Fintech News Issue #65 April 27th, 2016

This week the three payment nerds Brian, Faisal and Mike are back at it again. Faisal discusses the recent Money2020 Europe Conference that was held in Copenhagen for the very first time. Brian discusses his coverage of the TRANSACT show by ETA (Electronic Transaction Association) and Mike tells us all about how HomeHero is enrolled in TechStars with Cedars Sinai Hospital.

After writing about whether we are creating faster horses when we think of applying open sourced technologies to banking, some more thoughts occurred to me...

Business Insider has been covering the sector closely and has rounded up the 40 most exciting people in the scene right now.

Since Bitcoin we have a rather widely adopted option of transferring digital value directly between two parties. Which means we actually no longer have to transfer payment information in order to pay.

The Fintech Summit, an initiative of the Tech Tour and the International Venture Club, will take place in Paris May 3-4. The programme will revolve around the hottest topics and trends in the Fintech sector such as: Fintech market perspectives, Blockchain, Fraud & Cyber Security in the Fintech industry.

Fintech is currently undergoing a natural evolution stage. Previous three years were a «toothbrush» era: when you perform just one function, but better than anyone, and when you are irreplaceable and used every day. The long-awaited turning point came in 2015 when all services started merging with each other in some way.

This year's report covers more than 64,199 incidents, of which 2,260 were confirmed data breaches. About 1,368 of the incidents and 795 of the confirmed breaches occurred in the financial services industry.

To say that the mobile payments industry is undergoing a state of flux is a bit of an understatement.

Blockchain fever hasn’t been limited to financial institutions. Along with banks and FinTech startups, non-financial players have been paying attention and looking for ways to leverage the opportunities that distributed ledger technology opens. Let’s look at some interesting examples of the non-financial applications of blockchain technology.

This new generation believe that consumer banking services must travel at least as fast as their 4G connection. 21st century software groups are targeting the preserve of the traditional banks and winning millennial custom.

Consumers experience a simple, efficient signup process in every other facet of their daily lives. But the extra effort needed when trying to buy financial products online leaves many unhappy.

• Over 2 billion smart payment cards shipped globally in 2015 – up 34% on the previous year • Gathering pace of EMV migration in the US – smart payment cards shipments up 211% on 2014 figures • Demand for contactless cards soars – over half of all smart card shipments featured ‘tap and go’ technology outside the Americas