Earthport plc (AIM: EPO.L), the leading payment network for cross-border payments, is pleased to announce that Mr Sunil Sabharwal, has agreed to join Earthport's Board as a Non-Executive Director, subject to regulatory approvals. 

Abra, the first and only all-in-one cryptocurrency wallet and exchange, has partnered with Coinify, the leading global technology gateway for virtual currencies, to extend their services of buying and selling cryptocurrencies to the European market.

The escalation of the trade dispute between the US and the rest of the world has hit momentum in the global economy and that will only become more pronounced over the near- to mid-term.

Wage pressures in the Nordic countries have been conspicuous by their absence because of a focus on competitiveness in wage negotiations. But with employment continuing to rise, wage growth originating from Germany will inevitably spill over to the Nordic labour markets, says Nordea’s Group Chief Economist Helge J. Pedersen.

The Swedish economy is still doing fine, supported by strong domestic demand. Housing prices have stabilised after last autumn’s downturn, but private consumption looks set to slow due to uncertainty in the housing market. The labour market remains tight, but wage growth has been surprisingly stable. When the effect of the SEK depreciation fades and energy prices stabilise, inflation will drop next year. The Riksbank is expected to make its first move by the end of 2019 and hike twice in 2020, tracking the ECB towards normalisation.

The outlook for the Norwegian economy is good. The housing market has turned positive again and building activity will soon follow suit after a sharp drop year-to-date. Oil investment is also expected to rise sharply. Solid income growth and increased optimism among households and firms will boost growth in consumption and mainland investment. Wage growth will increase and in 2020 inflation will reach the target. Norges Bank will gradually increase rates and the NOK is set to strengthen.

The Danish economy is limbering up nicely on the back of falling unemployment, rising business investment and stronger consumer sentiment buoyed by very low interest rates, rising housing prices and solid real wage growth. Even so, growth this year looks very weak, mainly because of a one-off effect in 2017 and adverse effects from this summer's long drought. Growth will be higher in 2019, but is expected to slow slightly in 2020 due to growing labour shortages and lower demand.

The Finnish economy continues along a healthy growth track this year and next driven by consumption, which is fuelled by the favourable trend in the labour market and wage developments. However, at the end of the forecast horizon, employment growth is likely to cool as the labour market mismatch takes a negative turn. In addition, export growth has already slowed and we expect growth in export markets to cool further in the coming years.

In less than a year from now, on 1^st July 2019, the instant payment system of Hungary will go live - fundamentally changing the way Hungarians make payments.   

The implementation of the instant payment system is an historic step not only for GIRO, a leading provider of services to financial institutions in Hungary, but for the entire Hungarian financial system, because it will bring changes and significant advantages to all participants in the national payment ecosystem.

The new payment system will operate 24/7/365 and will settle all single credit transfers up to the value of HUF 10 million within five seconds. It will also enable consumers to initiate instant credit transfers using just a mobile telephone number – so that the payer does not need to know the payee’s bank account details to transfer funds.

The ‘Request to Pay’ service is often referred to as an alternative payment method to the so called ‘yellow cheque’, a common method of paying utility bills in Hungary, because the execution of the payment by the bank is always subject to the payer’s authorisation.

The central infrastructure of instant payments will be developed and implemented by GIRO Zrt. in partnership with Nets A/S group. Nets is one of Europe’s leading digital payment service providers, with instant payments solutions already live in Denmark, Italy and Slovenia.

GIRO has recently completed a major milestone in its instant payment implementation project. Nets has delivered the bespoke instant clearing software on time, which has all the necessary Hungary-specific features and meets all quality requirements. GIRO has configured the hardware infrastructure required for the installation and operation of the clearing software. Initial testing has been completed and the results are very promising.

GIRO Zrt. is committed to delivering the instant payment system on time. The timely completion of the project’s first major milestone demonstrates this commitment, and will serve as a foundation for future successes.  

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Global Digital Banking Platforms, Q3 2018. Temenos’ digital banking platform received the highest score in the current offering category after Forrester evaluated the strengths and weakness of the top 10 digital banking platform solutions against 40 criteria. Temenos also achieved the highest score in the market presence category.

According to the Forrester report, “Temenos’ banking platform excels with [its] current offering”. It also noted Temenos for its customer-focused product configuration, which it stated was “second to none in this Wave”. Temenos offers an upgradeable, packaged banking platform built on open banking architecture, which enables banks to scale at the pace of their business, lower their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and deliver compelling customer experiences.

