Emerging Markets Payments (EMP), the leading electronic payments processing company in Africa and the Middle East, is pleased to announce that it is now working with Premier Bank, its first customer in Somalia.

Sageworks, a financial information company that provides credit risk management solutions to financial institutions, today announced it will debut a major time-saving enhancement as part of the Sageworks solutions available to banks and credit unions.

These are the times that try men's souls: the summer soldier and sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph.

Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 1776

Democracy and Reputational Risk

The Banking Industry Architecture Network e.V (BIAN) welcomes three new members to its fast growing global network today, creating an international network of 60 of the leading banks, service providers, software vendors and academic partners.

I have this mantra in my presentations about payments.  Payments is being attacked by Fintech startups like Klarna, Square, Stripe, Alipay, PayPal (Venmo, Braintree) and more.  In fact, according to VentureScanner, it’s the second most active area for investors after lending (

 CSR plc (LSE: CSR; NASDAQ: CSRE) today announced that itsCSR1013™ technology has been used by BrilliantTS, a leading manufacturer of smart hardware and software solutions, to create a multi-payment card. This enables simple and secure credit and debit card payments by connecting to a smartphone using Bluetooth®.

BPC Banking Technologies, the leading provider of Open System payment solutions, together with Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) announces the launch of the National Switch of Palestine. The National Switch, based on SmartVista, is considered a cornerstone for the Electronic Retail Payments in Palestine.

Misys, the global application software and services company, has been awarded “Best buy-side pricing and market display” for its FusionInvest solution at the Systems in the City Awards. Misys FusionInvest was recognised for its ability to enable investment firms to price a wide range of asset classes accurately across listed, OTC derivatives and structured products.

OpenMAMA, the project developed to allow financial services firms to move more freely between market data technology and content vendors, today announces its re-launch boasting a new advisory group, increased vendor coverage and, for the first time, the ability to bridge data to and from Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform (TREP) using a completely open source stack.