With its own digital labs and an accelerator programme for financial technology start-ups, Wells Fargo is one bank that can boast it is keeping pace with technology trendsetters such as Google and Apple. Jane Cooper looks at how the bank is integrating new technologies to provide a seamless customer service experience.
Transferring money across borders through traditional correspondent banking networks can be time consuming and expensive for both business and consumers. Chris Larsen, CEO of Ripple Labs, believes he has the solution in Ripple, his open-source payment and currency exchange system, which can integrate with banks’ existing networks.
Pakistan's microfinance industry has slowly been gaining traction in recent years, and is in for a huge boost when new biometric identification methods are brought into the mainstream – primarily to help combat terrorism – which will allow banks to verify new customers remotely.
New players, new technology and new processes are changing the face of the financial services industry. Udayan Goyal, founder of Anthemis Group, is investing in the agents of this change – new service providers that are looking to take some of the value chain away from the banks.
Jane Cooper, The Banker’s technology and transaction banking editor, talks to Helen Mason, head of bank partnerships, and Nick Blake, head of sales, at RBS’s global transaction services division, and asks them what they are expecting from their first visit to Sibos as part of the new RBS team.
Kenya’s Equity Bank is determined to launch a new mobile banking product that has the potential to shake up an industry dominated by the creator of M-Pesa, Safaricom. Experts say that while Equity could present serious long-term competition for Safaricom, it has its work cut out.
Brian Caplen talks to chief executive of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift), Gottfried Leibbrandt, about changing technology, the impact of regulation and the society’s ‘incremental and gradual approach’ to its initiatives.
From financially motivated cyber crime to politically influenced cyber warfare, the virtual threats to financial institutions are multiplying. Companies must respond by arming themselves against such attacks or else they risk losing their footing on the new digital battleground.
Our first Technology Projects of the Year awards focus on the teamwork and collaboration needed to get a technology project off the ground. The winners show that from the smallest of start-ups to the largest of lenders, the innovative spirit is strong in the global financial markets.