Technology

Data is the new oil, and there’s no shortage of it. Rendering it useful while respecting privacy rights is the main challenge. That’s where synthetic data, created via artificial intelligence and machine learning to simulate real-world data, comes in. It is proving invaluable to financial firms seeking to optimize the vast power of data.

Deciphering coding is a stumbling block for businesses striving to stay relevant and maximize technologies. Fortunately, low-code and no-code solutions make the process of creating websites or applications easier and cheaper. How can banks cut through tedious coding and achieve optimal results with help from low-code/no-code platforms?

Facial-recognition technology has proved itself a useful tool, especially for identifying perpetrators of crime, but it raises serious ethical issues when used in public places. Regulators and privacy watchdogs are butting heads over the matter, and banks are playing a part in the solution while exploiting the tech in customer delivery.

Millions of people, especially in developing countries, depend on regular remittances for their livelihood, making the mechanism of sending money from rich to poor a bustling activity within the global financial sector. The process has been cumbersome, but ground-breaking technologies are improving speed, affordability and efficiency.

Blockchain has become the highway to the future in industries such as financial services, but all its speed bumps have not been flattened yet. Interoperability, whereby separate blockchain platforms interact so that data transfer can proceed smoothly from one to the other, is necessary for the technology’s continued acceptance and growth.

Digital acceleration has transformed how people live and work. Today, we expect our digital experiences with brands to have modern and intuitive user-interfaces, be seamless across devices and provide online communication options like chat. While many consumers have been seeing this digital evolution when interacting with their retail banks, it is also catching up fast in the corporate banking world.

or many banks, trade finance forms a large part of their corporate banking business. As a discipline, trade finance also presents some of the best opportunities for process enhancements in banking, not least because of inherent, manual-based practices and associated inefficiencies – fuelled by the fact that supply chains often stretch into some of the world’s least technologically enabled regions.

Most central banks are at some stage in the process of releasing their own central bank digital currencies. Some will be wholesale CBDCs, while others retail CBDCs that are available to all users. While offering benefits, they also carry risks, and central banks will need to perform cost-benefit analyses to determine the optimal models.

Following the launch of The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payment (RTP®) service in the US—and with the Federal Reserve hard at work on a similar scheme known as FedNow—instant payments are fast becoming a reality in the US. Amid these changes, what role can banks play in helping clients maximize the opportunities of real-time payments?

The quantum leaps made in payment technology over the past 10 years have transformed every part of the merchant acquiring landscape. Rampant M&A activity, the accelerating shift to ecommerce, and the influx of non-bank fintech players have up-ended tried and trusted business models.