has joined the Paybefore team as business development manager.
Shazia Manus, CEO of payments processor The Members Group (TMG), has been recognized by her alma mater, Iowa State University (ISU), for her commitment to driving economic growth in the financial services industry.
Payment services provider Total Merchant Services has been named to Fortune’s Best Medium Workplaces list, taking the No. 8 spot in the rankings.
SigFig, a San Francisco-based fintech start-up, is partnering with Wells Fargo to provide the bank’s clients with its robo-advisory tech and wealth management tools. A pilot version will be rolled out in H1 2017.
ClauseMatch and JWG have teamed up at the recent TechSprint event organised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to develop a new regulatory reporting solution.
FNZ, an investment management software specialist, is working on a major technology revamp at the UK-based private bank and wealth manager Kleinwort Benson, Banking Technology understands.
UK-based payments vendor Monitise has launched its Finkit partner programme with founding partner MasterCard to speed up collaboration in banking and payments. For the “first time”, the founding partners – which also include BehavioSec, Currencycloud, Envestnet | Yodlee, Experian, Fastacash, FICO, HID, iGeolise, LivePerson, Mypinpad, Syniverse and WorldFirst – have agreed to make their capabilities […]
Japan’s Mizuho Bank is going to move to a new core banking platform in early 2017, Banking Technology understands. The cost of the project is believed to be JPY 300 billion ($2.8 billion).
F10, a Swiss incubator and accelerator, is offering two six-month programmes for up to 20 start-ups to turn their prototypes into sellable products. Participation for the selected start-ups is free. After opening its “prototype to product” (P2) programme’s winter session on 7 November, F10 now wants applications for its next round in 2017. Markus Graf, […]
Prepaid providers are no strangers to balance alerts. But new research suggests that financial institutions can go further with alerts and push notifications to strengthen relationships with customers and increase revenue.
Visa hopes to spread the use of biometrics authentication by developing a mobile app that enables the use of multiple biometrics markers. The idea behind the technology, which Visa says it’s creating with BioConnect, is that if a consumer’s default biometric fails to work for some reason, the app will allow that person to use another such marker. For instance, a person’s fingers might be too damp to allow fingerprint access into a device, so the app might then enable voice recognition.
Heeding the advice of many payments experts who say mobile wallets need to do more than enable payments, Samsung has launched a points-based rewards program for Samsung Pay. Consumers using the mobile wallet for purchases can earn points from those transactions and then use those points to buy Samsung products and vouchers, along with gift cards and value that can be transferred to the Samsung Rewards Visa prepaid card.
A group of financial services and telecom providers has banded together to launch a new mobile payment service to help increase electronic payments in Nigeria. Known as mCASH, the platform is a joint venture of the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, numerous Nigerian deposit banks and the country’s four main telecom providers: Etisalat, MTN, Airtel and Globacom.
Stellar Development Foundation is offering sponsorships for fintech start-ups, and those who educate developers or represent an NGO. Sponsorship is available in the forms of “lumens” – Stellar’s unit of digital currency, similar to a Bitcoin. The firm says its goal is to support new products and ideas, and for those enabling that goal via […]
Fujitsu has launched its customer onboarding technology, Smart Origination, developed in partnership with ImageWare Systems, InAuth, Intelligent Environments, Mitek and Trunomi. The tech enables financial institutions to collect, process and verify documents and the identity of new applicants in “less than five minutes”. Gary Fegan, head of digital financial services solutions at Fujitsu, says Smart […]
It’s blockchain infographics time!
IBM has unveiled a blockchain-powered Know Your Customer (KYC) project with Singapore start-up KYCK! to help financial services providers onboard customers quicker and cheaper. Using the open source Hyperledger Project Fabric, IBM says immutability, traceability and privacy of the information is provided on a permissioned distributed ledger which is “critical” in a highly regulated environment. […]
Jordan Ahli Bank is live with new core banking software, Temenos’ T24. The go-live is a result of a four-year effort.
AmBank will be launching “a new phase of mobile banking very soon”, according to the bank’s new group CEO, Dato’ Sulaiman Mohd Tahir. The solution is provided by Backbase.
SETL, Deloitte and Metro Bank say they have completed “a series of firsts”. SETL provided a contactless smartcard for digitised payments (based on blockchain), Deloitte applied its Smart Identity blockchain ID system, and Metro Bank hosted a connected client account.
OCBC says it is the first bank in Southeast Asia to use blockchain for local and cross-border interbank fund transfers. A successful pilot payment transaction was carried out between the bank and its subsidiaries, OCBC Malaysia and Bank of Singapore, using a payment blockchain solution designed by OCBC and local payments firm BCS Information Systems […]
Bangladesh’s central bank is hoping to get back $30 million more of the $81 million stolen from its account at the New York Federal Reserve in February, according to Reuters. As Banking Technology reported earlier this year, Bangladesh Bank said a total of $101 million was “wrongly transmitted”, of which $20 million went to a […]
Indications continue to be positive for gift card sales this holiday season, with a recent report coming from Mercator Advisory Group predicting a bounce-back year from 2015, and research from the UK Gift Card & Voucher Association highlighting the popularity of digital gift cards, regardless of season.
