1. Payments News – Cyber Security

• Wanna Cry kill switch finder, Marcus Hitchins, is arrested in the US
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) intelligent deposit ATMs are allegedly used for money laundering purposes
• Organised crime – including money laundering and digital currencies – are costing the Australian economy $28 billion a year
• UK clearing houses will be subject to cybersecurity reporting based on laws to be implemented by May 2018

2. Payments News – Mobile Payments

• Paytm, a leading digital payments firm in India, will launch a messaging service to compete with WhatsApp
• China’s central bank looks to force mobile payments companies to route their transactions through a clearing house and share data
• UK Finance reveals that cash is still king in the UK, but the number of cash payments fell by 11% between 2015 and 2016
• Meanwhile WorldPay reveals that contactless mobile spending is up 336% in 2017 compared with first 6 months in 2016
• MasterCard to pilot accepting contactless payments in Poland using only a smartphone

3. Payments News: Blockchain / Digital / Crypto-currencies

• ING, Calypso Technology and the R3 consortium successfully test a blockchain powered trade confirmation platform
• Overstock will accept all major cryptocurrencies – such as Etheruem and Bitcoin Cash
• IBM partner with Kasikorn Bank in Thailand to process Letters of Guarantee over a distributed ledger platform
• Australia looks to regulate digital currencies
• The “Atomic Ledger” project uses atomic clocks to timestamp trades that are subsequently recorded on a distributed ledger
• 6 banks collaborate to form a Utility Settlement Coin (USC) digital currency
• The Russian state owner development bank, Vnesheconombank (VEB), will open a blockchain research centre in Moscow

4. Payments News: Banks

• RBC enables bill payments using Siri
• Natwest celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of its first ATM with cash rewards for some customers
• European Commission shares “statement of objections” with Visa regarding inter-regional interchange fees
• Tandem acquires Harrods Bank
• HSBC leverage IBM’s cognitive intelligence and character recognition technology to develop a trade finance automation solution
• DBS Bank launches DBS Car MarketPlace – an online portal for buying and selling cars
• Barclays launch SmartBusiness Dashboard to help SMEs manage their data in 1 place
• Simple (a US digital bank) lays off 33 employees in an effort to build better technology
• RBS to hold a Disrupt 17 event in Edinburgh and will welcome Silicon Valley’s finest
• Barclays anticipates weekend service outages as the banks sets up its ring fenced bank
• Barclays utilises heat sensing devices to see how often bankers are at their desks
• Bank of America uses AI (artificial intelligence) to AR (account receivable) to help companies determine who’s paid for what
• Rabobank builds 3D model of its IT landscape to help highlight opportunities for improvement
• Post Brexit, will Frankfurt be the new London…?
• The Singapore Payments Council will establish a Singapore QR code Taskforce (SGQR) with a view to developing a common QR Code in Singapore
• Singapore’s OCBC Bank launches “OCBC Keyboard” enabling e-payments to any bank in Singapore from any mobile app
• Credit Suisse invests in Sapience Analytics – “a market leader in People Analytics”

5. Payments News: Fintech

• Finnu, a fintech startup in the process of applying for a full UK banking license, announces some appointments to its board
• Oxford University with GetSmarter launch an online 10 week FinTech programme
• Blackstone and CVC buy PaySafe
• Abu Dhabi looks to bolster its FinTech interests by issuing a Innovation Challenge in October
• Banks and startups collabroate in Norway to form a FinTech “Finance Innovation” hub
• Fiserv acquires Dovetail
• Amazon enables, via Amazon Top Up, UK users to pay for goods on its platform via cash!
• The ride hailing platform Grab launches a peer to peer payments transfer app – GrabPay - in Singapore

6. Payments News: SWIFT

• Ripple will run a conference “Swell: The Future is Here” at pretty much the same time and city as the SWIFT annual flagship Sibos

7. Payments News: Reports

• Arvato – Financial Services reach a UK outsourcing high
• European Banking Authority – Discussion Paper on the EBAs approach to financial technology (Fintech)
• World Economic Forum - Beyond Fintech: A Pragmatic Assessment Of Disruptive Potential In Financial Services
• Basel Committee on Banking Supervision –  Sound practices: Implications of fintech developments for banks and bank supervisors
• CB Insights – European Fintech Trends