This year, the financial community can look forward to the 27th edition of the SWIFT African Regional Conference (ARC), taking place virtually on 23-24 November 2021. Due to the global pandemic, this event has shifted to a digital experience for the African community, making it easier than ever to be part of Africa’s premier
Be part of Africa’s premier financial services event Like many other events, the global pandemic has prompted us to shift the SWIFT African Regional Conference (ARC) to a unique and immersive digital experience, taking place virtually on 23-24 November 2021. Register today! The good news is that you can still expect to hear from and
China Minsheng Bank, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase are latest to go live to support small businesses and consumers with fast, secure, predictable cross-border payments Rapid adoption of SWIFT Go since launch in July reinforces SWIFT strategy for instant, frictionless cross-border transactions SWIFT today announces that 100 banks around the world have signed up for
Read the white paper here SWIFT, the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, has today published a paper that outlines the potential for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to transform international finance, and details how SWIFT is leveraging APIs as part of its strategy to enable instant transactions anywhere in the world. APIs are
REGISTER HERE In the last 12 months, there has been a radical shift in the payments behavior of African consumers. The McKinsey Financial Insights Pulse Survey conducted in October 2020 found that most consumers expect to increase their use of digital and mobile banking services after the crisis. Prepaid represents one of the fastest-growing segments
Launched in 2017, SWIFT global payments innovation (gpi) has transformed cross-border payments, providing speed, transparency and traceability across the payment journey. Louise Mostert, Senior Country Manager South Africa at SWIFT sat down with Naa Wilson, Head of Cross Border Payments at Standard Bank – Corporate and Investment Banking division to discuss how SWIFT gpi has
Sending payments across borders requires high levels of collaboration, communication, and trust. And that experience should be as straightforward, simple, and secure as possible. By transforming the SWIFT platform to centrally orchestrate transactions end to end, we are taking the next step towards enabling instant, frictionless cross-border, account-to-account payments. Here, Stephen Lindsay, Platform Evolution –
Over the next two years and beyond, SWIFT will deliver on an exciting strategic roadmap for and with its global community of 11,000 institutions, expanding SWIFT’s capabilities beyond financial messaging to provide a platform for comprehensive transaction management services. This new approach will support and accelerate innovation, paving the way for financial institutions — independently,
The global payments industry is undergoing major change and transformation. With the rate of change accelerating, the financial industry must continue to evolve and innovate in order to stay ahead of customer expectations and deliver instant, frictionless, transactions. SWIFT’s 2020 Community Update – Focus on South Africa, brought together market leaders and industry experts to
DOWNLOAD THE REPORT Retail payments is one of the fastest moving markets in financial services. Investment in retail payments is likely to increase, albeit modestly, despite the impact of COVID-19. Over the last three years, 83% of surveyed banks have increased their investment in retail payments, even though most players were also seeking to reduce
Building on the transparency and speed of SWIFT gpi, the next big improvement in cross-border payments will result from better quality payments data enabled by the adoption of the ISO 20022 standard. SWIFT has recently announced a new strategy with an enhanced approach for ISO 20022 adoption. Financial institutions need to develop a long-term strategy
From our bold new strategy to enable instant, frictionless transactions to ISO 20022 adoption, fighting fraud, new technologies and more, we break down the top 10 takeaways from SWIFT at Sibos’ packed three-day programme. The first ever digital SWIFT at Sibos is officially over, but the conversation continues. From 5-7 October we hosted 11 expert-led sessions covering a
On 1 October 2020, SWIFT announced plans for a new service to help banks improve the experience for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and consumers who send low-value payments across borders. The service will enable these bank customers to make faster, easier, predictable and competitively priced payments all around the world. SWIFT is working with
Combating fraud is one of the most challenging aspects of the modern financial ecosystem, especially in times of crisis. When the world goes through a period of instability or rapid change, as is the case today with the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercriminals are ready and waiting to exploit uncertainty and find gaps in normally hard-edged security
Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co, will deliver the opening keynote at Sibos 2020, the world’s premier financial services event organised by SWIFT. Dimon brings deep industry experience, with a career that spans five decades and senior positions at Citigroup, the Travelers Group, and American Express. He has served as CEO
This year, global member-owned cooperative and leading provider of secure financial messaging services, SWIFT, has announced it will host Sibos – the world’s premier financial services event – online and free of charge in order to make the event accessible to the global financial community during this exceptional and unprecedented year. The event will take
