Accuity

Competition and innovation has been an enormous force for good in driving the speed of change in the payment ecosystem to meet ever increasing customer expectations for excellent payments experiences. Now, with disruption of the payments landscape continuing apace, nimble, creative fintechs are challenging the ground held by established payment...

Recent news that a Maersk company carried arms components from North Korea to Egypt - in violation of international sanctions - acts as a fresh warning for those facilitating global trade to be diligent in monitoring and reporting suspicious activity. The transportation of electrical components by a Maersk subsidiary, which had the potential to be...

In 2017 Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) became the hottest new tool for startups, and transitioned from being a relatively unknown fundraising method used in the blockchain community, to raising over $4bn by the end of the year. Just like Kickstarter or Go Fund Me, ICOs let entrepreneurs take their business plans directly to non-accredited (any...

A number of news stories in 2017 detailed the radical methods being employed to evade sanctions controls, for example, through the transfer of commodities from ship-to-ship in international waters to avoid a vessel entering a sanctioned territory. This trend appears to have continued into 2018, with a recent case emerging in which a ship-to-ship...

The European Commission’s revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) will bring about one of the biggest changes that the banking sector has ever faced. However, as the Commission has indicated this is not a change being dictated by banks; it is a reaction to the ongoing disruption of payments in the digital age. In the words of the...

SEPA instituted some real game changers in the payments world. The IBAN and ISO 20022 XML standards, for example, promote efficiencies in streamlining payment processing. Using an IBAN as the account number standard allows both payment service providers (PSPs) and payment service users (PSUs) to avoid errors that can occur with data input. All...

Trade Finance can be described in its broadest terms as providing finance and related banking services to facilitate the movement of goods between the Exporter (seller) and Importer (buyer) in either the same country, or as a cross border transaction. The trade finance industry has recently come under the scrutiny of regulatory bodies worldwide...

It all started on 9 January 2014 when the European Commission (EC) recommended that the single euro payments area (SEPA) end date be extended beyond the original 1 February 2014 migration deadline; a date that had resisted being extended since it was defined back in February 2012, says Sarkis Akmakjian, director of payments market management at...

By Joel Lange, payments product managerSince the emergence of software systems to screen payment messages against sanctions lists in the 1990’s there has been a constant struggle between ensuring compliance with global sanctions regimes as well as demonstrating increases in payment efficiency. While compliance departments are judged on...

Joel Lange, payments product manager, AccuityIn December of last year, the European Commission (EC) released its plans for European Union end-dates for the migration of both credit transfers and direct debits to SEPA-compliant formats. Since that time, further input has been submitted from both the European Parliament as well as the Council of the...