News


Swiss plan lighter regulations to seduce fintech firms

If you reduce it, they will come. Swiss ministry officials want to entice fintech firms and boost competition with new, lighter regulations. The nation’s finance ministry says the plan is to remove barriers to market entry and offer more legal certainty for the fintech space. Ministry officials say draft legislation could be sent to Switzerland’s […]

Payroll Card Bill Passes in Pa. amid Court Decision against Employers

A Pennsylvania appeals court has sided with McDonald’s employees, deciding that the owners of 16 franchises were in violation of the state’s Wage Payment and Collection Law (WPCL) by requiring employees to be paid with payroll debit cards. The court filed its decision Oct. 21, 2016, which stems from a 2013 lawsuit—consisting of a class of 2,380 current and former employees, according to Law360—alleging that franchise owners Albert and Carol Mueller made it mandatory that employees’ wages be paid through payroll card rather than cash or check.

Dunkin’ Donuts Enables Gifting within iMessage

As the holiday shopping season kicks into gear, Dunkin’ Donuts customers now can send gifts via Apple iMessage in iOS 10. The popular chain—and longtime mobile pioneer—is the first national coffee retailer to integrate with the updated messaging service, which enables users to access the Dunkin’ Mobile App within a chat and purchase a mobile gift card using Apple Pay.

Post-Brexit Poll Shows Bank Executives Worried about Exile, Costs

Despite Brexit, 72 percent of British banks think London will remain Europe’s financial center in five years, according to new results from a survey the Tabb Group conducted on behalf of consultancy Synechron. Yet 55 percent of the 80 capital market executives polled said their financial institutions have set up committees charged with coming up with relocation plans as the U.K. prepares to leave the European Union.

UK challenger Pockit reaches 100,000 customer mark

UK challenger “neo-bank” Pockit says it now has 100,000 customers, “nearly twice as many” as three of its rivals – Monzo, Atom and Tandem – “combined”. On its website, Pockit says it is a “prepaid MasterCard, not a bank”, so the term “neo-bank” may be worth scrapping or explaining. It’s been around for a while, […]

Four banks team up to standardise repackaging transactions

Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Nomura International and Societe Generale have teamed up to produce documentation for use in listed and unlisted repackaging transactions. According to the banks, repackaged products provide the investor exposure to the underlying credit of an issuer and are specifically designed for the investor’s risk-return needs. In addition, cash flows can be […]

Will Bank-Backed M-Wallets Win?

As banks gain a more prominent spot in the mobile payments market, will they become the one wallet to rule them all?

Poland’s banks power national “paper to digital” project

Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs and its banking sector have launched a project, “From paper to digital Poland”, to boost the digitalisation of the nation’s public administration. With the project, Poles can use their banking ID and password to log in to the social insurance board, contact public administration offices or a local government’s site […]

ACI powers Faster Payments for Turkish Bank UK

ACI Worldwide has partnered with Turkish Bank UK to power its Faster Payments offering. The UK-based bank will use ACI’s aggregator service to connect to the nation’s Faster Payments Scheme (FPS) – allowing it to process all transfers to and from UK bank accounts “instantly”. It will use the service via ACI’s cloud-based delivery model […]

Abu Dhabi launches fintech regulation lab

Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has launched its Regulatory Laboratory (RegLab) as it looks to boost innovation in the region. As Banking Technology reported in August, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of ADGM was looking for public feedback and comments for its proposed RegLab. Richard Teng, chief executive officer, FSRA of ADGM, says it […]

Debit and Prepaid Card Bases Set to Gain Market Share

The global prepaid card base will increase to 921 million in 2021, up 46 percent from 624 million as of Dec. 31, 2015, according to a new forecast from U.K.-based Retail Banking Research, or RBR. Despite the prepaid surge, debit will continue its dominance of the overall cards market. RBR’s “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2021,” which does not cover closed-looped prepaid cards, found that debit cards in 2021 will account for 72 percent of all payment cards worldwide, up from 70 percent in 2015.

Smart Card Alliance Calls for More Secure IoT Devices

In the wake of a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that shut down hundreds of Websites in October, the Smart Card Alliance has issued a warning on the “critical need” to ramp up security on hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected devices. It’s those devices—which range from cars to refrigerators and make up the Internet of Things (IoT)—that hackers are hijacking and incorporating into their botnet attacks, making attacks large enough to overwhelm Websites’ defenses—as was the case in the most recent attack, which affected major Websites including Twitter, Netflix and Spotify, among others.

