SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM®) specialist, today announced the appointment of Richard Bowler as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), he will be responsible for all aspects of the company’s finances, including treasury, administration and financial strategy.

Ingenico ePayments, the online and mobile commerce division of Ingenico Group, today announced it has signed an agreement with Air China, China’s flag carrier and one of the largest airlines in the Asia-Pacific region, to provide the ability to accept Discover Card transactions in North America.

National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, in partnership with the Russian National Association of Securities Market Participants (NAUFOR), has launched a centralized system for record keeping and distributing Unit Investment Trust (UIT) units.

WorldRemit, the leading online money transfer service, has launched in Hawaii, targeting 120,000 Filipino migran

I blogged recently that there is around $1.6 trillion of money laundering globally and less than 2% is caught by the financial system.  That’s a stunning amount and makes you wonder why our system is so awful.  Much of it is down to the fact that account openings depend upon physical documentation and human checks.  If we could digitalise the whole process, it could be tightened up immensely.

So it surprised me little when I saw the headline in yesterday’s Guardian:

ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, expended its relationship  with the Egyptian Banks Company for Technological Advancement (EBC), the central domestic infrastructure provider for payments in Egypt.

ACI will help drive the bank’s ambitious growth plans and initiative to move from the use of cash to electronic payments/funds in one of Africa’s most innovative and fastest growing markets. 

Deutsche Bank has opened an innovation lab in New York, its fourth globally after Silicon Valley, Berlin and London.

Westpac is working with Israeli-based startup PayKey on technology to add banking options to the bottom of a screen on a messaging app.

BLUE BELL, Pa., a leading SaaS platform provider enabling channel delivery of cloud communications, today announced the addition of the BroadWorks call control services to its SwitchConnex platform enabling its channel partner community to sell to a wider range of customers.