Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN), a leading worldwide provider of payment technology and software solutions, and Discover Financial Services, a leading direct bank and payments services company, announced today that Global Payments is now an acquirer for all cards on the Discover Global Network in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This includes Discover, Diners Club International and affiliate partner cards.

The epidemic of cash machine attacks across the UK is a serious cause for concern with attacks having risen an average of 22% per year since 2014. The attacks, often carried out with heavy machinery, not only damage the ATMs themselves, but cause widespread disruption to the community. Local stores are damaged, and communities are deprived of vital access to basic financial services and cash. If this weren’t bad enough, the people most badly affected are those least able to travel further afield for their cash; the elderly and vulnerable.

PayU, an online payment service provider and Naspers’ fintech arm, today announced the acquisition of Wibmo, a Cupertino, CA-based industry leader in digital payment security and mobile payment technologies. This strategic acquisition combines PayU’s strong merchant network and Wibmo’s leadership in digital transaction security solutions to offer industry-leading payments solutions to merchants and financial institutions in India and other high growth markets.

With entries received from all over the UK, a visit from Hugo Taylor and a competitive voting period which saw over 5,000 votes cast by the public, The Hand Dyed Shoe Co. was crowned the winner of Klarna’s ‘Smoooth Stores’ initiative at last night’s star-studded awards.

TBC Bank Group PLC of Georgia has entered into an agreement to acquire a 51% stake in LLC Inspired, a leading payment platform in Uzbekistan trading under the Payme brand.

Payme is a leading payment service provider in Uzbekistan that supplies high-quality payment solutions to its 1.3 million customers. It facilitates utility payments, P2P transfers, loan repayments, mPOS for QR-based payments and ecommerce purchases. It also provides a marketplace platform for loans from certain Uzbek banks.

Sberbank, Gazprombank and Digital Horizon announce that Sberbank has agreed to acquire a 51% stake in Speech Technology Center (STC) from Gazprombank. Digital Horizon venture capital fund has also agreed to acquire a stake in STC. Gazprombank remains a strategic shareholder in STC and will continue to play an active role in the company’s future development. The deal is scheduled to close by the end of May 2019.

New research from analytic database firm Exasol has found that almost 40 per cent of businesses in the financial services industry (FSI) are currently failing to implement data initiatives due to a lack of employee skills. The research asked enterprises about the importance of data to their business, the strategies they are looking to implement in future, and the barriers to achieving their goals for data and analytics.

Banking has been around since the early days of our civilisation. Shaped by multiple reconfigurations of the world order, it has been an ever-changing industry, adapting to an ever-evolving society. Banking has been at times a way to transfer value across time (from the Silk Road promissory notes, to the modern complex lending system) and space (from cocoa beans and cheques to Ripple’s XRPs). More often than not, banking has been a source of trust for its stakeholders and the relationships amongst themselves.

Refinitiv and MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: MKTX), the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, and the provider of market data and post-trade services for the global fixed-income markets, have entered into an agreement to redistribute MarketAxess’ fixed income market data to Refinitiv’s customers via its Elektron Data Platform.