Finextra Research: Latest fintech news, analysis, interviews, features and opinion by industry experts

HSBC joins $20m funding round for financial crime specialist Quantexa

Big data and enterprise intelligence outfit Quantexa has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Dawn Capital and backed by HSBC and Albion Capital.

03 August 2018

News/Money Laundering

Revolut slashes fraud with disposable virtual cards

Digital banking startup Revolut is hailing its recent introduction of disposable virtual cards for online purchases, claiming a 30% reduction in card fraud cases.

26 July 2018

News/Money Laundering

Crooks use mobile games to launder money from stolen credit cards

Cybercrooks are buying and selling in-game currency from mobile games such as Clash of Clans to launder money from stolen credit cards, according to security firm Kromtech Security

23 July 2018

News/Money Laundering

ThetaRay secures $30 million investment

Financial crime threat detection outfit ThetaRay has completed a Series B fund-raising round of over $30 million.

04 July 2018

News/Money Laundering

Banks trial KYC on R3 Corda blockchain platform

More than three dozen firms - including BNP Paribas, China Merchants Bank and Deutsche Bank - have carried out a global trial of a know your customer (KYC) application built on R3's Corda blockchain platform.

28 June 2018

News/Money Laundering

IBM Watson expands further into RegTech

IBM is expanding Watson further into the RegTech arena, pitching the cognitive computing platform as uniquely placed to help banks deal with an increasingly complex regulatory and risk environment.

20 June 2018

News/Money Laundering

Spanish banks move ahead with blockchain platform for digital IDs

A consortium of Spanish banks is moving ahead with the development of a blockchain-based digital identity platform slated for live testing before the end of the year.

20 June 2018

News/Money Laundering

ABN Amro picks ThetaRay machine learning tech to fight money laundering

ABN Amro has signed up for machine learning technology from ThetaRay to help it tackle money laundering and terrorist financing risks.

19 June 2018

News/Money Laundering

ECB's Hakkarainen warns on IT outsourcing risks

As the digitalisation of banking gathers pace, outsourcing of key IT services to third parties poses an increasing risk to the sector, warns a senior European Central Bank figure.

06 June 2018

News/Money Laundering

Nordic banks explore shared KYC utility

Leading Nordic banks DNB Bank, Danske Bank, Nordea Bank, Svenska Handelsbanken, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken have announced plans to set up a KYC utility as a joint venture company to explore the creation of a shared infrastructure for know-your-customer processing.

31 May 2018

News/Money Laundering

HSBC applies AI to track financial crime

Having racked up billions of dollars in fines for money laundering and sanctions busting, HSBC is cleaning up its act with the global roll out of an AI tool capable of analysing data logs and tracking transactions within a customer's wider network.

09 April 2018

News/Money Laundering

India's central bank issues cryptocurrency ban

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has banned regulated banks and its account holders from dealing in cryptocurrencies.

06 April 2018

News/Money Laundering

South Africa's central bank mulls cryptocurrency regulations

The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) is setting up a dedicated unit to monitor cryptocurrency and fintech developments and inform future regulations and its first job will be to set up a proof of concept (PoC) for DLT-based interbank clearing and settlement.

04 April 2018

News/Money Laundering

UK could scrap 1p and 2p coins

With Brits increasingly turning to electronic payments, the UK government has raised the possibility of ditching 1p and 2p coins and even £50 notes.

14 March 2018

News/Money Laundering

US judge says cryptocurrencies are commodities

US lawmakers continue to wrestle with how to approach cryptocurrencies, as a federal judge says the likes of bitcoin can be treated as commodities by the CFTC, FinCEN says money transmitter rules apply to ICOs, and Wyoming's state legislature clears a bill exempting some crypto assets from securities laws.

07 March 2018

News/Money Laundering

DNB tests mobile passporting for international clients

DNB is experimenting with a mobile app that scans user passports and faces to identify customers from across borders for ID verification and digital onboarding.

02 March 2018

News/Money Laundering

Swiss watchdog tweaks digital onboarding rules

Swiss financial markets regulator Finma has updated its rules for digital client onboarding to reflect advances in technology such as the ability to authenticate a user with a "selfie with liveness detection".

16 February 2018

News/Money Laundering

UAE banks and regulators to explore blockchain-based KYC utility

Regulatory authorities in Abu Dhabi are kicking off a programme with a consortium of the region's banks to develop a shared KYC utility, possibly underpinned by distributed ledger technology.

07 February 2018

News/Money Laundering

Cambridge Blockchain and IHS Markit join forces to bring DLT to KYC data collection

Cambridge Blockchain and IHS Markit have teamed up to bring distributed digital identity technology to the collection and management of know-your-customer information.

31 January 2018

News/Money Laundering

Signicat snags EUR1.6 million in EU funding to create digital ID framework

Norway's Signicat has secured €1.36 million in phase two funding from the EU's Horizon 2020 programme with the objective of creating a fully-compliant ID assurance and digital onboarding toolbox for use by European financial institutions.

25 January 2018