• The economic outlook has improved, but risks to the recovery remain.
• Banks have the capital and liquidity to be able to support the economy. 
• Risky asset prices have continued to increase, partly due to higher risk taking.
• New monetary tools being explored to stop a ‘dash for cash’.
• Bank of England testing financial sector’s resilience to climate change.
• Spotlight turned on digital money.

Ecommerce driving link based payments in metros; groceries in non-metros

Payment links via SMS or WhatsApp have emerged as the front runner in contactless payments in the second wave of the pandemic with Mswipe registering a record 6X growth in Pay By Link based (PBL) transactions. PBL transactions grew from 2.37lakh in March 2020 to 12.55lakh in March 2021. 

A high adoption has been observed across metro cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai and Hyderabad, and non-metros such as Kanchipuram Tiruvallur, Coimbatore, Vadodara and Goa. 

Retail banks have been issued a warning by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) about continuing weaknesses and failings surrounding their financial crime controls.

• 182m securitised derivatives traded in Q2 2021 compared to 98m in Q2 2020
• First half volumes increased 146% year-on-year
• Most traded underlyings were OMX 30, DAX 30 and S&P 500

Spectrum Markets, the pan-European trading venue for securitised derivatives, has released its latest Quarterly Business Update, revealing continued positive momentum as its business matures.

Alfa Capital, one of the largest asset management companies in Russia, a member of the Alfa Group Consortium, selected an AI-based solution from Smart Engines for scanning new clients’ IDs to boost its remote service. Smart ID Engine software product enables Alfa Capital to significantly simplify data entry in their mobile app.

Before delving in, it is important to first establish what Integrated Surveillance is. For some firms, it means stitching together different data sets in order to improve alerting. For others it means managing global rules and all of an organisations’ surveillance obligations through a single platform.

The number of banks identifying payments data monetisation as a key strategic priority has doubled in the past two years.

• 70% of fintechs are using AI today, and the technology is predicted to dominate the market by 2025
• 90% of fintechs use APIs and they are currently the most widely used emerging technology
• “Fintech Five by Five” explores five core technologies that will have the biggest impact on the sector in the next five years

Engineered by SETL, Verafide allows organisations, networks and individual users to simply and securely issue, hold, verify and share digital ID and credentials 

Verafide, a verifiable credentials technology provider for issuers, holders and verifiers of digital credentials and ID, today announced the launch of their platform on the SETL enterprise blockchain.  The open source solution enables any community, network or organisation to set up and maintain a digital credentials ecosystem.

Fashion tech start-up closes Series C to consolidate leadership positions across Europe

Perwyn, a family-backed private equity and growth capital investor, is pleased to have led a $30m Series C funding round in Lookiero, the online personal shopping service.