Is The Silo Mentality Hindering Your Organisation? 3

Over the weekend I stumbled across an article Why the silo effect makes us stupid? by Gillian Tett. The article is an extract from the book, The Silo Effect and offers an insightful analysis into the area of silos and silo mentality. I’m no expert in this, but was amazed at some of the examples ...

SEPA Creditor Identifier By Country 20

As the SEPA February 2016 deadline approaches, we need to remember that there are many components to a SEPA Direct Debit implementation. In the SEPA Direct Debit Key Considerations post, i’ve highlighted all of the mandatory fields that you need to capture. One of those fields is the SEPA Creditor Identifier, which i will cover ...

The Top Payments News Stories in August, 2015

Payments news in August was dominated by 4 themes – cyber security, mobiles payments, fintech and IT glitches. Financial services are increasingly being driven by technology and various IT glitches highlight the fact that legacy systems just aren’t up to the job. Biometric authentication is also heating up, as are the number of fintech hubs ...

6 Corporate Treasury Insights from Deloitte 1

Every other year Deloitte conduct a corporate treasury survey to understand key trends in the treasury space. This is my ‘first’ Deloitte survey report but with so much going on in financial services right now, this is a timely insight into key corporate treasury trends. The first thing to note is that the survey has a primarily ...

Valid XML Characters for your SEPA Payments 3

Understanding the list of valid xml characters for your SEPA Credit Transfer (PAIN.001) and SEPA Direct Debit (PAIN.008) formats is really important. I know that is stating the obvious, but often invalid xml characters or illegal xml characters are entered into the payments format and can cause either the single payment to be rejected or ...

An Example of Wearable Technology By Disney

I must admit I haven’t been won over by the whole wearable technology craze that seems to be gaining in momentum with various fitness devices and smart watches available on the market. In short, I just don’t get how wearable technology could help or benefit me. Wearable technology is seemingly complicated, pretty expensive, the alternative (typically a ...

The Difference between a SWIFT ACK and SWIFT NACK 27

Having explained the various SWIFT message types and the structure of a SWIFT message, one of the other big questions that corporates contend with is what is the difference between a SWIFT ACK (Acknowledgement) and SWIFT NACK or sometimes referred to as SWIFT NAK (Negative Acknowledgement). Let’s get straight into it… The Structure of SWIFT ...

The Structure Of A SWIFT Message, Explained! 49

If you’re looking at a SWIFT message for the first time, it can be a bit daunting. To the untrained eye the whole SWIFT message structure can look like gobbledygook. But actually, there is a bit of a method to the madness. Whether you are receiving, processing or constructing an MT101 or an MT940 message ...

SWIFT Message Types – Know Your MTs from your MXs… 24

The recent SWIFT related posts have been pretty popular, and many of you have contacted me asking for more detailed information about SWIFT message types. To get the full lowdown on SWIFT message types, you need to read SWIFT’s very own Standards Inventory Of Messages. Its 47 pages worth of SWIFT message types, nice bedtime ...

The Top Payments News Stories in July, 2015

Mobile payments, blockchain and fintech payments news stories dominated in July 2015. Mobile payments news focused on the UK launch of Apple Pay, and the banks continue to express their excitement around blockchain technology. I never thought we would see news about Mike Tyson in a blog about payments news, but he’s fought his way into this months ...