Esme Loans, the standalone digital lending platform for SMEs and scale up businesses has today announced that it has now lent over £50million to UK businesses.

The lender has seen a continued period of strong growth in the run up to today’s announcement, following an uplift in lending of 337% between 2017 and 2018.

Investment app, tickr, is today launching its crowdfunding campaign on leading investment platform Seedrs. Funds raised will be used to accelerate user acquisition, while building several new features including a visual newsfeed giving users an interactive overview of the companies in their portfolio and the work they are doing to make an impact on the world. 

tickr’s user statistics demonstrate the scale of appetite for disruption in the investment market; 40% of users are women, while 90% of users are between the ages of 25 and 39, and 65% are first-time investors entirely.

The journey from unbundling to rebundling and back has been a formidable one. Emerging technologies and the pace of innovation are driving changes throughout the banking industry at an unprecedented rate. From Asia to Europe, U.S. to Africa, and Australia to the Middle East, consumers are not only increasingly adopting digital – most are demanding it. While the movement toward our ability to bank anywhere is inevitable, the path towards transformation varies from one region to the next – and very different models have evolved within each geography.

The 2019 Islamic Finance Awards, presented by World Finance Magazine, has announced that Temenos (SIX: TEMN) has won the ‘Best Islamic Banking & Finance Technology Provider’, for its breakthrough digital front office product, Temenos Infinity, and next generation core banking system, Temenos T24 Transact. For the second consecutive year, Temenos was recognized after demonstrating remarkable contributions to Shari’ah-compliant banking, finance and investing across the region.

Klarna Bank AB (publ) has released its annual financial report for 2018 (link), revealing that Klarna’s alternative payment methods and checkout services continue to resonate strongly with consumers, merchants and partners across all 14 core markets. With an average of 1 million transactions a day on the platform, Klarna’s total global sales volumes rose by 36% YOY in 2018 to 29bn USD.

Synectics Solutions, the Stoke-on-Trent based Fintech, predictive analytics and data services company, has been honoured with the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Innovation.  

The award was made for its outstanding successes in innovation, including the application of technology to save the UK taxpayer hundreds of millions annually from potential fraud.

The Queen's Awards, which are the highest official UK accolade for British businesses, aim to promote excellence and drive economic growth.  

To revolutionize in-person shopping for the world’s fastest-growing brands and their customers, today we’re launching a new retail hardware collection, including three devices: The Shopify Tap & Chip Reader, Dock, and Retail Stand. Our new retail hardware is designed from the ground up with merchants and customers in mind, to deliver an unmatched shopping experience. With years of experience building point-of-sale (POS) tools for brands that want to extend their online success to offline sales, this is just the latest way we’re helping merchants make commerce better.

OneSpan™, a global leader in software for trusted identities, e-signatures and secure transactions, today announced that United Bulgarian Bank (UBB) has deployed OneSpan’s Mobile Security Suite and Cronto technology to securely sign transactions and to protect the bank’s mobile banking application. This integration will help UBB meet PSD2 requirements related to strong customer authentication that come into effect September 2019. 

Lending against liquid marketable assets like securities and bonds, has been around for quite some time. We could say that the Lombards who conquered Italy in the 6th century, and settled in the northern region that became known as Lombardy, invented this first form of liquid asset based lending (LABL), often referred to as Lombard lending.

We are experiencing an unprecedented global shift in demographics. Our society is aging; we are living longer, healthier, and more productive lives. Life expectancy has improved significantly, and we have added decades of healthy living since the early 1900s. Along with longer lifespans, we are also staying employed longer than before. Soon, we will have five generations working alongside each other. Not only “when” or “how long” we are working has changed, “how” we are earning a living has changed as well.