Temenos serves over 3,000 financial institutions in over 150 countries around the world supporting them to realize their digital transformation. With its robust partner model – which now counts over 4,750 Temenos skilled consultants – the company delivered over 250 go-live projects in the previous year. The Forrester report noted that Temenos’ banking platform’s “ability to support testing, delivery and upgrades both on-premises and out-of-the-cloud are second to none.”

According to the report by Jost Hoppermann, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester: "Today’s banks need to cope with a changing and continuously increasing stream of business requirements, such as compliance with regulatory rules, better customer service, creating innovative banking products services, increased operational efficiency, and cost management. Both business and technology leaders are aware that their often-severely-overaged banking platforms do not provide a foundation for remaining competitive much longer. [Application development and delivery] teams need to identify state-of-the-art banking platforms that will help their bank survive in the fast-paced world of open digital banking.”

David Arnott, Chief Executive Officer, Temenos, commented: “We are excited that Temenos is a Leader the 2018 Forrester Wave, which we believe consolidates our overall market position as the world’s No. 1 banking software provider. Our relentless investment in R&D and aggressive innovation roadmaps make our software product the best digital banking platform in the market. Banks are now embarking on IT overhaul projects to respond to the changing market and customer needs and Temenos is the trusted digital banking platform partner that can help them innovate now and in the future.” 

The Forrester Wave report on banking platforms evaluates vendors according to their current offering, strategy and market presence.

Temenos was also named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms, Q3 2017 receiving the highest scores amongst all vendors in the customer experience criterion. Temenos believes that these two reports demonstrate that it has an exceptional front-to-back office offering for banks investing in digital transformation cycles.

Temenos was also named a “Global Power Seller” by Forrester for new business deals for 12 consecutive  years based on the analyst firms’ Global Banking Platform Deals Survey 2018 and cited as a Top Global Player for combined deals, which measures new and extended business across the regions of the world (True Digital Banking Drives Interest In Core Banking, April 2018, Forrester).

Turnkey open banking platform provider, Token.io Limited, today announces it is the first Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) to conduct an end-to-end payment with public bank APIs for each of the CMA9, a group of the nine largest banks and building societies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Reaching this milestone makes the UK the only region in the world with open and functioning Open Banking APIs.

Marten Nelson, Co-founder of Token, comments: “This is a huge achievement, not just for Token, but for the whole banking ecosystem. Open Banking payments are faster than direct debits, more secure than credit cards and provide a richer user experience for consumers and businesses. The UK is paving the way forward to an API-led economy and we are delighted to have played such a significant part in giving end users simpler, faster banking that they have more control over.”

Catherine McGrath, Managing Director of Retail Banking at Barclays comments: “Open Banking presents an exciting opportunity to evolve the way we currently bank and put our customers in charge of their data, enabling them to do exciting things with a broad range of parties. That is why it is great to be working together with Token and other third party providers to offer consumers better ways to manage their money."

Matt Cox, Head of Open Banking at Nationwide, comments: “Open Banking will revolutionise the way people do their day-to-day banking and manage their finances. Token is at the forefront of this innovation and we’re excited to see what they, and other third party providers, can do with Open Banking.”

Russell Saunders, Managing Director of Global Payments at Lloyds Banking Group, adds: “Innovation in the market that gives consumers greater choice, control and transparency should be embraced, and Open Banking is a significant opportunity for the industry to work together to shape the future of banking. Lloyds Banking Group is working with Token and other third party providers to enable consumers to benefit from Open Banking.”

Token was invited to participate by the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), which was set up by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in 2016 to deliver Open Banking. Token was able to bring together each bank’s implementation of the Open Banking APIs and reduce complexity for developers by delivering a single, unified platform for customers to connect to. Token’s self-serve testing approach also helped banks to validate that their implementation of the flexible specification appropriately supported PISP functionality including a myriad of authentication methods, optional endpoints and multi-use data fields.

Imran Gulamhuseinwala OBE, Trustee of the OBIE, says: “This is a tremendous achievement to be the first to market with active, open APIs in payments – moving customers ever nearer to reaping the benefits of innovative products and services.  The rest of the world is watching and learning from our experiences and I firmly believe in time will see how access to extraordinary new services will drive economic dynamism.”

