The capital of Kazakhstan will host Blockchain Conference Astana on June 14 - 15, 2017. The conference organizers have chosen Astana to be the conference location for several reasons. Firstly, Kazakhstan has a great potential for development of the fintech industry. The country has shaped its course for accelerated technological modernization of the economy.

I recently was hauled up over saying that Western Union (WU) was being disrupted by FinTech.  The words that a reader took issue with are:

The high fees of Western Union and other remittance providers were fairly punishing … until FinTech came along

The 2018 implementation date for the second Payment Services Directive, or PSD2 as it’s more commonly known, is fast approaching. A growing number of conversations are currently taking place around whether this represents an opportunity for tech companies, fintech start-ups, merchants, and challenger banks to share in the success of the traditional banks.

PSD2 will require banks to provide third parties, such as those mentioned above, with access to their customers’ account information (with explicit permission), through the use of application programme interfaces (APIs).

Today Huawei showed the availability of the Infosys Finacle core banking solution on Huawei KunLun. 

Today BillingTree revealed that Worldpay US, the world's leader in payments processing technology and solutions, will extend its omni-channel payment solutions to their growing customer base with the Payrazr Marketplace. Available immediately are robust myPayrazr payment acceptance technologies including myPayrazr IVR.

Are you getting the feeling blockchain is a load of bullshit? Are you struggling to see how any of this will ever make any money? If you are stand up wherever you are right now, raise you hands in the air and shout ‘’bullshit!’’. It feels good, doesn’t it? As you can tell by my title I believe you would be right to call bullshit on significant parts of what’s going on in the blockchain hype cycle or as I like to call it the ‘bullshit cycle’ (more later). Now that all sounds very negative but I am about to share a way out and actually it’s a hugely lucrative opportunity.

Fintech was the talk of the town in 2016. Mohammed Kateeb, Group Chairman & CEO of Path Solutions discussed with IFN major technological trends in the Islamic finance universe over the past year, and the trends that he foresees dominating in 2017. Click here to read the full interview https://www.islamicfinancenews.com/interview-with-mohammed-kateeb-the-group-chairman-and-ceo-of-path-solutions-2.html

Today, Mari T. Vullo, financial Services Superintendent, reported that the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has approved the application of Coinbase, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Coinbase Global, Inc., to offer Ethereum and Litecoin for New York customers. 

PaySimple, the major service commerce platform for businesses, has reinforced point-of-sale software for service businesses with their new release of Service Point of Sale (sPOS) platform.