B-North, the firm building an SME lending bank for the UK, has announced the appointment of Rebecca Owen as its first Regional Managing Director. Rebecca will help to develop and launch the firm’s first ‘lending pod’ – which will be based in Manchester.

Rebecca’s skill set is perfectly suited for the challenges of delivering a new regional SME lending bank, the UK’s first in 150 years, as she has both extensive experience in delivering meaningful SME lending and working at a challenger brand.

A report on intentional holdings of Bitcoin published today by digital assets derivatives exchange ZUBR, shows that, if current investment trends continue, daily demand will dwarf the new market supply of bitcoins mined after 2028, when the reward declines further.

Exclusive data from the blockchain and market analytics firm, Chainalysis, was used to analyse whether there was a growth in wallet addresses (or accounts) that could be viewed as “intentional holdings” (addresses which held 1-10 rounded bitcoins).

According to the second Payment Service Directive (PSD2), all the financial institutions that provide payment accounts (ASPSPs) – banks, e-wallets, prepaid cards, neobanks and e-money institutions with their agents – must have in place at least one channel for secure communication with third party providers (TPP). They can choose to offer a dedicated channel (API) or a Modified Customer Interface (MCI), being obliged to provide a sandbox 6 months prior launching the channel(s) in production.

The Covid-19 pandemic will accelerate a worldwide trend towards contactless payments, according to a new report from the Emerging Payments Association EU (EPA EU), which was commissioned by Luxembourg for Finance (LFF).

There is a general consensus among bankers as to which challenges posed by the Basel III finalization reforms (commonly referred to as Basel IV) are most acute, with credit risk identified as the biggest challenge, and of the need to use the data generated to make their institutions more efficient and profitable.

What is ISO 20022 & how will it transform payments?

Alongside the rise of Asia, a technology boom and the end of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, Covid-19 stands as one of the biggest things to have happened globally in the last 50 years. It represents an enormous shift.

It has also been a very fast shift. Unlike the other really big things, Covid-19 has affected almost all of mankind - and in the space of less than four months (as of 26 June 2020).