February 21, 2020 @ 8:05 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Sweden has reportedly begun piloting an electronic version of its national currency, the krona. The European nation’s government says that the e-krona is a step closer to its official launch as a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The testing of the country’s CBDC will go… Read More

February 21, 2020 @ 7:07 am By Omar Faridi  |  

The Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT), which is a part of Fidelity Labs, the financial giant’s incubator for Fintech startups, is reportedly looking for Bitcoin (BTC) mining engineers for a “new business opportunity.”  The proposal has been put forward by the team working at… Read More

February 21, 2020 @ 12:25 am By Omar Faridi  |  

India’s residents will soon have the option to submit votes from outside their city of registration. The nation’s citizens will be able to use a blockchain-enabled platform to cast their votes. The Times of India reported on February 13 that Sunil Arora, the country’s chief… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 11:21 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

India-based Paytm, an established payment gateway, has teamed up with ride-hailing app Uber in order to add credit and debit processing and will allow customers to easily perform card transactions. Uber will use the existing digital wallet integration with Paytm’s platform to offer riders a… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 10:13 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Australia-based digital bank Hay is the country’s latest fully app-based account provider to join the nation’s evolving digital banking ecosystem. As noted on the company’s website: “We are an Australian Fintech company that is building world-leading digital infrastructure from the ground up to provide Australians… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 9:12 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Banco Central de Brazil, the nation’s reserve bank, is planning to introduce an instant payments solution, PIX, in November 2020.  The Brazilian central bank noted on February 19 that the new instant payments platform will allow users to perform transactions using QR code technology. It… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 9:09 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Several promising startups are challenging major banks with the launch of their innovative apps that provide seamless, modern, mobile banking experiences. These new apps offer attractive features and very low or even no transaction fees. Level, a banking challenger and banking app provider, is offering… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 4:08 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Legendary billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper has reportedly purchased 1 million ANT tokens, which are presently worth an estimated $825,000, in order to join the governance structure of the Aragon blockchain platform. Aragon is an open-source initiative for managing decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs. As… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 8:48 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Israeli banks and other financial institutions in the country must not deny banking services to companies dealing in crypto-assets, Avichai Mandelblit, Israel’s attorney general, recently stated. Instead of denying banking services to crypto and blockchain startups, traditional financial service providers must carefully look into each… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 7:30 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Paxful, a leading peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin marketplace, revealed that it processed more than $1.6 billion worth of global trading volume last year. India’s digital assets industry has been experiencing major challenges as the nation’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has prohibited local banks… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 2:31 am By Omar Faridi  |  

OTB Ventures (OTB), a VC fund focused on making strategic investments in technology firms based in central and eastern Europe, has introduced an early-stage tech fund, which is notably the biggest venture capital fund in the region. The fund has reportedly received $100 million in… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 1:29 am By Omar Faridi  |  

LenDenClub, a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending solution provider, has teamed up with Singapore-headquartered CredoLab, an established developer of bank-grade online credit scorecards, which are based on mobile phone metadata.  LenDenClub has integrated CredoLab’s credit scoring system, called CredoSDK. The credit system will help the firm in… Read More

February 20, 2020 @ 12:27 am By Omar Faridi  |  

NICE Actimize, a NICE company (Nasdaq: NICE) business offering autonomous financial crime management solutions, has reportedly been chosen by TONIK, an Asian pure-play regulated digital bank, to develop its Essentials anti-money laundering platforms and also to assist in the creation of secure banking environments for… Read More

February 19, 2020 @ 11:26 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

WorldRemit, a cross-border funds transfer company, revealed on February 19 that it has teamed up with Varo Money, an established Fintech firm focused on providing digital banking services in the US.  According to a press release, the partnership between the two companies will give Varo… Read More

February 19, 2020 @ 9:57 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

Bank of Singapore, the private banking arm of OCBC Bank (Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, Limited) (SGX: O39), has appointed Celine Le Cotonnec to the institution’s newly created role of chief data and innovation officer. Le Cotonnec will be reporting directly to Bahren Shaari, the CEO at… Read More

February 19, 2020 @ 8:20 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

ASEAN Exchanges, a group which consists of six major exchanges based in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, have reportedly chosen to integrate Refinitiv’s digital solutions onto their online platform. The solution offers critical data and insights to institutional and retail clients, and assists… Read More

February 19, 2020 @ 3:18 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

UK-based Fintech company Axept has unveiled a Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) compliant payment method, which uses contactless payments cards for settling e-commerce transactions. Axept’s new solution does not require users to type in their card details, usernames, passwords or sign up while purchasing items. If… Read More

February 19, 2020 @ 9:21 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading multinational firm focused on offering financial services technology platforms, has teamed up with Visa, Samsung and PayCore in order to test the use of consumer-grade smartphones as PIN-entry devices for retail sales transactions. The new capability can be accessed… Read More

February 19, 2020 @ 9:15 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Cere Network revealed on February 18 that it has formed a strategic partnership with Harmony in order to secure personally identifiable information (PII) and link to a fragmented data economy by “co-innovating” with Harmony’s developers and their zero-knowledge proving (ZKP) system.  According to a press… Read More

February 19, 2020 @ 8:20 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Major bank-to-bank messaging system Swift processed $40 trillion in messaging transactions back in 2018. Significantly, Swift handled $77 trillion in international payments messages via the gpi platform last year, which indicates that the demand for the program is becoming even more firmly established in the… Read More