Banks believe that new digitally enabled supplier finance networks and alternative lenders now pose a significant threat to every part of the commercial lending business, according to a new survey conducted by Misys, the leading financial software company.

Key findings from the survey include:

·         68% cited small business lending as being under high threat

·         61% see competitive pressure in supply chain finance product lines, such as receivables finance and factoring

• 43% of people look to contactless payments as the payment method of the future.
• Within the next five years, one in three (34%) expect to be using a mobile device on a day-to-day basis to make payments.
• By 2025, over one in five (22%) think they will be regularly using their fingerprint to pay for goods and services.

The latest research from Lloyds Bank on the future of payments shows many people believe they won’t need cash in the near future as they increasingly turn to cards, contactless payments and other new technologies.

Meethaq, the pioneer of Islamic banking in Oman from Bank Muscat, as part of continuous endeavour to provide world class services through the latest technology and innovation, has upgraded its core banking system, resulting in a host of cutting edge and first-of-its-kind Islamic banking services covering ATM/CDM, debit card and mobile banking for Meethaq customers. Meethaq now functions with the new iMAL Islamic core banking system.

UK SMEs are now using £76 billion of alternative finance*, up 43% from £53 billion a year ago as banks continue to pull back from lending to smaller businesses, says Funding Options, the online business finance supermarket.

Funding Options says that alternative lending to SMEs is now equivalent to 46% of the value of traditional term loans and overdrafts, which have fallen to £163 billion**. That represents a fall of 5% from £172 billion a year ago, and 17% from £197 billion four years ago.

Wondershare, the Chinese software industry’s largest exporter by volume, has chosen global payments leader, Worldpay, for its complete payments infrastructure. The move will help Wondershare to improve payment acceptance in its priority markets, underpinning its ambitious global expansion plans.

AsiaPay, the premier ePayment service and technology player in Asia and Hong Kong Airlines, the internationally-acclaimed Skytrax 4-star airline, have today announced a collaboration with FEXCO, the leading independent global provider of Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) and Multi-Currency Pricing (MCP) technologies which will see FEXCO's world class MCP solution offered to passengers of Hong Kong Airlines.

Payment services specialist allpay is now collecting £1.59 billion per annum in Direct Debit payments, from 12.1 million transactions. With the total BACS Direct Debit transaction volume reaching 3.6 billion each year in the UK, allpay today represents a growing market share of the UK’s total Direct Debit market.

 Cross-border shopping is the fastest growing branch of international e-commerce with unprecedented global demand for the latest products on the market. The U.S. retail market is the go-to place for the newest tech products, but there are still many barriers for international consumers.

 Alpha Insight, a UK fintech company with a three-year track-record of exceptional delivery, is looking to shake up the global financial sector through its real-time process monitoring and measurement solutions.

Combining deep financial experience and technical monitoring skills, Alpha Insight successfully makes sense of millions of metrics, creating unrivalled end-to-end insight into financial organisations’ business flows without the requirement for major investment in new IT.

Few can have missed the carnage roiling Chinese stock markets recently. What’s interesting though is the emerging hubris from Western media that this is due to the intersection of communism and capitalism. The problem, they say, is that the purpose of markets is to allow free and open price discovery. However, they argue, a command economy like China can afford to tamper with this process and compel participants (like its state pension fund) to intervene in markets.