When I was growing up, America was the superpower that we followed and Russia was in a Cold War.  Today, there are two superpowers – America and China – and Russia is still in a bit of a Cold War that might be thawed by Donald Trump.

So when it comes to Fintech, there’s two major countries to watch – America and China – but China does it all rather different, because they can.

So, here’s a few highlights about Fintech China of late.

New research by mobile phone provider, Plusnet Mobile, has found that half of the UK respondents polled (50%) would feel stressed and anxious if they ran out of mobile data, with almost 1 in 5 (16%) finding the prospect more stressful than an argument with their partner.

The severity of FOND is directly related to how much consumers rely on mobile data to connect. The majority of Brits polled (71%) use mobile data every day for email, followed by catching up on messaging apps such as WhatsApp (47%).

A blurring of personal and business life is causing significant problems for the UK’s self-employed workforce, according to the first set of findings from the ‘Definitive Study of the Self-Employed’, commissioned by Intuit QuickBooks, the world’s leading online accounting software.

Technology and regulation are revolutionising the relationship between the buy and sell-sides, creating a ‘digitally led’ engagement model which will radically alter both the consumption and provision of investment recommendations. 

SMEs are signing up to livelihood threatening loan conditions, ignorantly, a report exposes today. The research by Wirefund, an SME loan provider, reveals that the majority of SME owners have no idea what a personal guarantee is, despite it being a requirement from banks and many alternative finance providers when lending to businesses. 

Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, has been selected by "Le Groupement d'intérêt Economique des Cartes Bancaires (CB)" in France to supply the technology of its PURE payment solution for mobiles. PURE is a white label payment solution compliant with international standards, used today by 27 national payment schemes and large retailers in the world. PURE brings full independence and sovereignty for local payment issuers, with proven security and interoperability benefits for cards and mobile payments. 

enepath, the voice trading and communications specialist, and Insightful Technology (Insightful), compliance solutions specialists, have partnered to provide a seamless means of integrating voice trading with all other trading data. The collaborative solution combines Insightful’s Soteria™, the leading multimedia capture, analytics, proactive monitoring, and case reconstruction platform, with enepath’s Eclipse™ trader voice product suite.

Sopra Banking Software, a subsidiary of the Sopra Steria Group (Euronext Paris: SOP), announces its acquisition of Cassiopae MEA. Sopra Banking Software today announced its acquisition of outstanding shares in the Cassiopae MEA joint venture, and is thus increasing its stake from 45% to 100% of capital.

In the past few years the finance industry has come a long way in terms of understanding the kind of cyber-threats it faces. Phishing, ransomware and DDoS have all, unfortunately, become familiar terms to everyone; from the boardroom to front-line staff in high street banks. But when it actually comes to tackling these cyber-threats, much of what the security team says can be lost in translation. An employee opening an unidentified email attachment claiming to contain financial analysis would likely make the IT department jump to ‘red alert’.