The Top Payments News Stories in April, 2015

There were some recurring payments news themes that dominated the headlines in April 2015 – cyber security, mobile payments and various fintech developments. Interestingly though there were some new stories around ATM’s and a couple of important financial inclusion stories worth catching up on. Unfortunately there were also some bank glitches that caused customers a bit ...

Global Real Time Payments Systems 3

Global Real Time Payments Systems
I have been on a bit of a real time payments mission recently, with posts on Immediate Payments and Instant Payments in Europe. About a month ago this got me thinking, what are the Real Time Payments Systems around the World – and from the feedback you sent me this was also something on your ...

5 Reasons Why Financial Inclusion Is Important… 6

Last week the World Bank released The Global Findex Database – Measuring Financial Inclusion Around the World – Policy Research Paper. The Global Findex data was collected by the World Bank and Gallup World Poll, and was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The data is based on interviews with 150,000 adults (aged ...

10 Revelations from the ING Mobile Banking 2015 Survey 1

Last week ING Group released their ING Mobile Banking 2015 Report highlighting trends and key developments in the mobile banking and payments space over 2015. I don’t want to get too heavily into the statistics, but rather to share some of the overall themes that emerged from the survey. Following are 10 key takeaways from the ING ...

5 Takeaways from the BBVA Annual Letter to Shareholders 1

Having recently reviewed the JP Morgan annual letter to shareholders, I thought it would be useful to see what other banks were saying in their annual letters to their shareholders. I went through the Top Payment News Stories in March 2015 and noticed BBVA’s Chief, Francisco Gonzalez, “plans to build the first and best digital ...

10 Takeaways from the JP Morgan Annual Letter to Shareholders

In his annual letter to shareholders Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, outlines some of the major themes that present both challenges and opportunities to the bank in the past, present and future. I have read quite a few interesting articles in the last few days that highlight what Jamie Dimon is thinking about disruptive ...

The State of the Digital Economy in Europe

The European Union is all about creating a prosperous single market by removing barriers and simplifying rules and regulations within the region. At the heart of the European Union are the four freedoms – the free movement of people, goods, services and capital. Now with virtually everything going digital, the free movement of people, goods, services and ...

The Top Payments News Stories in March, 2015 1

It only seems like yesterday that I was summarising the top payments news stories for February 2015 – Is it me, or is time flying?!?! So in March cyber security continued to hit the headlines with various reports highlighting the extent of the issue. Various FinTech, digital/cryptocurrency and innovation related payment news stories also caught my ...

The Europol Encryption, Privacy and Cyber Crime Tightrope

Security is paramount, or is it? There has been a lot in the press recently about the delicate balance that technology companies need to strike between ensuring legitimate user privacy on the one hand and the use of this same security technology by terrorists to communicate privately on the other. The debate has been further ...

The Top 10 IT Trends According To McKinsey 2

Given the recent focus on disruptive innovation, I’m currently on a mission to understand more about future IT Trends and how they might impact the payments space. So with that in mind the purpose of this article is to share with you what I have found. Once we know what the IT trends are, we ...