MUFG Union Bank N.A. today announced that receipt of real-time payments is available for its corporate, retail, and small business clients via the RTP® network, operated by The Clearing House. The RTP network provides instantaneous receipt of payments, which increases payment certainty and funds availability, with funds immediately available for use. Real-time payments enable MUFG Union Bank clients to improve cash flow, manage working capital, and streamline processes.

“Real-time payments offer our clients the payment processing speed to meet their business needs in a rapidly changing digital commerce environment,” said Ranjana Clark, Head of Global Transaction Banking and Transaction Banking Americas, and Bay Area President. “MUFG Union Bank is committed to supporting our clients' movement toward real-time payments in the United States to enhance their experience.

The RTP network is the first new core payments infrastructure built in the U.S. in more than 40 years and gives the banking industry a modern platform for domestic payments, complete with rich data capabilities and immediate payment confirmation. The system enables instantaneous settlement and availability, so those funds can be used or withdrawn as cash within seconds. With receipt of real-time payments, businesses will experience improved straight-through processing, automated reconciliation, fraud and risk reduction, rich data reporting and analytics capabilities, partnership integration, and reduced operational costs.

“In addition to accelerating the speed and certainty of the transaction, real-time payments provide a standardized message format delivering extensive information throughout the full payment lifecycle. It is a completely new way of thinking about payments,” said Managing Director Ray Fattell, Head of Product, Innovation, and Risk Management, Transaction Banking Americas. “We are committed to providing innovative product solutions, utilizing the latest technology, so that CFOs and treasury managers can optimize their business processes to achieve their objectives.

“MUFG Union Bank’s customers can enjoy the benefits of immediate funds availability now that they can receive real-time payments over the RTP network,” says Jim Colassano, Senior Vice President of RTP Product Strategy and Development, The Clearing House. “We are very excited that MUFG Union Bank has joined the real-time payments revolution.”

Expenditure on European payment cards has grown by a third since 2014 to reach €3.9 trillion, as cards are used increasingly for everyday purchases

Rapidly rising usage spurs card spending

RBR’s latest research, Payment Cards Issuing and Acquiring Europe 2020, shows that in 2018 cardholders in the UK, France and Germany spent the most, with the total increasing by 26%, 19% and 22% respectively since 2014. The fourth largest market, Russia, saw spending double over the same period.

The RBR report showed that growth in spending is inextricably linked to the ramp up of card usage. Greece stands out in particular, as card usage grew sevenfold, following widespread state-mandated card acceptance at many merchants. Unsurprisingly, the country also saw the fastest growth in spend, which almost quadrupled over the four-year period.

Eastern European markets tended to be the fastest growing in terms of expenditure, notably Ukraine, Romania and Hungary where spending more than doubled. Recent surges in card spending across Europe can in large part be attributed to the growing adoption and acceptance of contactless payments, as well as increased online shopping.

Behavioural shift sees cards used for everyday transactions

RBR’s report showed that, for Europe as a whole, the number of transactions grew nearly three times as fast as the rise in expenditure, with the result that the average value of each transaction continues to fall – from €46 in 2014 to just €34 in 2018. The reason for this is that cards are increasingly being used for everyday, low-value purchases, as customers rapidly adopt contactless and mobile payments. As a result, growth in the total number of card payments made by Europeans is accelerating year-on-year.

Russian cards see the lowest average ticket in Europe, at €12, while the number of payments in the country nearly quadrupled over four years. Whilst this echoes the general pattern seen elsewhere in Europe, in Russia in particular this has been driven by initiatives such as contactless ticketing on the Moscow and St. Petersburg metro systems, and lucrative cashback reward schemes, offered by a number of banks, incentivising use of cards ahead of cash.

Increased debit card spending drives overall growth

RBR’s research shows that the vast majority of markets in Europe have seen an increase in the proportion of spend made with debit cards. There has been a widespread consumer shift from pay-later credit cards to pay-now debit cards, as a result of economic uncertainty and increasing consumer frugality. RBR found that this shift is most stark in Greece, with debit growing from 26% of the country’s card expenditure in 2014 to 68% in 2018.

Thomas Madden, who led RBR’s Payment Cards Issuing and Acquiring Europe 2020 research, commented: “The increasing customer adoption of payment cards, as well as expanding acceptance networks across Europe, is helping drive the sustained growth seen in card expenditure. The rising use of debit cards, in particular, as the default payment method for many Europeans, has significantly boosted the amount they have spent on their cards in recent years”.

State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) today announced it has entered into a new partnership with iCapital Network[1], the financial technology platform setting the industry standard for delivering access and efficiency in alternative investing. The collaboration will combine State Street’s registered transfer agency and private market fund administration capabilities with iCapital’s platform technology and distribution network to enhance the offering and servicing of US registered funds.

Historically, private market funds, such as private equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure have been available primarily to institutional investors. However, high-net-worth investors and family offices are increasingly seeking access and exposure to these alternative asset classes to achieve portfolio goals of diversification and income. This partnership aims to support State Street’s clients as they navigate this complex market.

