IHS Technology Analysis:

For Apple, the investment in Didi highlights the strategic importance of China and the services segment for Apple’s future strategy. The past quarter’s results show that Apple’s iPhone business is slowing and expansion in China had been one of its main growth drivers in recent years. As its hardware business has slowed, Apple has been keen to drive growth in its services revenues. This move shows how Apple is increasingly focused on services, such as Apple Pay, App Store, Apple Music, iTunes and iCloud.

Insurers are embracing digital to meet the demands of the modern consumer. And of course there are obvious benefits to them from less costly, more streamlined interactions with their customers. The trouble is that digitisation comes with a major health warning: unless insurers put suitable measures in place, they risk being exposed by increasingly sophisticated fraudsters and falling prey to one in around every 10 claims being fraudulent.

Green Dot Corporation launches Green Dot Money, an online marketplace that seeks to match low and moderate income consumers with a curated set of lending partners that specialize in serving low and moderate income Americans. The loans are made by third party lenders who are members of the marketplace. Green Dot does not use its balance sheet to fund the loans nor does it assume any risk of non-repayment.

Just how much do Americans want to shield their data? Sticks and stones may break their bones but they’d rather have that (18 percent) than get their identity and payment information stolen.

As the leading real-time credit bureau for the non-prime market, Clarity Services is prepared to offer a variety of solutions to assist online and storefront lenders with the compliance requirements found in Utah’s current regulations as well as the Deferred Deposit Lending Amendment (Utah Code § 7-23-401) that will become law on July 1, 2016.

BPC Banking Technologies, a world leading provider of payment solutions, announces the launch of the national payment system of Ethiopia, EthSwitch S.C. based on SmartVista. As of today for the first time, all 17 of the countries retail banks are connected together via the unified payment system.

EthSwitch was formed by all the banks in Ethiopia, and with the backing of the Ethiopian Bankers’ Association and the country’s central bank known as the National Bank of Ethiopia. Following the implementation of the full SmartVista suite all the banks’ payments are now centralized.

As more financial services activities shift to digital, account opening remains – for now – a branch-centric activity. Only 22 percent of people who opened a checking account in the last 12 months did so online, compared to 72 percent in the branch, according Expectations & Experiences, the Fiserv quarterly consumer trends survey.