Worldpay has today unveiled a unique offering for the UK payments industry that will provide a greater range of payment pricing options, meaning SMEs can find the perfect payment plan to fit their business.

Taking inspiration from the mobile telephony industry, the UK's number one payment provider has added 'Pay As You Go' and 'Fixed Monthly' card payment pricing plans giving Britain's small businesses more flexibility, simplicity and choice for taking card payments.

Samsung Electronics announced today new partnerships with the world’s largest POS makers, including Verifone (NYSE: PAY), Ingenico Group, First Data and Clover, PAX Technology, Equinox, ID TECH, MagTek, USA ePay and OTI Global, to accelerate mobile payment adoption by ensuring the best possible user experience at merchants’ point-of-sale (POS) systems during checkout. Samsung Pay is the only contactless payment solution that works at over 90 percent of the top 250 retailers and the vast majority of merchants, including small, local businesses.

European organisations performing ahead of market expectations and creating more value for shareholders place a much greater emphasis on understanding and improving margin than their competitors. This is the key finding from a study published today by profit performance experts Vendavo and Patrick Reinmoeller, Professor of Strategic Management at Cranfield School of Management. The report also highlights a worrying lack of insight into margin among many organisations, and a clear link between low level of margin insight and company underperformance.

Margin matters

Sopra Steria, selected by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to deliver a new digital regulatory market data processing platform. The exclusive six-year contract will see Sopra Steria supply a complete solution, which ensures investment firms’ trading reporting activity remains compliant.

A digital divide is opening up across the British economy, with just over half (55%) of “pioneer” firms adopting digital technologies and processes, while the other half (45%) are falling behind. This is according to new research by the CBI and international technology and consulting firm, IBM.

Thomson Reuters is providing energy traders with comprehensive analysis of the intraday European power market via a new app on its flagship desktop platform Eikon. The tool helps energy companies manage their delivery commitments efficiently by generating intraday predictions for price drivers on the European Power Exchange (EPEX).

Diners Club International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Discover Financial Services and part of the Discover Global Network, and Computop, a leading international payment services provider, today announced an agreement that will increase e-commerce acceptance for Discover, Diners Club and Alliance Partner cards.

Digital Asset announced the acquisition of Elevence, a technology firm that has developed an expressive language for financial institutions to model and execute agreements with certainty and finality. This technology complements Digital Asset's existing software by providing a new, verifiable way for parties to a transaction to prove updates to a distributed ledger while preserving data confidentiality.

Fiserv announced  an agreement with Cisco that help financial institutions enhance internal collaboration and drive customer engagement. The partnership enables integrated communications capabilities essential for financial institutions to execute their branch of the future strategies, including virtual interaction with remote experts and secure wireless access that supports a universal banker model.

SWIFT announces today the availability of a new paper investigating how Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) could be used in financial services. Published in collaboration with Accenture, the paper is based on an in-depth technology assessment by SWIFT of DLT usage across financial institutions, highlighting the opportunities as well as the challenges for industry wide adoption.