I blogged recently that there is around $1.6 trillion of money laundering globally and less than 2% is caught by the financial system.  That’s a stunning amount and makes you wonder why our system is so awful.  Much of it is down to the fact that account openings depend upon physical documentation and human checks.  If we could digitalise the whole process, it could be tightened up immensely.

So it surprised me little when I saw the headline in yesterday’s Guardian:

ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, expended its relationship  with the Egyptian Banks Company for Technological Advancement (EBC), the central domestic infrastructure provider for payments in Egypt.

ACI will help drive the bank’s ambitious growth plans and initiative to move from the use of cash to electronic payments/funds in one of Africa’s most innovative and fastest growing markets. 

Deutsche Bank has opened an innovation lab in New York, its fourth globally after Silicon Valley, Berlin and London.

Westpac is working with Israeli-based startup PayKey on technology to add banking options to the bottom of a screen on a messaging app.

BLUE BELL, Pa., a leading SaaS platform provider enabling channel delivery of cloud communications, today announced the addition of the BroadWorks call control services to its SwitchConnex platform enabling its channel partner community to sell to a wider range of customers.              

Complete XRM, Inc., the culture-of-productivity experts, announced it has acquired Fanatic Software, makers of the Pocket Informant Mac, iOS, and Android productivity apps. A software developer of mobile and Mac applications with over 4 million app downloads over its 17-year history, Fanatic Software, based in Cedar Park, Texas, will continue to operate, develop and support the Pocket Informant product line. 

Gemini, a provider of the leading security analyst platform to rapidly deploy, manage and achieve true situational awareness across data and security solutions, today announ

Today linked2pay announced the deployment of real-time delivery of merchant accounts to its 

Thomson Reuters has completed its acquisitions of Clarient Global LLC and Avox Limited, expanding its risk-management footprint and its ability to provide a best-in-class standard of customer solutions by integrating both businesses into its portfolio of risk management, compliance and data offerings.