The escalation of the trade dispute between the US and the rest of the world has hit momentum in the global economy and that will only become more pronounced over the near- to mid-term.

Wage pressures in the Nordic countries have been conspicuous by their absence because of a focus on competitiveness in wage negotiations. But with employment continuing to rise, wage growth originating from Germany will inevitably spill over to the Nordic labour markets, says Nordea’s Group Chief Economist Helge J. Pedersen.

Over the last few years, smart home devices have become increasingly popular amongst consumers. From retail to social media, and finance to marketing, machine learning technology is leading to substantial improvements in service and productivity. But, for many, the idea of opening a bank account with your Alexi or Google Home is a long way off. This nervousness is reflected in the credit risk industry, which has struggled to warm to the use of machine learning.

In less than a year from now, on 1^st July 2019, the instant payment system of Hungary will go live - fundamentally changing the way Hungarians make payments.   

The implementation of the instant payment system is an historic step not only for GIRO, a leading provider of services to financial institutions in Hungary, but for the entire Hungarian financial system, because it will bring changes and significant advantages to all participants in the national payment ecosystem.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Global Digital Banking Platforms, Q3 2018. Temenos’ digital banking platform received the highest score in the current offering category after Forrester evaluated the strengths and weakness of the top 10 digital banking platform solutions against 40 criteria. Temenos also achieved the highest score in the market presence category.

Turnkey open banking platform provider, Token.io Limited, today announces it is the first Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) to conduct an end-to-end payment with public bank APIs for each of the CMA9, a group of the nine largest banks and building societies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Reaching this milestone makes the UK the only region in the world with open and functioning Open Banking APIs.

Today Instantor, the Swedish fintech company making financial decisions easy, announces, WDSK, The World Domination Starter Kit. The WDSK is an initiative to support start-ups and scale-ups to develop next-generation products by giving them access to Instantor´s Bank API with no associated costs for new Instantor customers. By using Instantors bank API, developers will have access to transactional data from over 300 banks in 25 countries, with the potential to reach half a billion people.

Horizon Software(Horizon), the leading global technology provider for electronic trading and investment management, announced today that the China-based securities firm Caitong Securities  has gone live with its Options Trading platform to trade SSE 50 ETF options on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.   

Limassol, Cyprus: ICS Financial Systems Limited (ICSFS), the global software and services provider for banks and financial institutions, has successfully completed the implementation of blockchain proof of concept (PoC), which was conducted at  Arab Jordan Investment Bank (AJIB), one of Jordan’s leading investment and commercial banks, through ICS BANKS® Blockchain Adapterbetween Amman Head Office and Cyprus Branch (Limassol). 

Chip & PIN Solutions (CPS), the point of sale card payment company that helps over 8,000 UK small businesses manage their payment needs, today announces that its Operations Director Ingigerður (Inga) Guðmundsdóttir becomes Managing Director.