Today Starling Bank and Moneybox revealed their partnership providing Starling Bank customers with seamless access to Moneybox’s suite of saving and investing tools. Starling is the first digital challenger to join the list of banks supported by Moneybox for their innovative round ups feature.

Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) proposed to facilitate compliance with the 2015 updates to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) rule. The changes proposed today would help financial institutions comply with the 2015 HMDA Final Rule by clarifying the information they are required to collect and report about their mortgage lending. 

An overwhelming 97% of businesses see IT as a strategic asset when it comes to branch retailing, according to the latest research from Zynstra, an enterprise-grade IT software provider. Seven in 10 respondents said IT could enable them to meet future demands by helping to reduce operating costs, speed up roll-out of new stores, support new business opportunities and streamline IT management.

The Vietnamese mobile operator Mobifone and the mobile payments company Fortumo are today announcing the launch of carrier billing on Google Play.

CIMB Group today announced the coming appointment of Olivier Crespin as the Chief FinTech Officer for its newly set-up unit, CIMB FinTech, which is a standalone unit that will actively explore new, innovative banking solutions.

Profile Software, an international financial solutions provider, today announced the latest upgrade in the FMS.next Alternative Finance platform, to offer enhanced capabilities for “Auto-investing” that further boost the marketplace lending processes.

B2 Payment Solutions Inc. (B2), an organization providing products and services for the payment industry, announced today the launch of a newly-redesigned website. Whether organizations want to easily order products online via the new eCommerce site, learn more about electronic payments with eLearning modules, or easily access the customer portal to download updates on current products, B2’s new website now offers all of this in one place.

Writing more and more about chatbots, robots and AI, I can see a day coming in the not too distant future where we won’t be able to tell the difference between the human and the machine.  That’s not scary science fiction, as it’s now almost science fact.  However, there is still a long way to go as demonstrated by IBM’s Watson Avatar.

Adyen, the technology company reinventing payments for the global economy, today disclosed 2016 revenue for the business surpassed $700 million, up from $365 million in 2015. The news follows Adyen’s previous disclosure that it processed $90 billion in transactions in 2016, a year-over-year increase of 80 percent. With $727 million in revenue and 500 employees at the end of 2016, Adyen is bringing in over $1.4 million in revenue per employee.

Recently, I wrote that smaller blockchain consortia are needed (see my Blog: Towards smaller and more focused blockchain consortia, 27 February 2017). The Hyperledger Project however may be the exception.