Societe Generale Group has acquired a stake in the share capital of TagPay, a French FinTech specialised in mobile digital banking. TagPay is currently being rolled out in several of the Group’s African subsidiaries: a mobile recovery solution implemented by Manko in Senegal, merchant payments in Ivory Coast tested at Shell service stations, as well as mobile banking projects in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. TagPay is a Core Banking System built around the mobile phone, from basic feature phones to smartphones.

Bitcoin arguably started the blockchain movement based on several key principles; among these: accountability, decentralization, and transparency. That hasn’t stopped banks and other organizations involved in financial technologies to start developing private blockchains.

In the world of technology today, perhaps no label is more overused than fintech. Fintech—the portmanteau of finance and technology—is being slapped onto any technology system and process that interacts with finance—from clearing and settlement to counterparty risk management—as if the magic aura of the word alone will suddenly place financial executives on panels with kids in hoodies.

MasterCard’s acquisition of VocaLink has created a new payments powerhouse in Europe and beyond, and represents a win-win for both companies.

VocaLink knows that payments processing is a scale game, and having a virtual monopoly in the UK, the only way to drive further scale is to pick up volumes in mainland Europe and beyond.

For MasterCard the rationale is twofold.

The dark pool debate has raged across the globe for some time now and, in every jurisdiction, it’s more often than not accompanied by a smattering of assumptions on almost everything and certain knowledge of almost nothing. Fair enough, in the absence of hard facts, the term dark pool doesn’t really instil a great deal of trust from the outside world. But this lack of reliable information has been significantly reduced by the recent publication of the FCA’s thematic reviewon equity dark pools.

CPI Card Group announced the appointment of Tom Knaus as vice president and general manager of Financial Card Operations in Nashville, Tenn. Knaus brings more than 25 years of experience to the role, in which he will lead CPI’s Nashville-based personalization and fulfillment operations, managing teams responsible for the fulfillment of banking cards for over 4,000 U.S.-based financial institutions. He will also have operational responsibility for CPI’s instant issuance service, Card@Once®, which is deployed at over 4,000 banking locations.