I’m sorry for the lack of posts recently, i will get back on it from September (promise!). For now, let’s kick off with the big payments news stories over the last month. Check out the following top payments news stories that caught my eye during August 2017:
1. Payments News – Cyber Security
- Wanna Cry kill switch finder, Marcus Hitchins, is arrested in the US
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) intelligent deposit ATMs are allegedly used for money laundering purposes
- Organised crime – including money laundering and digital currencies – are costing the Australian economy $28 billion a year
- UK clearing houses will be subject to cybersecurity reporting based on laws to be implemented by May 2018
2. Payments News – Mobile Payments
- Paytm, a leading digital payments firm in India, will launch a messaging service to compete with WhatsApp
- China’s central bank looks to force mobile payments companies to route their transactions through a clearing house and share data
- UK Finance reveals that cash is still king in the UK, but the number of cash payments fell by 11% between 2015 and 2016
- Meanwhile WorldPay reveals that contactless mobile spending is up 336% in 2017 compared with first 6 months in 2016
- MasterCard to pilot accepting contactless payments in Poland using only a smartphone
3. Payments News: Blockchain / Digital / Crypto-currencies
- ING, Calypso Technology and the R3 consortium successfully test a blockchain powered trade confirmation platform
- Overstock will accept all major cryptocurrencies – such as Etheruem and Bitcoin Cash
- IBM partner with Kasikorn Bank in Thailand to process Letters of Guarantee over a distributed ledger platform
- Australia looks to regulate digital currencies
- The “Atomic Ledger” project uses atomic clocks to timestamp trades that are subsequently recorded on a distributed ledger
- 6 banks collaborate to form a Utility Settlement Coin (USC) digital currency
- The Russian state owner development bank, Vnesheconombank (VEB), will open a blockchain research centre in Moscow
4. Payments News: Banks
- RBC enables bill payments using Siri
- Natwest celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of its first ATM with cash rewards for some customers
- European Commission shares “statement of objections” with Visa regarding inter-regional interchange fees
- Tandem acquires Harrods Bank
- HSBC leverage IBM’s cognitive intelligence and character recognition technology to develop a trade finance automation solution
- DBS Bank launches DBS Car MarketPlace – an online portal for buying and selling cars
- Barclays launch SmartBusiness Dashboard to help SMEs manage their data in 1 place
- Simple (a US digital bank) lays off 33 employees in an effort to build better technology
- RBS to hold a Disrupt 17 event in Edinburgh and will welcome Silicon Valley’s finest
- Barclays anticipates weekend service outages as the banks sets up its ring fenced bank
- Barclays utilises heat sensing devices to see how often bankers are at their desks
- Bank of America uses AI (artificial intelligence) to AR (account receivable) to help companies determine who’s paid for what
- Rabobank builds 3D model of its IT landscape to help highlight opportunities for improvement
- Post Brexit, will Frankfurt be the new London…?
- The Singapore Payments Council will establish a Singapore QR code Taskforce (SGQR) with a view to developing a common QR Code in Singapore
- Singapore’s OCBC Bank launches “OCBC Keyboard” enabling e-payments to any bank in Singapore from any mobile app
- Credit Suisse invests in Sapience Analytics – “a market leader in People Analytics”
5. Payments News: Fintech
- Finnu, a fintech startup in the process of applying for a full UK banking license, announces some appointments to its board
- Oxford University with GetSmarter launch an online 10 week FinTech programme
- Blackstone and CVC buy PaySafe
- Abu Dhabi looks to bolster its FinTech interests by issuing a Innovation Challenge in October
- Banks and startups collabroate in Norway to form a FinTech “Finance Innovation” hub
- Fiserv acquires Dovetail
- Amazon enables, via Amazon Top Up, UK users to pay for goods on its platform via cash!
- The ride hailing platform Grab launches a peer to peer payments transfer app – GrabPay – in Singapore
6. Payments News: SWIFT
- Ripple will run a conference “Swell: The Future is Here” at pretty much the same time and city as the SWIFT annual flagship Sibos
7. Payments News: Reports
- Arvato – Financial Services reach a UK outsourcing high
- European Banking Authority – Discussion Paper on the EBAs approach to financial technology (Fintech)
- World Economic Forum – Beyond Fintech: A Pragmatic Assessment Of Disruptive Potential In Financial Services
- Basel Committee on Banking Supervision – Sound practices: Implications of fintech developments for banks and bank supervisors
- CB Insights – European Fintech Trends
That’s it folks! Let me know below if I missed anything important…