A New Year always brings a revised sense of hope and expectation. But as we enter a new decade, the financial industry seems to be facing some age old problems. Two key questions for both the sell and the buy-side are: “do we truly understand exactly what our client costs are across the business?” and “how do we improve our Return on Equity (ROE)?” 

JCB International Co., Ltd. (“JCBI”), the international operations subsidiary of JCB Co., Ltd., Japan’s only international payment brand, and Oceanpayment Co., Ltd., China’s leading cross-border payment brand, announced that they signed a License Agreement to start JCB merchant acquiring business. In order to strengthen the cooperative relationship, Mr. Hirohiko Sugiyama, Managing Director of JCB International (Asia) Ltd. and Lanny Yang, Co-Founder and EVP of Oceanpayment made greetings in Hong Kong to announce the partnership.

Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, has won HEYTEA, China’s most popular tea brand, as a new client in South-East Asia. As part of the collaboration, Wirecard provides seamless payment solutions to customers in all stores in Singapore and Hong Kong via HEYTEA GO, a newly launched mobile app which allows users to order and pay online without waiting in stores. Founded in China in 2012, the tea chain now manages more than 400 stores in over 37 cities in China and abroad.

Cybertonica, an award-winning platform using Machine Learning and AI for delivering authentication, risk analytics and fraud prevention to the payments and FinTech sectors, has raised £2 million in Series A funding.

The Bank of England has referred to the UK markets watchdog a spike in sterling that happened just seconds before the central bank announced that it would leave its key interest rate unchanged. The Financial Conduct Authority, whose job it is to detect market abuse, is now scrutinising the matter, according to both the central bank and the watchdog.

Deutsche Bank bosses will still be taking home a bonus this year despite the bank slumping to a bigger than expected €5.7bn (£4.8bn) annual loss.

Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Intelligent Automation, Blockchain, Tokenisation, Machine Learning - banks are struggling to work out which technologies are most suitable for their needs and which they should prioritise in order to get the most out of their investment. In some ways, this has always been the case with technology, but there are some differences today.

MoneyNetint, a leading global payment solution provider, announced a strategic partnership agreement with TerraPay, a mobile-first international payment network, which will expand and enhance MoneyNetint’s reach into Asia and Africa.