A friend of mine had his car stolen when trying to sell it to someone he met online. He handed over the keys to the potential buyer for a test drive and the moment he turned his back to make the buyer a cup of tea, the car was gone.

Ingenico Group, global leader in seamless payment, has won Best Use of Social Networks or Gamification at the 2018 FStech Awards for its work with customer experience start-up LuckyCycle, culminating in the Ingenico Gamified Checkout, boosting conversion rates by making the shopping experience fun and rewarding. 

Yolt, the smart thinking money app owned by ING, has refreshed its top bar to allow users to see the sum of all their balances across their accounts. The implementation of this ‘total balance’ tool is based on popular feedback from the app’s users.

I’m not surprised to hear that HMRC is looking to artificial intelligence when it comes to tax compliance. Automation is already becoming an increasingly integrated part of financial reporting and management and it’s a trend that shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, our own research has found that 96% of accountants believe that either all or some accountancy work will be automated by 2022. 

SWIFT announces the extension of its gpi Tracker to cover all payment instructions sent across the network, enabling gpi banks to track all their SWIFT payment instructions at all times, and giving them full visibility over all their payments activity. 

Delivering on its open platform approach to provide seamless integrations across an ecosystem of accounting-focused solutions, Intuit today announced that QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) now allows accounting professionals to manage all of their clients – even those that don’t use QuickBooks – within the product. This innovation is now available globally for QBOA users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and France.

Duco, the data engineering technology company, today announced the launch of the Duco Cube Data Platform. This extension of Duco Cube, the cloud-based normalization and reconciliation system, enables users to access up to ten years’ worth of results and exception data via a Hadoop-based big data infrastructure. Clients can easily connect in-house or third-party tools, such as Tableau, Power BI and QlikView, for monitoring, trend analysis, reporting and analytics. Three customers are already live on the platform.  

Paul Bari is appointed Group CIO and Head of Group Technology of Nordea. Paul joined Nordea in February 2017 from a position as Global Head of Technology Delivery at Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore. Paul has had several executive positions at Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays Capital and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

In his different roles Paul has led global technology teams, been responsible for core technology business efficiency programmes, engaged with regulatory authorities and chaired numerous risk committees.

CLX Communications AB (publ.) ("CLX") - a leading global CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) provider, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Danish company Unwire Communication ApS ("Unwire Communication") for a cash consideration of DKK 148 million on a cash and debt-free basis.  The acquisition excludes Unwire Payments & Mobility ApS which has been carved out prior to the acquisition.