Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, and Google Cloud today announced a global, strategic partnership to help financial services organizations run mission-critical banking software and applications on Google Cloud, create profitable business models, and improve and differentiate their customer experiences.

German business banking platform Penta has opened a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs to get their business propositions off the ground, co-operating with legal network Jurpartner to put together a full set of documents, checklists and guidelines for a fast company launch.

Contour, the blockchain-based trade finance platform backed by a host of big name banks, has made its commercial launch.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has put together a policy-maker toolkit designed to help central banks investigating the creation of digital currencies.

It is no secret that a fundamental change has started - the migration to a data-driven economy. Why this should be speeded up is obvious - everyone stands to benefit (i) from much better services when any citizen can authorise connecting MyData and Big Data to life events (at home and at work), (ii) from costs being automated away in all adminstrative and commercial processes, (iii) from better productivity when data is being used to make better and more transparent decisions in all organisations, (iv) from lower risks (data integrity, credit, currency, fraud etc), (v) from

China’s FinTech industry is incomparable to the rest of the world. It is home to eight of the world’s leading FinTech unicorns, with an average value of $26.8BN – eight times greater than the average value of North American FinTech unicorns.

The future of finance is open. But not because of Open Banking legislation, but because the internet has unshackled information flows. In the future, financial information will flow horizontally across an ecosystem, rather than vertically through an integrated value chain; finance will be embedded into everything from ecommerce to homebuying.

Open banking legislation has been a helpful catalyst

The US-based fintech has teamed up with Mastercard for its new card network. Currently, SoFi offers a debit card product to users as part of its SoFi Money product via a partnership with Visa, but under the new deal, the cards will now run on Mastercard's network.

In addition to issuing new cards to existing cardholders, SoFi is adding new benefits to its offering, including cash-back rewards, free cell phone insurance, and discounted airport concierge services. The fintech is also planning to launch a credit card with Mastercard.

 ARM Insight, the leading provider of actionable insights from financial data, today announced the availability of registration for the company’s upcoming launch of its Enlightmint research tool. Qualified equity analysts and portfolio managers may now register to be one of the first to take advantage of the tremendous insight provided through millions of consumer transactions across more than 1,600 companies and 430 tickers.

Leading digital money platform Uphold today introduces zero-commission trading on cryptocurrencies in a milestone for the industry designed to open up affordable access to one of the world’s most important new asset classes for millions of retail investors.