N.Y. Facing BitLicense Backlog after Lawsky Departure

New York State’s pioneering BitLicense program could be losing momentum after the departure of New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) head Benjamin Lawsky last year. The state has issued just two BitLicenses since enacting the program in June 2015, shortly before Lawsky left the agency. Another 15 licenses are pending, while four applications have been withdrawn and four others have been denied, according to Reuters, citing an NYDFS spokesperson.

UK’s Financial Conduct Authority calls for more finserv access

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) wants more access to financial services and for fintech to show a greater understanding of the nation’s ageing population. In its 160-page “FCA Occasional Paper”, published today (1 November), the FCA looks at “barriers to bank accounts”, digital transformation and the growing grey brigade. Christopher Woolard, director of strategy […]

Credit Suisse plans tech cost-sharing with another bank

Credit Suisse is talking with an unnamed bank about a cost-sharing project around technology as it looks to make savings. In an interview with the Financial Times, Tidjane Thiam, the bank’s chief executive, says its idea is at the “proof of concept” stage – and hints it may use an investor day in December to […]

Japan rises to blockchain challenge with new consortium

The name may not be catchy but “The Japan Bank Consortium to Centrally Provide Domestic and Cross-border Payments” has officially launched with 42 member banks. As Banking Technology reported in August, SBI Ripple Asia, a joint venture between distributed ledger tech provider Ripple and SBI Holdings, announced that a Japanese consortium of 15 banks in […]

10x Future Technologies to build digital core banking platform for Virgin Money

10x Future Technologies, the start-up founded by former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins, is building a digital core banking platform for Virgin Money. It will be delivered in a cloud and will enable Virgin Money to unify its data platforms into a single infrastructure via 10x’s APIs, the vendor says. This new deal follows on from […]

Nimbrix launches blockchain consortium and platform

London-based Nimbrix has unveiled its new blockchain platform and the creation of an industry consortium with KPMG and Microsoft. The Nimbrix buy-side platform will use cloud, open API, Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) and blockchain. It will be powered by Microsoft Azure, and Nimbrix says trades can be “executed instantaneously between counterparties, thus reducing the risk of […]

MasterCard unveils new blockchain

MasterCard has unveiled its own blockchain as it reacts to arch-rival Visa’s partnership with Chain and seeks to use the technology in payments and trade finance. Its version is currently at the testing stage and offers the usual things in this corner of the fintech world. These include smart contracts – scriptable transactions that automate […]

Deutsche Bank opens data store to developers

Deutsche Bank is opening its data store to software developers from Germany and abroad as it looks for more digital solutions for its bank clients. Its site, developer.db.com, will from tomorrow (1 November) provide access to the bank’s proprietary development environment, allowing programmers to test their ideas for “digital services of the future”. The bank […]

DBS to acquire ANZ retail and wealth business in Asia

Singapore-based DBS Bank is buying the retail and wealth business of Australia and New Zealand-based banking group, ANZ, in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Indonesia for about SGD 110 million ($79 million) “above book value”. The exact figure has not been disclosed, but the portfolio represents total deposits of SGD 17 billion ($12.2 billion), […]

Fed Seeks Industry Input on Payments Security by Nov. 8

As part of its mission to improve the U.S. payments system, the Federal Reserve’s Secure Payments Task Force is seeking industry input on ways to beef up security. Industry members can provide comment through online surveys, which are separated into the task force’s three areas of focus: payment identity management, information sharing for the mitigation of payment risk/fraud and data protection.

NRF Study Projects Post-Election Holiday Shopping Surge

Election-season politics are taking up ad space typically used to get holiday shopping on the minds of consumers—but observers predict a post-election surge as Americans finally get into the holiday shopping spirit. And much of that spending will be on gift cards—both as gifts for others and for self-use.

India, Singapore Banks Launching Sound-Based Payment Services

Audio-based payments continue to make noise with India’s YES Bank enabling payments via sound waves over its mobile wallet and OCBC Bank becoming the first in the Asia Pacific region to enable secure payments via Apple’s Siri service.

