Banco Santander’s board of directors has accepted the nomination committee’s proposal to appoint Felipe García Ascencio CEO of Santander México and Group country head for Mexico, effective from 1 January.
García Ascencio will replace Héctor Grisi, who in turn will take over from José Antonio Álvarez as Banco Santander CEO on 1 January 2023.

Banks will pounce as recession sets in

1. Payments

“2023 will be a year when we see accelerated change in the payments market. Over the last year, Tink has paved the way for the widespread adoption of Pay by Bank, with use cases for account top-ups and bill payments in particular taking flight. This is being used by businesses wanting a low-cost, instant-settlement payment method that reduces friction and fraud, and by consumers who want a seamless user experience they can trust.

As Banking as a Service (BaaS) nears mainstream adoption, there is a significant opportunity for banks to join the BaaS ecosystem, develop new relationships with fintech firms and create new revenue streams for themselves at the same time.

There are 117 projects nominated to participate in "Metaverse 4 Finance", the first Italian Web3 acceleration program - promoted by the Sella group and implemented by its Venture Incubator dpixel in collaboration with the Global Partner VISA. The aim is to identify and support the growth of national and international startups for the development of innovative, economically sustainable, inclusive and safe solutions and technologies, in the context of the metaverse applied to finance.

Small business loan approval percentages at

Database specialist Martin Gaffney hopes the sector recognises the value that Open Banking has added and how it helps companies better manage complexity

July 2022 marked five years since the beginning of API specifications for Open Banking. At the time, the financial services sector was broadly unimpressed, as they considered Open Banking a hurdle rather than an opportunity.

Encoded, a leading Payment Service Provider and pioneer of innovative secure payment solutions for contact centres and e-commerce, has announced that JT (Jersey Telecom) has successfully implemented its Gateway Services, Agent Assisted, PayByLink and E-Commerce Payments technology. JT, a government-owned full-service global communications provider headquartered in the Channel Islands, selected Encoded as a single supplier of payment solutions to migrate from its existing legacy payment systems.

Transact365, a UK-based global payments platform powering merchants in emerging markets, has appointed Scott Major as its new Chief Commercial Officer. 

Scott joined Transact365 in 2020 as its Director of Business Development. With more than 12 years of experience operating directly in European and Asian markets, Scott moved into the payments sector six years ago. 

Leading RegTech provider Rivero today announced it has signed a deal with Paymentology, the world’s first truly global issuer-processor.