Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 boasts iris recognition technology and provides interesting opportunities for mobile banking. Compared to knowledge based authentication, biometric solutions such as Samsung’s offer more robust security and will prove an attractive proposition to issuers in the fight against fraud. It will certainly stimulate more interest in biometric authentication and increase competition amongst other market players to develop and offer similar solutions.

Visa announced that more companies in the United States are choosing Visa Direct to expand their real-time payment services. Visa Direct is a payments platform designed to allow financial institutions, developers and partners to offer secure real-time1 person-to-person (P2P) payments and business disbursements such as insurance claims payments, contractor payments, tax refunds and many other forms of business payment services.

I like to point at the fact that the Bank of England is taking a leadership role in FinTech, but it goes wider and deeper than this.  Bear in mind, the regulator –  the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) –  lies under the Bank’s control.  Before the Global Financial Crisis, it was independent and part of the FSA.

By Special Counsel Roy Keidar and lawyer Ahuva Gold of Israeli law firm Yigal Arnon & Co

Thomson Reuters has seen a significant increase in new Eikon Messenger account registrations after the announcement that Yahoo will discontinue support for its legacy messaging and API service on August 5, 2016. Global energy company Gazprom Marketing and Trading Limited and Dong Energy, Denmark’s largest energy company, are the latest firms to publicly endorse Eikon Messenger following similar endorsements from Europe’s top energy brokers and international energy companies. 

VUE Software announced that Aviva Financial Advisers, based in Singapore, has selected VUE Software for their industry-leading VUE Distribution Compensation module. This marks VUE Software's entry into the Asia-Pacific region.

A consortium of global investment firms announced today the signing of definitive agreements to make a substantial investment in GO-JEK, Indonesia’s leading on-demand mobile platform. This equity capital raise of over $550 million, which represents the company’s latest round of financing, is comprised of leading investors including KKR, Warburg Pincus, Farallon Capital and Capital Group Private Markets, as well as existing shareholders and other international investors.

Box  announced that Western Union, a leader in global payment services, has selected Box’s content management platform to centralize content and drive new ways to work in the cloud. With Box, Western Union is furthering its IT innovation and transformation to digitize business processes and create highly customized content experiences.

DynamicAction announced it has secured $15 million in new funding and entered into an alliance relationship with Accenture. Lead investors in the round include Accenture and West Coast Capital.

Huawei launched its Cloud Open Labs in the presence of 19 leading global operators, industry organizations and partners, including the Linux Foundation, Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV), China Association of Communication Enterprises, Accenture, Red Hat, VMware and Wind River.

As part of Huawei's commitment to open, evolution and innovation, the Cloud Open Labs – with interconnected facilities across four labs – aim to enable operators' business success. These centers will provide the foundation for integrating and verifying solutions which enable the All Cloud transformation.