Wholesale / Commercial Banking Systems Insights

In 1987, the then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher telephoned Canadian property developer Paul Reichman asking him to develop London’s derelict docklands into a glittering new financial centre. The urban myth is that Reichman, who already boasted similar successes in New York and elsewhere, looked at a small-scale map of London and deduced... read more

Challenges around scalability and cost pressures have resulted in an inability to create a viable commercial use case for blockchain technology, according to two bankers. “We know that blockchain does suffer from scalability issues, which is one of the challenges,” said Rob Scott, managing director and senior banker at... read more

Banks have allowed fintechs to take a large portion of market share, according to Paul Maley, managing director, head of corporate bank UK and Ireland at Deutsche Bank “[Banks] have as a community allowed the fintech and certain providers to actually take away a lot of market share, a lot of access to clients, and therefore, a lot of... read more

Adoption of real-time payments has been picking up recently, according to a recent report by FIS, but not without barriers. Research by the payments giant suggests retailers and fintechs are embracing open payment initiatives, with firms such as Amazon, Facebook, Alipay, Tencent (WeChat), Baidu and Google expanding their presence in real-time... read more

The German Federal Ministry of Finance’s proposal to legislate for blockchain technology is an example of how German policy makers and regulators are looking to move ahead of the rest of Europe, according to Enno-Burghard Weitzel, cluster lead trade finance, Commerzbank. “Companies and regulators are waking up, no longer is... read more

US-based Ripple is ramping up its instant liquidity capabilities in a bid to stand out in the increasingly competitive cross-border payments sphere, and has been on an acquisition spree to build back end capabilities.  “We’ve been ramping up our efforts around On-Demand Liquidity,” says Amir Sarhangi, vice president of... read more

Ripple customers looking to utilise the firm’s on-demand liquidity capabilities are not impacted by fluctuations in the company’s crypto asset, XRP, according to its global head of banking, Marjan Delatinne. “[T]he technology is designed to cater for the requirements needed for high volume low value payments, so the exposure on... read more

SMEs are no longer just traditional outlets manufacturing goods and then selling them on local markets. With constant technological progress and stiff competition, many new start-ups expand their business activity and go global. They grow in wealth, number and significance: according to Accenture, only in the UK SMEs constitute 99.9 percent of... read more

Detection of fraudulent activity in the payments world is the perfect place for artificial intelligence to blossom, according to Riteesh Singh, senior vice president at Finastra and Joël Winteregg, CEO and co-founder of NetGuardians. The pair were speaking on the side lines of Sibos in central London this week, after announcing a... read more