When I spoke at the Goldman Sachs financial services conference last Wednesday, we got into a good discussion about how little insight investors are given into bank IT spending (one audience member described it as a "black box").

The Government has made spurring the growth of the UK's financial technology sector a priority for 2015. After reviewing the responses to its recent Data Sharing and Open Data in banking report, it is committing to delivering an open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) standard within two years. It’s a decision savvy banks will welcome because customer demand for change has already grown to such proportions that require banks to act.

According to new figures from The Payments Council, cashless payments in the UK have overtaken the use of notes and coins for the very first time. The figures published show the total number of cash payments made by consumers, businesses and financial organisations in the UK fell to just 48% of all payments received last year.

When I started working in FinTech, the first question I had was: "Do banks seriously give us all that data to analyze?" To be honest, I was mainly concerned about my own privacy instead of dreaming about the benefits I could get by giving some of my information to third parties.

Wearables, attachables or implantables are going to become household names for most of us within the next few years. The next generation of smart devices is certainly evolving in that direction, especially in sectors like healthcare (medicine, fitness & wellness), heavy industries, retail and military.

Trying to prevent financial crime before it occurs is not a new concept for the financial services industry. In instances of fraud, for example, there is a clear obligation for financial institutions to do whatever is required to prevent the completion of these transactions. This helps ensure that the financial institutions protect themselves, but more importantly their customers. However, in the case of suspected money laundering, the waters are somewhat murkier.

Financial institutions would be well advised to start investigating now whether they need to ensure compliance in line with the proposed Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB). That’s according to a white paper released today by risk and regulatory technology firm Wolters Kluwer Financial Services. In fact, proposed changes may mean firms that currently do not consider they have a trading book actually will do so under the new definition that could come into effect as soon as 2017.

The Central Bank welcomes the decision by the Government to rollout the rounding of 1c and 2c coins nationally.

Having supported the Korean market with EMVCo Level 1 compliance services for a number of years, FIME’s Korean secure chip test laboratory is now approved to test compliance of mobile handsets, chipsets and near field communication (NFC) antennae to Visa’s Level 1 specifications.

Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank) and JCB International Co., Ltd. (JCBI), the international operations subsidiary of JCB Co., Ltd., officially held a magnificent launch event for the VietinBank-JCB Hello Kitty Card with Hello Kitty as theme on June 19 2015.