Banks are coming under increasing pressure to update legacy systems and provide a more digitized experience to customers, automated bots are another tool beginning to be used; while most banks are still in pilot mode, some are beginning to have wider adoption as they have seen how technology in other areas of the bank have improved efficiency and experience; "The technology works and banks are starting to have more confidence in them," explained KPMG's Managing Director for Emerging Technology Risk Services Kiran Nagaraj, bots can help make interaction with customers more efficient and allow for high-volume, repetitive processes and tasks to be done a lot faster. Source
Red envelope gifting is a Chinese New Year tradition that has become digitized as a result of advanced payment processing; the January 27 weekend marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year and the country is expected to transact over 100 billion digital envelopes, an increase from 32 billion in 2015 which reported a 1,000% increase from the prior year; payment processors integrated with social media have increasingly been gaining market share and supporting digital transaction growth; bitcoin transactions are also expected to increase for the Chinese New Year. Source
Motif Investing provides a unique platform for investors interested in investing in stocks based around different themes; Lend Academy interviews Hardeep Walia in their podcast which provides more details on the investment platform; Motif allows investors to build a thematic investment portfolio with low trading costs; it has over 300,000 investors and is also working with institutional clients. Source
Condor Capital Management's Ken Schapiro analyzed the market's robo adviser offerings by opening and funding more than a dozen accounts with a similar investment profile; all portfolios included an allocation of 60% equities and 40% fixed income however each followed the robo adviser's suggestions within those two categories; the results showed one year performance ranging from 10.75% to 5.55% with international holdings and bond fund variations significantly affecting the returns. Source
The UK's Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) has the potential to significantly change banking for consumers with access to open APIs; the article notes that banks that have only done the minimum to comply with PSD2 may run into issues if we ever see a PSD3; fully embracing PSD2 may save headaches for banks down the road; the trend of open APIs and data sharing is likely to make its way to the US; Japan is also leading the way in this area having explored domestic ACH on blockchain. Source
A white paper from Juniper Research projects mobile wallet transactions to increase to $1.35 trillion globally in 2017, an annual increase of 32%; the data shows that the Far East and China are currently accounting for most of the market transactions with growth specifically from Alipay and WeChat; PayPal and Apple are also noted as leading market providers; in the European market the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) is also expected to be a factor supporting near-term growth in mobile wallet transactions. Source
A new consortium has been developed for internet of things (IoT) blockchain technology; the consortium includes established companies and blockchain startups targeting various industries; overall the consortium will focus on setting blockchain industry standards and developing new solutions for IoT technology. Source
The acquisition of Lawnmower comes at a time when CoinDesk has been expanding their research division, this will only help to enhance that strategy; Ryan Selkis, CoinDesk's managing director said, "The tools and expertise the Lawnmower team has built over the past two years will accelerate the growth of our new research division, and add critical depth to our product team."; Lawnmower first launched in April of 2015 with their micro-investment application for bitcoin's retail investor, from there they built out a research and analysis team to produce insight into digital currencies; "We're thoroughly excited to come onboard and help shape the future of digital currency," said Pieter Gorsira, co-founder and CEO of Lawnmower. Source
American Express has joined the Hyperledger Project; the Hyperledger Project which is hosted by the Linux Foundation and supported by IBM, now includes over 100 members from various industries; in regards to joining the Hyperledger Project, Marc Gordon, executive vice president and chief information officer at American Express said, "We're excited to join Hyperledger, as we're looking to take full advantage of blockchain to deliver new and innovative products for our customers and partners, while transforming existing business processes and applications."; with the firm's membership, senior executive Sastry Durvasula, who is responsible for leading enterprise-wide big data, blockchain, digital payments and partnerships at American Express will join the Hyperledger Project's governing board. Source
PYMNTS.com provides insight from MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes on the Ant Financial merger; the merger represents a strategic deal that Holmes says will significantly benefit the industry and the shareholders of both companies; both companies are leading payment providers with MoneyGram offering global payment processing capabilities and Ant Financial seeking to expand on its market position in payments through Alipay in China; "We are going to see, when this deal goes through, those capabilities getting built out between our two organizations in a much more robust and dynamic way," said Alex Holmes. Source