Misys in five-year Deutsche Bank deal

Misys has signed a five-year enterprise license agreement with Deutsche Bank giving it “unrestricted access” to deploy Misys FusionBanking Lending and Misys FusionCapital solutions across the business. Misys’ FusionBanking Lending offering includes the Loan IQ back office platform for syndicated lending and the front-end that originates from Custom Credit Systems (CCS), a US-based provider of […]

US Treasury looks to control innovation

The US Department of the Treasury has unveiled an “Office of Innovation” as it looks to assert its control on regulations in this fintech space. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an independent bureau within the Treasury, says it is “making certain that institutions with federal charters have a regulatory framework that […]

Next-generation virtual data room launched by Drooms

No more drowning in tons of paper and receiving eye-watering bills from lawyers – Drooms introduces a brand new virtual data room, Drooms NXG. The work is a result of a two-year development, says Jan Hoffmeister, managing director and co-founder of Drooms, and features self-learning software and automatic translation from core European languages to English. […]

Ex-Barclays CEO back with new firm and digital banking platform

Antony Jenkins, former CEO of Barclays, is back with a new company called 10x Future Technologies and launched a new core digital banking platform. As Banking Technology reported in June, Jenkins, who was sacked by Barclays in summer 2015 for failing to transform the bank quickly enough, set up 10X Future Technologies. At that time, […]

Brave new Bitcoin for Tullett Prebon

Tullett Prebon Information (TPI), a provider of real-time price information from the global OTC financial and commodity markets, has signed a deal with Brave New Coin (BNC) to distribute its digital currency data. TPI says this is the “first time such a comprehensive view of the entire digital currency landscape has been made available to […]

Five-Star for Nucleus Software’s lending solution in the cloud

India-based Five-Star Business Finance is modernising its lending operations with a new platform, FinnOne Neo, provided by local specialist vendor Nucleus Software. The solution will be delivered in the cloud. Five-Star is a non-banking finance company, and provides small business and small housing loans to “underbanked customers”. It chose FinnOne Neo to “help scale [its] […]

ABLV Bank chooses Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX for regulatory reporting

ABLV Bank, a Latvia-based private bank, has selected Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX to provide regulatory reporting software. The solution will be used for both its Latvian headquarters and its Luxembourg-based subsidiary, including European Banking Authority reporting obligations. The bank is also using the firm’s Regulatory Update Service. This service is maintained by Wolters Kluwer experts who […]

Earthport revenue and payment volume take off

Earthport, a cross-border payments service provider, has revealed its revenues increased 18% to £22.8 million for the full year (FY) 2016 – powered by the rise in payment volume and transaction numbers. For the year ended 30 June 2016, it says payment volume increased to more than $11 billion, a 64% increase prior to the […]

OCBC Bank first in Asia Pacific for Siri payments

OCBC has become the first bank in Asia Pacific to let customers send cash through Siri. Users can send money with a voice command via Siri, then use the OCBC Pay Anyone mobile e-payment service. It also offers Apple’s instant messaging service –  iMessage. No need to stop texting, payments can be made without leaving […]

“Outstanding sales” boost Fiserv revenue

Fiserv’s GAAP revenue increased 5% in the third quarter to $1.38 billion, with 8% growth in its payments segment and 2% growth in the financial segment, compared to Q3 2015. The firm also released figures for the first nine months of 2016, with GAAP revenue rising 5% to $4.07 billion, with 8% growth in the […]

Top fintech stories this week – 28 October 2016

Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! HSBC Private Bank live with Avaloq Banking Suite EXCLUSIVE. It’s on in Switzerland and Luxembourg. European Association for Biometrics conference Eyes down for our event review. New challenger bank to launch in UK Hampshire Community Bank wants a […]

Cognizant works with KeyBank on Oracle Banking Platform project

Cognizant has assisted KeyBank in implementing Oracle Banking Platform (OBP) from Oracle FSS as part of the bank’s tech revamp. Cognizant says it redesigned KeyBank’s core systems, applications, business processes and customer interfaces to “simplify transactions”. Vipin Gupta, EVP and CIO of Key Community Bank (KeyCorp’s division that includes retail, business and commercial middle market […]

Report: Consumers’ Use of Mobile Devices in Stores Stops at the Register

U.S. consumers’ usage of mobile devices in-store ranks as one of the highest compared with shoppers in other countries. However, their use of mobile devices at the POS drops dramatically, according to the 2016 FutureBuy report, which tracks trends in online, mobile and brick-and-mortar shopping. The results indicate that payments providers have work to do to convince shoppers m-wallets are worth the effort.

Money20/20: The Future ATM Features Biometrics, Leaner Look

Sleek, small, clean and thumbprint-operated—a new Diebold Nixdorf ATM shown off at this week’s Money20/20 show in Las Vegas points toward the future of cash distribution, and speaks to the spreading potential of biometrics in payments.