- Which? has claimed that it expects the advent of Open Banking to lead to more instances of ‘push payments’ scams. Separately, Get Safe Online has warned that the number of businesses pretending to be involved in Open Banking in order to steal consumers’ details is on the increase.
- CYBG chief executive David Duffy has said that Open Banking could spell the end of traditional banking and could result in the disappearance of some banks. He told the BBC, ‘The banks [face] the possible consequence of death by a thousand darts, where all the individual higher margin services are being taken out by these other providers’
- JPMorgan Chase has created an algorithm to prevent its online advertisements appearing alongside controversial YouTube videos. Several politicians and advertisers said it was an indictment of Google, YouTube’s parent company, that a financial firm was able to identify and filter racist and terrorist clips where the tech giant had failed to do so
- Royal Bank of Scotland Group has agreed to sell the offshore operations of its Lombard leasing unit to Investec and Shawbrook. The two lenders have agreed to divide the Jersey and Guernsey assets between them. Investec will also take on the Lombard loans in the Isle of Man and Gibraltar, according to a person close to the deal
- BBVA has reported that the proportion of its Spanish customer base engaging with the bank via digital channels has passed the 50% mark. Across its wider business, six of BBVA’s 11 core countries have now passed this point, with the USA, Turkey, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela also past the 50% mark. Across the whole group, the digitally active customer base has grown by 24% over the past year
- Bank of England could approve its own Bitcoin-style digital currency as early as 2018. According to a Bank of England spokesman, a research unit set up by the Bank to investigate the possible introduction of a crypto-currency linked to sterling could report back within the next 12 months
- DueDil has claimed that big banks are charging some business customers more than 20% in interest. According to the financial information start-up, NatWest and Santander are the most expensive of the big five high street lenders, with NatWest charging up to 29% for business loans through its Esme online service and the APR on Santander’s online small business loans ranging from 4.9% to 25.9%.
