Hamish Monk - Community Author: Finextra Research

How can banks improve their onboarding processes?

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

How can banks improve their onboarding processes?

In a report published by UK Finance in January 2025, the trade association stated that in an “increasingly competitive and congested financial services industry, with legacy banks and fintechs going head to head, improving the customer onboarding experience is key for those serious about growth.” Onboarding is the process by which financial insti...

21 October 2025 /retail

Pre-payment KYP: The next frontier for cross-border payments

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

Pre-payment KYP: The next frontier for cross-border payments

Tackling fraud and misdirected payments is a war of two fronts: it must be waged both domestically and across borders. Thus far, the fight against domestic fraud has been something of a success, with local pre-payment checks – such as the United Kingdom’s Confirmation of Payee (CoP), introduced in 2020, and Europe’s Verification of Payee (VoP), eff...

20 October 2025 /payments

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

What is Open Finance?

On 13 October 2025, the FCA announced a partnership to accelerate the delivery of Open Finance in the UK: “We've been working with the industry to deliver Open Finance,” it said in a press release, “which will give people control over how they manage their money and plan their finances for the future.” This news came ahead of the launch of the FC...

13 October 2025 /payments

AI-powered banking agents: How FIs can support Europe’s micro-business long tail

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

AI-powered banking agents: How FIs can support Europe’s micro-business long tail

The small and micro-business long tail of Europe’s economy is vast. According to the European Commission, small businesses represent 99% of all European enterprises, and account for 48% of total employment within enterprises. Despite being the backbone of the economy – and critical to growth, innovation, and productivity – the small and micro-bus...

07 October 2025 /ai

Could FX strategies be a game-changer for corporate treasurers?

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

Could FX strategies be a game-changer for corporate treasurers?

With the macroeconomic outlook seeming more unpredictable than it has in years, the foreign exchange (FX) market is experiencing considerable volatility. Shifting trade policies are proving a notable headwind – driving liquidity and working capital challenges, as well as geopolitical uncertainty. Fortunately, there are opportunities to be seized a...

06 October 2025 /payments

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

What is API standardisation?

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are a millennial innovation opened out to the financial sector through a series of open banking regulations – the first instalment of which, the Payment Services Directive, was introduced in 2007. APIs transport requests – in the form of data – from one system to the other, informing the provider what the...

01 October 2025 /payments

Emerging technologies revolutionising cross-border payments

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

Emerging technologies revolutionising cross-border payments

This is an excerpt from a Sibos special edition report: The Future of Cross-Border Payments 2026: Strategies for Success. Cutting-edge technologies like AI – and its content-creator cousin, GenAI – are set to revolutionise almost every area of the financial services industry. Particularly exposed to change is the payments landscape, with AI slated...

01 October 2025 /Sibos

Unified lending platforms: An answer to the SME service gap?

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

Unified lending platforms: An answer to the SME service gap?

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the global economy. In Europe, 99% of businesses are SMEs – and provide jobs to over 85 million citizens. In the United States, meanwhile, McKinsey estimates that small businesses contribute almost half (44%) of the gross domestic product (GDP), and are responsible for a significant por...

24 September 2025 /Sibos

Crypto’s embrace of extremism risks derailing legitimate economic progress

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

Crypto’s embrace of extremism risks derailing legitimate economic progress

A global pattern is emerging: extreme right-wing organisations and state actors are using cryptocurrencies to make clandestine donations to likeminded political movements. A big development came from the UK in May 2025, when Nigel Farage announced at a conference in Las Vegas that Reform would be the first party in Europe to accept cryptocurrencies...

23 September 2025 /crypto

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

What is Verification of Payee?

Verification of Payee (VoP) is a pre-payment security measure which confirms whether a payment recipient’s name matches the bank account details provided by the payer, before a transaction is executed. Not to be confused with Confirmation of Payee (CoP) – which performs a similar function, though specific to the United Kingdom and introduced by P...

16 September 2025 /regulation

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

What are social engineering scams?

Social engineering is the next cybersecurity battleground. In August 2025 alone, social engineering and multi-chain attacks drove a 15% crypto hack spike – with $163 million lost across 16 major breaches, targeting exchanges, DeFi protocols, and individual users. According to the on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, one investor lost 783 Bitcoin, worth $91 mi...

08 September 2025 /crime

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

What is blockchain?

Since its ideation over 30 years ago, blockchain’s use by the private and public sector has grown exponentially. In August 2025, Bloomberg reported that the United States had put its gross domestic product (GDP) data on blockchain, marking yet another foray by President Trump into the world of crypto. Google Cloud, meanwhile, is said to be develo...

02 September 2025 /crypto

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