Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 12 December 2017
Bank of America revamps mobile app – 24 million users and counting
Bank of America today announced a series of updates to its award-winning mobile banking app and online banking platform to better connect to its customers’ life priorities. These latest enhancements provide customers new, interactive ways to use the app and the ability to further personalize the user experience, helping them meet their unique goals.
“We continue to deliver new solutions based upon our customers’ life priorities,” said Michelle Moore, head of digital banking at Bank of America. “With 24 million mobile customers and growing, we’re developing interactive ways customers can use the app and personalize it to help simplify their financial lives.”
B-Hive and Stockholm Fintech sign MoU
On Friday, December 8, B-Hive and Stockholm Fintech Hub signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will allow them to collaborate and cooperate through areas of mutual interest.
Fabian Vandenreydt, Executive Chairman of B-Hive, signed the MoU alongside Matthew Argent, CEO and Founder of Stockholm Fintech Hub, which states that both hubs mutually agree on the expediency of further cooperation in several areas, including a mutual exchange of trends, research and more.
Slush and Connecting with Stockholm
Collaborating with Stockholm Fintech Hub was a natural next step in our relationship with the Nordic region. Since B-Hive’s mission two years ago to Stockholm, we have been actively linking to this community. One of the ways we have connected to the Nordic region is through conferences—including Slush. Visiting this “tech conference of the year” was actually an invitation from the Flanders Investment and Trade department to make sure the Nordics are on the map of B-Hive.
Credit Agricole and Wirecard forge e-payment and acquiring partnership
Crédit Agricole Payment Services and Wirecard announced today that they have signed a letter of intent to enter into exclusive negotiations to conclude a partnership to offer an innovative and differentiated service offering based on a high-performance technology in the field of electronic payment acceptance and acquiring. The goal will be to launch a range of cross-channel acceptance and pan-European acquiring offerings for French merchants and marketplaces in France and abroad.
By capitalizing on the respective strengths of Crédit Agricole Payment Services and Wirecard, this partnership will enable both companies to grow in a rapidly changing market.
Credit union trade body joins Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU) today announced it has joined Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), an industry-supported, not-for-profit established to build, promote and broadly back Ethereum-based technology best practices, open standards and open-source reference architectures. NAFCU is the first non-profit financial services trade association to join EEA.
“NAFCU is pleased to be invited to join Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and we look forward to contributing to one of the world’s leading blockchain technology initiatives,” said NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger. “With this new partnership, NAFCU hopes to bring critical knowledge of blockchain technology to the credit union industry and create an innovative environment where NAFCU members can inform technology firms of what credit unions need most.”
Established in February, EEA’s members include more than 300 organizations in technology, financial services, government, healthcare, energy, pharmaceuticals, and a number of fast-growing Ethereum startups. Several of the largest companies in the world who are also EEA members include Microsoft, Intel, Samsung and Accenture.
Iguazio opens Apac HQ in Singapore
Iguazio, the leading data platform powering continuous analytics and event-driven applications, announced the opening of its Asia Pacific (APAC) regional headquarters in Singapore.
iguazio announced Singapore-based Grab as a marquee customer in September 2017 and is rapidly growing its customers across industries including financial services, automotive, IoT and telecommunications that require real-time data processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In July iguazio raised US $33 million in Series B funding from investors including Verizon Ventures [NYSE: VZ], Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group, Dell Technologies Capital and leading venture capitals, bringing total funding to US $48 million. Funding from the latest round is being used for the company’s global expansion.
“We’re seeing great demand in the APAC region, which will generate a third of global revenues related to data driven applications,” said iguazio CEO Asaf Somekh. “Our APAC expansion better positions iguazio to work with innovative companies such as Grab which are driven by the growing up-take of digital technologies among consumers and businesses.