This collaboration will allow State Street’s alternative fund manager clients to simplify and accelerate the launch of registered private market products, establish scaled access to the wealth management channels, monitor fund raising activities, and utilize a comprehensive, fully searchable database of all their investor documents across all funds.

“We’re delighted to be cementing our relationship with iCapital in order to support the needs of this growing distribution channel”, said Paul Fleming, global head of State Street’s Alternative Investment Solutions (AIS) group. “If the private markets were to capture just 5-10 percent of the affluent and mass affluent market in the US alone, it would represent between $800 billion and $1.6 trillion in assets under management.[2] A strong partner with a solution that addresses the needs of the investor, fund manager and investment advisors and distributors is critical. That’s why we’re partnering with iCapital.”

“The opportunities of the private market have traditionally been unattainable for those that lack the scale of an institutional investor”, said Lawrence Calcano, chief executive officer at iCapital Network. “However, our technology is rapidly changing that with access, efficiency and transparency.  This partnership with State Street aims to create new opportunities for fund managers, advisors and high-net-worth investors by facilitating the offering of registered funds, providing managers access to fresh capital and giving investors an opportunity to add new asset classes to their portfolios.”

Market Logic announced that Visa & Market Logic have been named a winner in the 2020 BIG Innovation Awards presented by the Business Intelligence Group.

The award acknowledges Visa’s Market Logic powered insights platform, The Global Insights Exchange, which helps thousands of marketers to search, share and use insights across countries and business lines to drive successful business decisions. The platform holds a growing knowledge base worth over $50 million, comprising hundreds of market research projects, marketing ROI and business analytics, and fully integrated content from syndicated sources.

Market Logic CEO Kay Iversen said Visa’s Global Insights Exchange “leverages Market Logic’s knowledge graph and AI capabilities to deliver insights on demand, upcycle existing research to prevent duplication, and efficiently generate new insights via collaboration with research agencies.”

Technology is only one of three contributing factors driving the award-winning innovation. Kay Iversen said Market Logic is “not only proud to provide Visa with game-changing technology, but we’re also delighted to partner with them in an innovation that embraces behavioral change and governance.”

Visa’s marketing governance unit systematically measured ROI on The Global Insights Exchange, as well as targeted change behaviors, throughout their transformation journey. Through this process, key scenarios were identified and measured where hundreds of thousands of dollars are saved.

“This year’s winners show just how deep a role innovation plays in nearly every aspect of business,” said Maria Jimenez, chief operating officer of the Business Intelligence Group. “We are thrilled to honor Market Logic and Visa for their outstanding Global Insights Exchange, which brings together the key elements for successful innovation inside a world-leading corporation – groundbreaking technology, a robust change management program, and governance to ensure that clearly stated business objectives are achieved.”

Organizations all over the world submitted their recent innovations for consideration in the BIG Innovation Awards. Nominations were then judged by a select group of business leaders and executives who volunteer their time and expertise to score submissions.

EMQ, a global financial settlement network today announced that customers from around the world can make secure and reliable cross-border money transfers to their family or friends leveraging the company’s extensive real-time pay-out network.

Researchers from Intel have published a study examining whether AI can recognise people’s faces using thermal imaging.

Thermal imaging is often used to protect privacy because it obscures personally identifying details such as eye colour. In some places, like medical facilities, it’s often compulsory to use images which obscure such details.

AI is opening up many new possibilities so Intel’s researchers set out to determine whether thermal imaging still offers a high degree of privacy.

Intel’s team used two sets of data sets:

• The first set, known as SC3000-DB, was created using a Flir ThermaCam SC3000 infrared camera. The data set features 766 images of 40 volunteers (21 women and 19 men) who each sat in front of a camera for two minutes.

• The second set, known as IRIS, was created by the Visual Computing and Image Processing Lab at Oklahoma State University. It features 4,190 images collected by 30 people and differs from the first set in that it contains various head angles and expressions. 

Each image from the data sets were first cropped to only contain each person’s face. 

A machine learning model then sought to numerically label facial features from the images as vectors. Another model, trained on VGGFace2 – a model trained on visible light images – was used to validate whether it could be applied to thermal images.

The model trained on visible image data performed well in distinguishing among volunteers by extracting their facial features. 99.5 percent accuracy was observed for the SC3000-DB data set and 82.14 percent for IRIS.

Intel’s research shows that thermal imaging may not offer the privacy that many currently believe it to and it’s already possible to distinguish people using it.

“Many promising visual-processing applications, such as non-contact vital signs estimation and smart home monitoring, can involve private and or sensitive data, such as biometric information about a person’s health,” wrote the researchers.

“Thermal imaging, which can provide useful data while also concealing individual identities, is therefore used for many applications.”

Just five UK banks, two of them challengers, managed a net gain of customers in the third quarter of 2019, according to figures from the Current Account Switch Service.