Last night, Secure Trading attended the Merchant Payment Ecosystem Awards (MPE Awards) in Berlin, one of the most prestigious events in the payments industry, and was delighted to be awarded the PSP Award.

Forming part of the MPE annual conference in Berlin, the MPE Awards is now in its sixth year and is one of the most sought after industry accolades. Recognising the outstanding role of card acquirers, processors, PSPs and solution providers, it aims to honour exemplarity and innovative payment providers that are helping to move the industry forward.

The P2P and crowdfunding industry was worth £3.2bn in 2015, according to the new University of Cambridge and Nesta report published this week. That sounds good, but what does it actually mean? We’ve done the hard work for you and pulled out the top five things from the report.

FIME announces today that its Japanese laboratory is the first in the country to be accredited by JCB to perform functional testing on contactless payment terminal kernels, in line with its Book C-5 specification which relates to the JCB’spayment scheme. Global manufacturers of contactless payment terminals and mobile point of sale (mPOS) devices, in addition to kernel developers, can now validate the compliance of their products in FIME’s Taiwanese and Japanese laboratories.

 Driven by recent research and following on from a successful The Block Chain Conference, Lighthouse Partners, Inc. is introducing its Blockchain Business Acceleration Advisory Service, aimed at established IT vendors that wish to embrace blockchain technology and approaches as part of their product and service offerings.

The prevailing winds point to a strong year for the UK’s credit finance brokers in 2016. For example, in the secured loans market ‘completions’ rose by a whopping nine per cent in quarter three of 2015. However, despite this buoyant outlook most know that it isn’t going to be plain sailing all the way.

Leeds-based managed service provider, Fantastic Cloud Services (FCS), has been awarded the highly valued ISO 27001 certification after establishing international best practice in the Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) field.

ISMS is a systematic approach to managing sensitive company information so that it remains secure. It includes people, processes and IT systems by applying a risk management process.

It can help small, medium and large businesses in any sector keep information assets secure.

TransferTo, a leading global Mobile Money hub, has partnered under a framework agreement with Vodafone Group to enable real-time international money transfers to M-Pesa Mobile Money accounts worldwide.

Powered by TransferTo’s cross-border Mobile Money network, the global partnership will make it faster and easier for consumers and organizations to send money to multiple M-Pesa accounts, in real time.

 Bell ID, the mobile payments specialist recently acquired by Rambus Cryptography Research, today announces it will support international issuing banks, payment schemes and processors to integrate with Android Pay. Bell ID customers can utilize its Token Service Provider (TSP) software to enable and secure near field communication (NFC) payments functionality on Android phones.

Kyc.com, the joint venture between Markit Ltd. (Nasdaq: MRKT) and Genpact Limited (NYSE: G) today announced the expansion of its service to Hong Kong and Singapore. This roll out is in addition to jurisdictional coverage in the US, UK and Australia which launched in 2014.

 BrickVest is announcing the launch of its online direct real estate investment platform.The London based Fintech platform allows investors to invest as little as EUR 1,000 in institutional quality real estate that previously was only accessible to large institutions such as pension funds, insurance companies and large family offices.