The results of the latest ECB stress tests on European banks, due on 29 July, will determine whether the banks have sufficient capital buffers to withstand theoretical adverse swings in asset prices, interest rates and other macro-economic variables.

By Xavier Giandominici, Vice President, Americas and Financial Services at FIME

For issuers and merchants alike, fraud is an unwelcomed part of the payments industry. To take counterfeit card fraud out of the system, the U.S. is migrating to EMV chip technology.But for this to work, both issuers and merchants need to make the switch.

Whether it is EMV, NFC, HCE or TSP, there is certainly no shortage of acronyms within the payments ecosystem. And this is one trend that is here to stay.

The recent release of EMVCo’s updated payment tokenization specification has added yet another into the mix – Payment Account Reference (PAR). But what is PAR, why has it been introduced and what does it mean for the payments industry?

What is PAR?

The Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent, Matthew Holehouse, has joined MLex Market Insight as a re­porter on its Brexit service, where he will cover the UK side of the negotiations surrounding the UK’s extraction from the European Union.

Matthew, who previously worked as Westminster political correspondent for the newspaper, is joining a team of journalists in London and Brussels covering the regulatory and political landscape. Further hires are expected to be announced in the coming days.