CORPORATE ACTIVITY

• HSBC has written off its stake in Monese just two years after investing $35 million in the mobile banking fintech.

CROSS-BORDER

• Post Office ends contract with MoneyGram following announcement of major cyber attack. The long term contract was about to be agreed when Post Office removed money transfer services from thousands of branches.

CRYPTOASSETS/BLOCKCHAIN/DLT

• Visa launches platform to help banks issue fiat-backed tokens such as stablecoins on blockchain networks. The Visa Tokenised Asset Platform ( VTAP) lets participating financial institution partners mint, burn and transfer fiat-backed tokens, such as tokenised deposits and stablecoins, and experiment with use cases.
• Robinhood Crypto launches transfers in Europe. Robinhood Crypto now allows customers in Europe to deposit and withdraw more than 20 cryptocurrencies.
• Swift preps live digital asset trials. Banks around the world will next year start live trials of digital asset and currency transactions over the Swift network.

DIGITAL & eCOMMERCE

• Klarna launches new storefront for Apple products in the US, named Apple from Karna, available on the app and website. The platform allows customers to purchase Apple products using Klarna’s flexible payment solutions. As an official Apple reseller, Klarna also rolled out a new payment option, Upgrade Financing, which offers Apple products at monthly payments starting from USD 7.99

EMBEDDED FINANCE

• HSBC introduces new Embedded Finance venture, SemFi by HSBC. As a joint venture between HSBC and Tradeshift, SemFi is set to integrate HSBC payment, trade, and financing solutions across a range of ecommerce and marketplace venues, including Tradeshift’s B2B network.

EPC/SEPA

• EPI launches Wero in France. While most banks will initially offer Wero via their applications, La Banque Postale customers will be able to make payments using the Wero application. It will be available in all smartphone application shops from the second half of October 2024.

FINTECHS

• Irish fintech spending falls by 90% in H1, according to the annual State of European Fintech report published by Finch Capital.

FRAUD & CYBERSECURITY

• The UK Treasury will give banks power to delay payments to investigate suspected fraud. The government states that where there are reasonable grounds to suspect a payment is fraudulent they can implement a delay by up to 72 hours.
• Meta to expand information sharing to UK banks to tackle scams. A six-month pilot with NatWest and Metro Bank led to action against thousands of accounts run by scammers, with approximately 20,000 removed based on data shared. Among the successes, the programme led to the takedown of a concert ticket scam network attempting to target people in the UK and US.

ISSUING

• UK Expense Management platform, Expend has announced the integration of Mastercard and Visa business card transactions on its offering.
• Hilton launches hotel loyalty debit cards in partnership with Currensea. Hilton has rolled out Honors Debit Card and Hilton Honors Plus Debit Card in the UK.

LITIGATION

• FCA fines Starling Bank GBP 29 million due to financial crime failings. The fine comes as a result of Starling Bank’s failing in its financial systems and controls, as well as a breach of a requirement to not open accounts for high-risk customers.

OPEN BANKING & PSD2

• Majority of UK adults “unaware” of open banking, according to research from Bluestone Mortgages
• Tink has announced the launch of Merchant Information, a solution that focuses on offering consumers a more detailed overview of their transactions. Merchant Information allows banking app transactions to be shown with a clear brand name, logo, location, and merchant contact details, to minimise the need for consumers to contact their bank to enquire about payments they don’t recognise.
• Token.io has announced the expansion of its partnership with Ecommpay in order to optimise real-time Open Banking payments in more markets.

REALTIME/INSTANT PAYMENTS

• UK ready to make 2027 T+1 switch without EU. The UK will push ahead with the move to a T+1 settlement cycle for securities trades by the end of 2027, regardless of whether the European Union makes the switch at the same time.

SCHEMES

• Mastercard to buy Swedish subscription management startup, Minna Technologies, a software company that makes it easy for consumers to manage their subscriptions.