IN OTHER NEWS…

CORPORATE ACTIVITY

• Tencent offloads stake in Tide, as part of a retreat strategy from international investments and fundings.
• Societe Generale Sells UK and Swiss units for EUR 900m to Union Bancaire Privée. This decision is part of an ongoing strategy by the bank’s CEO to divest less profitable segments of the bank. The transactions involve the sale of SG Kleinwort Hambros in the UK and Societe Generale Private Banking Suisse. Together, these divisions manage approximately EUR 25 billion in assets.

CROSS-BORDER

• Wise to start signing up new customers in India for overseas remittances after a pause to revamp infrastructure following being granted license by the RBI. Wise plans to restart signing up new customers in the next few months

DIGITAL & eCOMMERCE

• Amazon has entered into a collaboration with TikTok and Pinterest in the US, allowing users to buy products directly from the social media apps.

DIGITAL, RETAIL & ‘Neo’ BANKING

• Monzo experienced a technical problem on Tuesday morning (13/08) leaving customers unable to make payments. The bank have told users they are ‘experiencing issues’ and the app will not be fully functional. More than 2,000 outages have been reported online.
• Klarna is rolling out an “account” where customers can store money and cashback rewards, to diversify beyond BNPL into more traditional banking services.

ISSUING

• ClearBank secures Dutch banking licence and expands to Europe. The company is now set to provide clearing and embedded banking services across Europe to UK and European institutions
• BLIK partners with Vodeno and Aion Bank to provide BLIK-as-a-service to financial institutions. This marks BLIK’s first as-a-service agreement, which will enable various entities from financial and non-financial sectors across Europe to be able to use BLIK’s services.
• Spend on card technology by card issuers will rise significantly, from $9.8bn globally in 2024 to $13bn in 2029. This growth of 39% will be driven by banks and other card issuers attracting new customers with differentiated card types. By using premium options such as metal or wooden cards, banks can differentiate themselves in the highly congested banking market.
• UK customer engagement company Reward has expanded partnership with NatWest to power new Travel Reward Credit Card.

MOBILE MONEY

• Apple to open up NFC payments access to third parties, meaning developers will be able to offer NFC transactions using the Secure Element from within their own apps on iPhone, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. Developers, however, will need to enter into a commercial agreement with Apple, request the NFC and SE entitlement, and pay the “associated fees”.

REGULATION (EU)

• Bank of Italy restricts Lemonway from new operations, affecting Lemonway’s ability to enter into agreements with new partners for the provision of payment services via related platforms, offer new products and services to customers, and open new payment accounts.