- Digital Trade Chain Consortium has agreed to set up a joint venture company incorporated in Ireland to manage the roll out of Digital Trade Chain. The joint venture, which has also welcomed Banco Santander as a new consortium member, will be rebranded under the banner we.trade, with a commercial roll-out anticipated in Q2 2018 ahead of a test run in February with bank clients
- Lloyds Banking Group has selected a cash management and payments platform from SAP to provide new digitalised functionalities to its commercial portfolio
- Santander is using the incentive of free fish and chips to encourage customers to provide it with examples of scam emails or texts. Customers need to present examples to the bank’s van, which is travelling around the UK to raise awareness of online fraud, in Cardiff, Bristol, London, Leeds and Glasgow on 20, 21, 24, 27 and 28 October respectively.
- Circle has announced that users can now make money transfers from a UK bank account to a US bank account within 10 seconds, without any transaction fees
- Venmo has announced that users can now use their Venmo accounts to shop at 2m-plus US retailers that accept PayPal
- Visa has announced a new partnership with accounts receivable and cash management company Billtrust which will provide streamlined payment reconciliation of business-to-business payments and increase automation of virtual card payments
- Amazon and Google are set to disrupt small business lending and place competitive pressure on traditional banks, according to Karen Mills, advisor for small businesses to former US President Barack Obama. Speaking at London’s LendIt Europe conference, Ms Mills suggested tech giants would come to dominate the market, with Amazon already providing loans to merchants selling on its platform
- Barclays chief executive, Jes Staley, has warned that Amazon, Apple and other large tech companies are seeking to take payments business from banks
- Coutts has revealed that it is looking to update its technology and its business model in a bid to combat international competition and attract younger customers without alienating its traditional client base. Peter Flavel, chief executive, said the bank was looking to attract the business of ‘a younger generation of wealthy Britons, including vloggers, gamers and other entrepreneurs