“The full potential of open banking can only be reached when true customer-centricity is achieved,” adds Nelson. “Account holders can permit a merchant, bank or another service provider to access their account data and initiate payments, all while enjoying a much richer user experience. However, unless a business can offer this facility to all of its customers, the proposition falls flat. That’s why Token enables full interoperability between banks, merchants, and service providers via a single standardised Open Banking platform. All parties can connect immediately, securely and at a lower cost than with any other provider.”

Via its universal open API banking platform, Token enables banks, merchants and other third party providers (TPPs) to connect to any bank in the EU for payments and account information requests, thereby solving the integration pain being felt across the industry caused by multiple, proprietary bank APIs.

Today Instantor, the Swedish fintech company making financial decisions easy, announces, WDSK, The World Domination Starter Kit. The WDSK is an initiative to support start-ups and scale-ups to develop next-generation products by giving them access to Instantor´s Bank API with no associated costs for new Instantor customers. By using Instantors bank API, developers will have access to transactional data from over 300 banks in 25 countries, with the potential to reach half a billion people. Instantor´s bank API has an unrivaled reach, and the WDSK initiative includes access to several markets outside new Open Banking legislation. The authentication and the end user’s interaction with banks are handled by Instantor, and the data can be accessed once the end user has given their consent.

Commenting on the launch, Simon Edström, CEO of Instantor says:

“At Instantor we are in the business of making peoples financial lives easier, we want to fuel the development of new financial solutions that help people to change their lives. I believe that by opening up our technology combined with the power of great developers, we can support ideas to become fully realised and transformational products. By using our Bank API businesses can now access data and implement something in an instant. 

Since 2010 Instantor has developed advanced analytical solutions and products using transactional data. To digitise the lending process, Instantor is empowering financial organisations to make better risk assessments using AI, as well as supporting people in emerging financial markets to verify and prove their identity, income, and employer directly online.

Helene Westerlund, CTO of Instantor, says:

“I'm excited to see what innovative new products will come from WDSK. We are experts in interpreting data, and we want to give startups an opportunity and empower them to build and launch consumer-friendly products quickly. As the price of data diminishes, there is now a real tangible opportunity to start making intelligent products on top of the data. 

Horizon Software(Horizon), the leading global technology provider for electronic trading and investment management, announced today that the China-based securities firm Caitong Securities  has gone live with its Options Trading platform to trade SSE 50 ETF options on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.   

Founded in 1993, Caitong Securities is based in Hangzhou and now has more than 80 brokerage outlets as well as over 2000 employees. The company primarily engages in securities brokerage, investment banking, asset management, proprietary securities trading and research.

Chunting XU, General Manager of Caitong Securities' derivatives department, commented: "We are very impressed that the professional team at Horizon Software has shown the capability to support our specific market requirements. Since the Shanghai Stock Exchange launched SSE 50 ETF Options in 2015 we have been preparing for this opportunity and researching the right technology platform to help us grow our project effectively. Horizon came out far ahead of the competition because of the strength of its systems, particularly its business coverage, software stability, flexibility, scalability and expert support, all of which are crucial qualities for us meeting our goals quickly and efficiently." 

He adds: "The support provided by Horizon's team during the implementation process has ensured a smooth transition and we are very happy with the result. I know it has been working hard with us and this effort is both truly appreciated and reflected in its system."

Adrien Mastronardi, North Asia Sales Director of Horizon Software, said: "We are very pleased to be part of Caitong's success and development, culminating in its ability to trade SSE 50 ETF Options on the Shanghai Stock Exchange using our trading algorithms, which allow it to create its own proprietary quantitative strategies based on volatility. We are proud to have delivered our advanced technology platform and high-performance systems to develop options trading opportunities across several APAC nations, especially in China."

He adds: "We have recently significantly expanded our presence in China, working with an increasing number of Chinese securities firms to implement our system, which is testament to our being a leading technology provider internationally. Long-term partnerships in China such as this one are very important to us; they underline our strong track record of helping clients meet their business objectives with our products and services."

Horizon has been empowering capital market players for over two decades by building powerful algorithmic technology into its electronic trading platform and offering trading opportunities through direct connectivity to more than 70 exchanges worldwide. Horizon enables clients to quickly create, test and implement automated trading strategies in real-time, in line with its 'Trade Your Way' philosophy. Its platform can be easily integrated with rich APIs and allows proprietary strategies to be built while keeping traders' code confidential.