We all know the old adage that you’re more likely to divorce than change your bank account. 
But that’s all about to change as the banking sector faces its biggest challenge for over thirty years with the introduction of the Competition and Markets Authority’s “Open Banking programme” which will require banks to share their customer data with third party app providers. But what does it mean for consumers? Which non-financial companies might enter the marketplace? And how will banks respond?

Cummins Allison, the leading innovator of coin, currency and check processing technology, as well as ATMs, today announced the completion of EMV certification for all its ATMs on the Vantiv network. This certification includes both Visa and MasterCard.

In August 2016, payment service provider ECommPay began processing transactions on behalf of Wargaming.net, one of the market leaders in the sphere of online gaming.

The strategic partnership promises Wargaming customers an assortment of enhanced capabilities and additional services. In turn, the collaboration with a forerunner of the online gaming industry has expanded ECommPay's client portfolio in this business sector. The payment processer offers online gaming clients bespoke, modern, and secure payment solutions.

2015 was a banner year for M&A with $4.7 trillion in transactional value reported. Many analysts expect this trend to continue especially as the acceleration of technology speeds up and upsets entire markets. Consolidation coupled with these ‘digital disruptions’ puts any organisation into stress-mode.

Data centre providers are positioned to capitalise on the growth in tech-savvy challenger banks as their market share continues to gather pace. By offering flexibility on IT usage and contract lengths, data centres are able to work with these emerging financial institutions to ensure customers are never out of touch with their finances. This is according to colocation data centre provider, Aegis Data.

Fraud prevention software company Risk Ident has today announced the appointment of its CEO, Roberto Valerio, to the European Advisory Board of the Merchant Risk Council (MRC).

Roberto Valerio founded Risk Ident and leads the day-to-day management of the company, responsible for driving the development of the business to serve companies in need of a modern, intelligent approach to fraud prevention, supported by machine-learning technology.

The financial services have always had a complex relationship with cloud computing. Faced with increased competition from fintech players, many retail banks for example, are looking to expand their consumer offering faster and more cost-efficiently, leading to quicker return on investment and competitive advantage. Cloud environments offer these organisations the potential to develop innovative services more quickly, however, for them to be able to take full advantage, many things still need to change.

Atlantic Capital Bank, NA announced today that Julie Schriver has joined its team as a Treasury Sales Officer. Schriver joins Atlantic Capital with more than 20 years of experience, most recently with SunTrust, where she served in a similar capacity and was recognized for her remarkable client-centric strategies which produced sustainable portfolio growth for clients across the Tri-Cities and Knoxville area.

Reval, the leading global provider of a cloud-based platform for Treasury and Risk Management (TRM), is now certified as a Great Place to Work® by the independent analysts that review high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures, globally.

After Clearing and Settlement as a blockchain use case, the next big area of interest is Trade Finance.  This is primarily because it’s an area full of inefficiencies and open to fraud.  Bills of Lading and Letters of Credit are old world methods of managing the shipping of goods and services, and the potential to replace these paper processes with digitalised operations via blockchain has become carpe diem in the last few months.  (Ed: are you being ironic by saying that you can seize the day in months?)