SWIFT’s Chief Innovation Officer, Tom Zschach, speaks to Financial IT about the cooperative’s ambitious new strategy and its innovation agenda moving forward

You have been Chief Innovation Officer at SWIFT for a year now and the world has changed significantly in that short time, how do you see financial services adapting to the ‘new normal’?

Photo Credit : Martin Meyer (Unsplash)

Cashless technology isn't a completely fresh concept. People have been using credit cards for decades, and the market for fintech services has been growing steadily. That being said, the current health crisis has underscored the need for economies to go cashless as a way to restrict the spread of the coronavirus.

Omnio’s Credit Union business Kesho, has launched Vox Money, a portfolio of financial products and services that deliver greater financial control to those in society that need it the most and that have been unable to access traditional high street banking.

B2B payments specialist, Adflex, today announces the launch of its Payment Links service designed to enable supply chain merchants to simplify and accelerate payment acceptance from corporate buyers.

Path Solutions, the global Islamic banking software company, today announced it has been awarded ‘Best Islamic Fintech Solution Provider’, whereas Mohammed Kateeb, the company’s Group Chairman & CEO won the ‘Islamic Fintech Leader Of The Year’ award of the FINTECH Prize 2020

Shopping with small and local businesses has never been more important with almost one third (31%) of the UK’s SMEs relying on the Christmas period to help them survive, according to new research released by Nucleus Commercial Finance. 

The research found that one in five (20%) SMEs are anticipating a challenging Christmas trading period - comprising of 18% who think their businesses will suffer over the season, and 2% who believe they will have to close. 

OutSystems, a global leader in modern application development platforms, today announced it has entered into a multi-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This collaboration will enable OutSystems to deliver deeper integrations with AWS services in the OutSystems Cloud, allowing customers around the world to quickly put to work enhanced DevOps, data and analytics, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), and other AWS services in the applications that make a difference to their business.

THETA, the specialist provider of buy-side trading technology as a service, has appointed Neena Dholani as Head of Business Development and a Board Member.

Neena has 25 years of experience in Capital Markets, specialising in fixed income e-commerce and technology sales to the buy-side. She has an in-depth knowledge of applying technology solutions for multi-asset trading across the full order-execution life cycle, including front to back workflows and regulatory frameworks.