First National Bank (FNB) and UnionPay International (UPI) jointly announced today that UnionPay cardholders will be able to make contactless payments with their cards via FNB Speedpoint® terminals at merchants in South Africa. FNB becomes the first bank in South Africa to accept contactless transactions made with UnionPay cards, providing customers with a safer and
If you know anything about Renovite you will know we love cloud-native payments. We live and breathe it. Even so, I still get amazed sometimes when I really think about the remarkable capabilities a platform like Reno-Cloud delivers. For example, we recently conducted a benchmark test for a leading organisation demonstrating a sustained load of
There are many hidden gems in running payment systems in the cloud. Cost savings that here at Renovite as cloud native providers it is easy for us to take for granted. Take for instance observability. This is being able to see the state of any part of the system at any time, using standard open
AI is not as smart as it thinks it is cautions Janelle Shane in her excellent blog aiweirdness.com and in her book “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You”. AI excels at single “simple” tasks rather than multiple complex ones. One of the examples Janelle gives is about phantom giraffes. AI trained to
In cash-centric societies, the safe and reliable access to banking services and ready cash continues to be of critical importance. The good news is that there is a revolution in progress that will ensure the humble ATM continues to serve consumers in new and personalised ways for many years to come. Many of you will
We are delighted to announce that the SWIFT African Regional Conference (ARC) will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, on 21-23 April 2020. ARC is an annual event bringing together more than 600 leading financial services executives from over 55 countries, across Africa and beyond, to do business and shape the future of Africa’s
The SWIFT global payments innovation (gpi) service is the largest change in cross-border payments over the last 30 years and is the new standard. SWIFT gpi dramatically improves the customer experience in cross-border payments by increasing their speed, transparency and end-to-end tracking. Hundreds of thousands of cross-border payments are being sent every day using the
Callpay has announced the addition of Tyme Bank, Bidvest Bank, Old Mutual Money Account and African Bank to EFTsecure – the first instant EFT solution in South Africa to add these four banks on checkout. EFTsecure opens the eCommerce market to users who do not have a credit card, with the most advanced EFT payment
In June 2019, SWIFT published a vision paper, ‘Payments: Looking to the future’, setting out a vision for the future of how value will be exchanged by financial institutions around the world. SWIFT’s vision is simple: to make cross-border payments as seamless and convenient as domestic ones: instant, accessible and ubiquitous. Denis Kruger, head of
SWIFT’s 26th African Regional Conference (ARC) was the largest yet, gathering more than 600 participants from 55 countries in Accra, Ghana, to talk about the future of Africa’s financial services sector. His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of the Ghana, opened ARC 2019 and explained the steps being taken by Ghana to enable the digital
Altron Bytes MS and Renovite to deliver 21st century ATM services. Leading technology firm Altron Bytes Managed Solutions (Altron Bytes MS) and payments specialist Renovite Technologies have announced a new strategic partnership which will revolutionise the ATM channel. The agreement will see the two businesses help financial institutions bring innovative new services to market, echoing
Written by Alois Maluvu, Financial Crime Compliance expert, SWIFT Managing risk in financial institutions has never been more complex. As cyber-attacks continue to evolve and increase in frequency and sophistication, cyber security has become a major area of attention and investment. Complying with the large number of global regulations that aim to combat money laundering and
SWIFT will hold the 26th edition of the African Regional Conference (ARC) on 18-20 June 2019 in Accra, Ghana. The President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo, will open the event. ARC is an annual event which brings together more than 500 senior financial professionals from across the continent to discuss the
With 2019 now in full swing, Renovite Technologies’ Issa Keshek, regional manager for Africa, considers banking innovation and what we can expect in the year ahead. Innovation and transformation will be key themes in the African banking sector as we continue to move through 2019. Many of those who previously lacked access to financial services
The payments industry faces immense pressure on multiple fronts. Waves of technological advances, regulatory scrutiny, and changes in consumer and client behaviours and expectations, are having a significant impact on what was once a staid and relatively unchanging business. Consumers want their retail experience to be replicated in the banking world; this means instant, frictionless
In June 2018, SWIFT published a white paper exploring the trends in transaction banking in Africa. The paper reveals that cross-border banking has evolved over the last five years, with intra-Africa payments and clearing increasing and the use of regional currencies rising. The paper looks at what is driving change in African transaction banking and
According to a new white paper by SWIFT examining Africa’s cross-border payment landscape, intra-Africa payments and clearing is increasing in importance and there is a rise in the use of African currencies for cross-border payments. Africa’s trading relationships are evolving. Over the past decade, trade has begun to move away from developed countries and towards
A new white paper from SWIFT, mapping commercial payment flows against financial flows in Africa, reveals that that intra-Africa payments and clearing is increasing in importance. It also points to an increase in the use of African currencies for cross-border payments. The white paper, published at the SWIFT African Regional Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, aims
