As deadlines loom for a plethora of new accounting and regulatory frameworks, firms across Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas must ensure they have the right finance, risk and regulatory reporting management structures and systems in place to meet the challenges ahead.

PayKey, a social Fintech company that enables banks to provide their users with peer to peer payment options through any social and messaging platform, today announced a $6 million Series A funding round co-led by leading global venture capital firm, e.ventures and Gaby Salem of Wharton Asset Management, with investments from new investors, including financial-sector leaders CommerzVentures, Mastercard and Santander InnoVentures, Digital Leaders Ventures, and follow on investment from Magma VC.

Meed announced today the launch of its innovative mobile banking program together with Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Maritime Bank) of Vietnam. With its new platform now live, Meed is able to offer its target segment of underserved but digitally savvy individuals access to banking and payment services through a subscription model that is consistent with how they consume other digital services today.

Ahead of the Government’s Autumn Statement, alternative assets platform CoInvestor urges the Chancellor not to move further away from the pensions freedoms which have given investors more control and choice over their investments.

Nearly half (48%) of mass affluent Britons benefitting from the Government’s changes to pensions legislation in 2015, said this was because it gave them control of their own investments, research carried out by YouGov has found.

Dynamics of digital

Ancoa, provider of contextual surveillance and insightful analytics for exchanges, regulators, buy & sell-side firms, today announced that Dinosaur Merchant Bank Limited has deployed Ancoa’s surveillance platform to monitor their equity trading activity for instances of market abuse and to meet their obligations under MAR (Market Abuse Regulation). Dinosaur Merchant Bank Limited combines global investment banking and advisory services, a full-service institutional brokerage and investment advisor services.

 The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, announces that its Global Trade Repository (GTR), through its locally registered trade repository, has added trade repository services for Newfoundland and Labrador. With this addition, GTR now supports all Canadian provinces and territories, with existing support for Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Prince Edward Island and Yukon. 

Verifone announces the European launch of Verifone Engage with the all-in-one countertop solution, Verifone V200c, installed at Anne Rueschenschmidt, a boutique fashion retailer in Rheine in northern Germany. A key strategic milestone in building a commerce-enabled payment infrastructure in Europe, Verifone Engage family of devices are now available to small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB) across Germany through InterCard, a leading network service provider (NSP) acquired by Verifone in 2015.

Equity Trading Challenges

With stricter regulations, capital constraints and technology costs impacting the sell side, large brokers are rationing their services and this trend is being felt on equity trading desks.

I’m a big fan of Kraken, the digital currency exchange in California, as it’s my main exchange for investing in digital assets.  If you want to know more, checkout their general overview at the end of this blog.  I’m also a fan of their blog, which regularly sends me interesting stuff and they’ve just launched a competition to see who the world thinks will be the digital currency of the future.

The competition is: