Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, and Ledger, a leader in security and infrastructure for cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications, today announced a technology partnership to deliver high-assurance security infrastructure for crypto assets applications.

Numerix, the leader in risk technology, today announces the integration of its industry-leading analytics into Oneview Asset Management, its real-time portfolio and risk management solution for asset managers.

Trulioo, the leading global identification company, has launched its Global Business Verification solution to provide an innovative, effective, and low-cost way to perform due diligence on business entities around the world to determine the authenticity of the business in order to help organisations detect fraudulent behavior and criminal activity, such as tax evasion and money laundering.

Statista expects that there will be a staggering 5.07 billion mobile phone owners worldwide by 2019.

This one huge number quite simply shows the overall potential market for mobile payments even in the short term.

Meanwhile Gartner has estimated that the global market for mobile payments will be worth $720 billion in transactions by the end of 2017, up from about $235 billion in 2014.

Yet currently the potential is far from fulfilled.  Juniper Research says that only 16.5% of smartphones in the US in 2016 were used to make a contactless payment that year. 

PrePay Solutions (PPS), Europe’s leading prepaid and digital banking services provider, and Monese, provider of instant bank accounts, have successfully completed a European tour to promote the launch of the challenger bank’s new Eurozone account.

National Settlement Depository (NSD) has operated emission and initial placement of the first blockchain-based commercial bonds on the Russian market.

NSD has joined forces with two majors to bring to life a decentralized ledger solution that will allow trading, placement and record keeping for bonds to be simple and transparent. Raiffeisenbank Russia became a blockchain bond issue pioneer, starting the initial placement and subsequently purchasing $10M worth of papers of MegaFon, one of the largest mobile network operators in CIS.

Asian payments specialist PaySec has announced global payment expert Koen Vanpraet as its new CEO as it embarks upon significant global expansion.

Digital technology has changed financial services and is being driven by new entrants that possess characteristics that are increasingly important to consumers and shareholders:  the ability to be lean and agile, provide a best-in-class user experience, as well as grow and scale rapidly.