It has been quite a crazy month on the Payments News front, with 2 key financial services conferences taking place at the same time in Sydney-Sibos and Las Vegas-Money20/20. Of course, all of the hip movers and shakers from the world of finance and technology were there and sharing their views on where the industry is heading. Check out below the other top payment news stories that caught my eye in October 2018:
1. Payments News – Cyber Security
- FCA fines Tesco Bank £16.4m for 2016 cyber hack failures
- FireEye release details of a North Korean cyber-threat group (APT38) , which they believe have been involved in recent SWIFT related hacks
- European Association for Secure Transactions (EAST) report highlights losses due to card fraud at payment terminals have fallen to lowest levels since 2005
- Pay.UK is set to launch “confirmation of payee” system in 2019 – enabling a name check to happen before any money is transferred
2. Payments News – Mobile Payments
- SingTel together with AIS and Thai bank Kasikornbank launch VIA, enabling cross border payments between Singapore and Thailand
- Scotland National Trust implements contactless dontations at two sites
- Mastercard simplifies paying bills with Mastercard Bill Pay Exchange
- Worldpay figures reveal contactless overtakes chip and pin payments in the UK for the first time
- Grab will partner with Mastercard to issue virtual and physical prepaid cards through its app – allowing customers to top up their card through GrabPay and to use the Mastercard card online and offline
3. Payments News: Blockchain / Digital / Crypto-currencies
- Fidelity Digital Assets Services, a Wall Street based cryptocurrency trading arm is launched
- Voltron a trade finance solution is launched on the R3 Corda blockchain platform
- The UK FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) releases report on the UK approach to Cryptoassets
4. Payments News: Banks
- HSBC Fusion is launched in the US, enabling customers to manage accounts on a single platform
- The Banco Sabadell digital business hub, InnoCells buys online payment platform PAYTV
- Citibank Ventures partners with Howard University to engage students in innovation initiatives at the bank
- JPMorgan to introduce mandatory coding lessons!
- Reserve Bank of India (RBI) “data localisation” regulation comes into effect and major payment firms are not ready
- JP Morgan to build a “fintech campus” in Silicon Valley, scheduled to open in 2020
- HSBC partners with Avant to launch a digital lending platform in the US
- Hitachi and State Bank of India (SBI) enter into a Joint Venture focusing on state of the art card acceptance and digital payments platform in India
5. Payments News: Fintech
- Students can add their student ID cards to the Apple Wallet and use their iPhone / Apple Watch to access and pay for stuff around campus
- Fintech M&A Report highlights a surge in transactions in first half of 2018, with a disclosed transaction value of almost $40 billion – up 26% from the first half of 2017
- Asifma (Asian Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) warns data privacy laws may restrict the fintech boom
- 11:FS launches 11:FS Foundry – a new way to deliver digital banking services
- Thomson Reuters and Blackstone partner to launch Refinitiv
- Cross industry initiative – STT: Stop the Traffik – creates a international data hub using IBM Watson to combat human trafficking
- First Direct customers choose banking via smartphone app rather than desktop/computers
6. Payments News: Europe – SEPA, PSD2, Open Banking, GDRP
- Over 40 European financial institutions and serive providers join Open Banking Europe, a single and standardised pan-European PSD2 directory launched by PRETA
- European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) budgets €1.1million for financial innovation and crypto-assets
- Nationwide Building Society Open Banking for Good challenge (OB4G) aims to connect fintech’s and academics to develop open banking for the financially vulnerable
- BBVA launches Banking As A Service (Open Platform) in the US
- Financial institutions, fintech’s launch Financial Data Exchange (FDX) to harmonise the way in which consumer and financial data is shared
- IBM unveil IBM Open Banking Platform – to accelerate digital transformation at financial institutions
- BBVA is ready to deploy BBVA One View after a 5 month trial with over 300 customers – allowing customers to manage multiple accounts in one dashboard
7. Payments News: SWIFT
- SWIFT launch Business Intelligence gpi Observer Analytic, a analytical tool for banks to better understand their cross-border message flows
- SWIFT, STET and Berlin Group NextGenPSD2 publish a API blueprint for common API standards
- EBA Clearing and SWIFT announce EURO1 (the Large Value Payments System – LVPS) move to ISO 20022 by Nov 2021
- Sibos – Microsoft and SWIFT announce cloud based (Azure) SWIFT infrastructure proof of concept
- Sibos – Finextra and BankingTech report on the opening day
8. Payments News: Money20/20
9. Payments News: Reports
- FireEye – APT83 Un-usual Suspects
- Federal Reserve – Speech by Lael Brainard – Support Fast Payments for All
- Bain and Company – Can Amazon Take Customer Loyalty to the Bank?
- SWIFT – Delivering a global platform for the financial services API economy
- Accenture Report on the impact to bank revenues due to Digital Disruption
- Deutsche Bank – Regulation driving banking transformation
- Ovum survey sponsored by Temenos reveals payment infrastructure renovation is key to bank digital strategy
- Bank of Canada – Is a cashless society problematic?
- Euro Banking Association – Cryptocurrencies: Improving Regulatory Compliance
- Sweden’s Riksbank – E-Krona Project – As cash usage declines, the e-krona may be the only viable option for a state guaranteed method of payment
- Gartner – Digitalisation will Make Most Heritage Financial Firms Irrelevant
That’s it folks! Let me know below if I missed anything important…