The World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative is partnering with WorkInProgress, an Absa Innovation Lab in Cape Town, to host a ‘solveathon’ workshop for the inaugural Mission Billion Challenge.

Thanks to our partnership with Flux, you’ll now be able to see receipts for purchases at selected retailers in your Monzo app!

G+D Currency Technology, Munich, and Transtrack International, Amsterdam, entered into a definitive agreement today, under which G+D Currency Technology will acquire all shares of Transtrack International. 

The European challenger and innovative bank in Portugal, Banco BNI Europa, became recently a strategic customer of NDGIT, provider of the first API platform for banking and insurance in Europe. 

The Western Union Company, a leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, and 

Avoka, a Temenos company and SaaS leader in digital customer journeys in banking, today announced the launch of Workspaces, a new module of the Avoka platform within the Temenos Infinity product. Workspaces is a digital review and approval workspace for retail banking and credit union staff, built to support resolution and customer service for account opening and onboarding. The new module is included with all implementations of the Avoka platform within Temenos Infinity, which includes Springboard Retail Deposit Account Opening, and is available today worldwide.

Half of young professionals (53%) working in the finance functions of large organisations want a position on the C-Suite, according to new research revealed today by Metapraxis, the leader in financial analytics technology. However, of these respondents, only 29% want to become CFO, the assumed natural career progression of those working in the finance function today.  

One year on from its commercial launch, payments app MuchBetter, is announcing a number of significant milestones and figures, as it signals its intent to ‘break the monopoly of iGaming payments’, in an industry estimated to be worth £40bn. Having launched in November 2017, key highlights and milestones after 14 months include: 

Global smartphone shipments recorded a negative year-over-year growth rate in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2018, for a third consecutive quarter. According to IHS Markit preliminary smartphone data, global smartphone shipments reached 365.2 million units in Q4 2018, which is a 5.7 percent y/y decline. For the 2018 calendar year, shipments declined 2.4 percent compared to the previous year, from 1.44 billion units in 2017 to 1.41 billion units in 2018. 

Following is an overview of the smartphone market leaders in 2018, based on unit shipments: 

This morning, we hosted a conference call where we shared Mastercard’s financial results for the fourth quarter and our 2018 fiscal year. If you listened to that call, you heard how we had a strong end to the year, delivering broad-based growth.

The numbers speak for themselves – double-digit gains in both volume and transactions, with earnings per share increasing 40 percent year-over-year, on a currency-neutral basis and excluding special items.