Coupa Software (NASDAQ:COUP), a leader in cloud-based spend management, announced today that fast-growth companies like Bankrate (NYSE:RATE) have extended their NetSuite ERP systems with Coupa’s Procure to Pay (P2P) solution to automate their purchasing tools, eliminate paper processing, and reduce costs.

Building on its innovation heritage, Accuity, the global financial crime compliance, payments and KYC solutions provider, is expanding its global innovation team and investing in collaborative innovation processes across its business and technology teams.

Neela Das has been appointed to lead Accuity’s global, multi-disciplinary innovation team, with regional hubs in London, Paris, Chicago and Singapore.  She will be working in conjunction with Ronald Hobbs who has been appointed Director of Technology for Innovation. .

Finantix, an established provider of components that empower sales and advisory processes for the financial services industry, today launched Finantix AI Gears for Wealth - a collection of engines, tools and data structures that accelerate the injection of Artificial Intelligence into wealth management platforms. The new offering brings tangible benefits by automating tasks, distilling intelligence, supporting decisions and enforcing compliance for wealth managers, private banks and robo-advisers.

 Finastra has recently added several credit unions to its growing client portfolio, based on its ability to provide a complete suite of lending, enterprise, and retail solutions. Among the latest credit unions added to the client roster are TruMark Financial Credit Union located in Pennsylvania, Central Florida Educators Federal Credit Union and Evansville Teachers Federal Credit Union located in Indiana.

Leading global research firm, Roubini ThoughtLab, released its new study today titled, Wealth and Asset Management 2022: The Path to Digital Leadership. The research, which explores how digitalization, globalization, and consumerization will reshape digital leadership in the investment industry by 2022, is informed by a survey of 1,503 investment providers from 15 countries, in-depth interviews, and rigorous cost-benefit analyses.

Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) today (September 7) announced that Hong Kong's regulators, along with a host of private sector partners, entrepreneurs and industry leaders, will participate in the second annual Hong Kong FinTech Week, to be held from October 23 to 27 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. The Week will focus on the driving forces that shape Hong Kong as a global financial technology (FinTech) hub.

Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, and Ledger, a leader in security and infrastructure for cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications, today announced a technology partnership to deliver high-assurance security infrastructure for crypto assets applications.

Numerix, the leader in risk technology, today announces the integration of its industry-leading analytics into Oneview Asset Management, its real-time portfolio and risk management solution for asset managers.

Trulioo, the leading global identification company, has launched its Global Business Verification solution to provide an innovative, effective, and low-cost way to perform due diligence on business entities around the world to determine the authenticity of the business in order to help organisations detect fraudulent behavior and criminal activity, such as tax evasion and money laundering.

Statista expects that there will be a staggering 5.07 billion mobile phone owners worldwide by 2019.

This one huge number quite simply shows the overall potential market for mobile payments even in the short term.

Meanwhile Gartner has estimated that the global market for mobile payments will be worth $720 billion in transactions by the end of 2017, up from about $235 billion in 2014.

Yet currently the potential is far from fulfilled.  Juniper Research says that only 16.5% of smartphones in the US in 2016 were used to make a contactless payment that year.