2018 will go down as a landmark year for the UK banking and payments sector; marked as it was by regulatory changes that have opened the way for new modes of service provision. Here, I want to look at some of the main forces that have shaped the banking and payments landscape in 2018 and look ahead to what this might mean for the sector in the year ahead.
It’s not news that many economies of the developing world face barriers to financial inclusion, making it difficult for citizens to both borrow and save; but the good news is that help has arrived in the linking of mobile payments with remittances. From sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America and the Caribbean, mobile money is bringing the previously underbanked into the fold.
Access to cash is a staple requirement for the on-demand generation of consumers. Cash is still relied upon as a payment option and as such the general public want to be safe in the knowledge that they are never too far away from access to our favoured notes.
It’s not news that the innovation sweeping most of the financial world has been slow to meet up with the realm of international trade finance. That’s why the world’s premier international-payments network, SWIFT, has joined forces with various financial institutions and utilities to make cross-border payments a whole lot faster as well as more efficient, transparent and traceable.
Digitisation is driving unions across the financial world, and especially in the payments industry. Mastercard’s pioneering acquisition of the UK bank-account-based payments system Vocalink sets a precedent for such mergers all around the globe, in large measure due to the growing influence of the world’s first truly digital generation, the Millennials, who demand instant transactions in real-time.
SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the grease that keeps the wheels of the worldwide economy moving. Some 25 million messages – most of them money transfers – pass through the SWIFT system daily.
The burgeoning FinTech industry is estimated to have brought £6.5 billion in revenues within the UK alone during 2015. Innovative technology companies are rapidly creating smart, intuitive programmes and apps that help consumers and businesses
Having launched the Saxo Payments Banking Circle in 2015, following two years of intensive development, we wanted to get a sense of the current challenges facing corporates in terms of cross-border payments.
It’s no secret that the majority of banks could be doing more to broaden their digital-banking services; however, legacy infrastructure and regulation often hinder their progress.
Consider the statistics. While 67 percent of American cellphone owners check their smartphones for messages and calls even without the “ping”, and 49 percent of these same owners assert that it would be “very hard to give up”, why don’t they use smartphones to make payments?