Visa, the world’s leader in digital payments, announced a tech startup based in Kenya, Mookh Africa, as the overall winner of its first ever Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) Everywhere Initiative, a global program aimed at startups and designed to encourage the development of the next big thing in payments. The winning solution beat 11 other
• Leading startups from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia among 12 finalists from 238 entries • Will compete in Johannesburg (South Africa) for a chance to secure funding of up to US$50,000; Winners will be announced on July 24 Leading fintech companies from the dynamic Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) technology startup community have made
Visa has announced that its Visa’s Everywhere Initiative, a global innovation program that tasks start-ups to solve commerce challenges of tomorrow, and further enhance their own product propositions and provide visionary solutions for Visa’s vast network of partners, will expand into the Sub Sahara Africa (SSA) region. Entrants in the first-ever Sub-Sahara Visa’s Everywhere Initiative
Visa has announced the results of an independent study conducted by Roubini ThoughtLab and commissioned by Visa examining theeconomic impact of increasing the use of digital payments in major cities around the world. The study estimates that relying more on electronic payments, such as cards and mobile payments, could yield a net benefit of up
A new Visa survey of 500 South Africans exploring awareness and perceptions of biometric authentication, confirms that consumers continue to have a strong interest in new biometric technologies that make their lives easier. New forms of authentication, such as fingerprint, facial, and voice recognition, can make unlocking accounts and payments much easier and more convenient
UnionPay International has announced that the official website of Yiwu Market ( www.yiwugou.com ) now connects to UnionPay Cross-border B2B Payment Service Platform (hereinafter referred to as “UnionPay Cross-border B2B Platform”). Purchasers outside mainland China are able to pay safely and conveniently with UnionPay cards issued overseas to buy goods at www.yiwugou.com. This cooperation between
Visa announced a suite of sensory branding that will support the Visa brand in an expanded universe of connected, payment-enabled devices. These new sound, animation and haptic (vibration) cues will help signify completed transactions in digital and physical retail environments when you pay with Visa. The sound of Visa will debut in Visa’s global advertising
UnionPay International announced today that it has reached cooperation with Banque Misr in Egypt. The two sides have agreed to enable UnionPay acceptance at all the Bank’s local merchants by the first quarter of 2018. The agreement enhances UnionPay acceptance penetration at the local POS terminals to 40%. Now, cardholders are already able to withdraw
South Africa has just got its own version of Venmo, one of the US’s most successful payment platforms owned by PayPal that processes $25 billion in person to person payments annually. The Slide app, founded by three young South Africans who recently returned from living in the States, has been developed to change the way
UnionPay International has recently concluded a comprehensive cooperation agreement with Banque Populaire, the second largest bank in Morocco. Mr Chen Zhi, Vice Chairman of China UnionPay was delighted to attend the ceremony. Currently, UnionPay cards are accepted at all POS terminals in Morocco, and ATM coverage is increasing rapidly. As one of the emerging popular
UnionPay International and Attijariwafa, the largest commercial bank in Morocco, jointly announced the launch of ATM acceptance in Casablanca, with which all their 2,000 ATMs will soon be enabled to accept UnionPay credit and debit cards. This will increase UnionPay’s ATM acceptance coverage in Morocco from 15% to 45%. Morocco is one of the emerging
Visa held the 2017 Merchant Forum in Cape Town recently, bringing their global experts to share insights with local merchants and showcase their new merchant focused offerings that enable greater customer engagement, marketing collaboration, and data insights. The forum was specifically designed to speak to non-bank Visa clients that are on the acceptance side of
UnionPay International announced that it has deepened its cooperation with Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), the largest bank in Kenya. First, the two will jointly issue the first UnionPay card with the mobile QuickPass function in Kenya this month, supporting the upgrade of the local payment industry through product enhancement. Second, with the official website of
Visa Inc, Digital commerce is the fastest growing area of payments, as more connected devices become payment devices. Consumers have more ways to pay than ever before, whether through a browser, mobile app, or connected device. Today’s six billion connected devices will exceed 20 billion in the next three years. But, when a consumer making
Visa, a global payments technology company, announced that it has opened its regional headquarters for the Western and Central Africa region in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. Visa staff will work with local governments, financial institutions and merchants to bring the benefits of electronic payments, and introduce new payments technologies such as mVisa to more people in
Africa is coming off an enviable streak of strong growth. For the past 16 years, the region has maintained an average GDP growth rate of five percent, which has outperformed the global average by about two percentage points per annum. However, recent disruptions in global commodity prices and greater competition for global trade have made
