Pelican, a leading provider of solutions to the financial services sector, today released the findings of its global survey ‘Leveraging artificial intelligence for payments efficiency’, which explores the attitudes of senior payment professionals within banks and corporates towards the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in supporting the payments business and related processes.

The survey of more than 120 payments professionals across 32 countries found that:

China’s largest mobile wallet Alipay has started to expand in the UK. The Body Shop, one of Britain’s best-known and biggest cosmetics and skin care companies, will launch the service in three major London stores, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and Regent Street using the new Scan Alipay App provided by Wirecard. The launch takes place on October 1st, parallel to the start of China’s national Golden Week. This date marks a week-long national holiday during which millions of mainlanders set off on vacation and hit the European shopping streets.

At Sibos 2016, Misys is urging banks to think now about transitioning their confirmation matching processing ahead of the retirement of SWIFT Accord. With the service due to cease in October 2017, making provision to transition as early and as painlessly and as cost effectively as possible is absolutely vital for business continuity. 

CGI (NYSE: GIB) (TSX: GIB.A) today announced it is the first commercial enterprise to implement the Ripple Validator Node. Ripple validators are servers that confirm Ripple’s distributed financial technology transactions on the network. The CGI-hosted Ripple Validator Node provides banking clients with a trusted network partner for Ripple’s distributed financial technology that settles international and domestic transactions in real-time.

This paper is intended for readers who want to better understand the dramatic changes that have begun to take place—and that are accelerating—in the global payments industry. Based on the results of a bank client survey conducted by BNY Mellon Treasury Services earlier this year, we know that this is an area where financial institutions vary greatly in terms of their level of knowledge and perspectives and a subject that they are eager to learn more about.

The economy of the future will need a vastly different platform for making payments. Consumers and corporations will need access to easier, faster and flexible platforms., BankservAfrica’s new chief executive officer Chris Hamilton has entered the market with the bold objective of bringing to South Africa and Africa, the revolutions underway in global payments infrastructure – and the necessity of re-design to keep up with the ‘payments Joneses’.

Data from SWIFT’s latest RMB Tracker shows exceptional growth in RMB adoption in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) witnessing a 210.8% growth in payments value of the currency since August 2014, albeit from a low base. More than 80% of the direct payments made between the UAE and China/Hong Kong in August 2016 were in CNY, representing one of the highest increases worldwide.

Ecobank, the leading independent pan-African banking group, has won the awards for Best Trade Finance Services in Africa and Best Treasury Services in Africa in this year’s Treasury Services Awards, organised by financial trade magazine EMEA Finance. The awards were handed out in Geneva today on the margins of Sibos, the major annual banking conference organised by SWIFT.

According to EMEA Finance, Ecobank’s strong pan-African platform and its extra level of detail impressed the judges, differentiating the bank from its competitors on the continent.

Worldwide, people make more than $1.7 trillion in non-cash payments every year. Making those payments as instant and open as cash is a top priority for FIS™ (NYSE: FIS), a global leader in financial services technology and, it has made great headway toward such a goal by putting payments solutions in place around the world.