Financial Platform News
News and analysis coverage of financial platforms, ranging from payment processing and credit through to retail banking and investment services.
Grab expands finance business with consumer loans services and wealth management
Asian ride-hailing business Grab has deepened its financial services push by announcing that it will offer consumer loans services in Singapore and roll-out wealth management produ...
Wirecard: The rise and fall of the German FinTech
German FinTech business Wirecard collapsed back in June when its auditor EY refused to sign off on the 2019 financial accounts, following months of investigation into missing money...
Expansion: Amazon to open ten new warehouses in India
Amazon’s Indian business has announced that it will open 10 new warehouses in the country. Additionally, the company will begin offering auto insurance, in two moves that wil...
WhatsApp to partner with more Indian banks
WhatsApp plans to team up with more Indian lenders to expand banking services in rural areas and for lower income individuals, the messaging platform’s country head said.
Prosecutors arrest three in suspected Wirecard criminal racket
Prosecutors have arrested three former executives of German FinTech Wirecard, saying it suspected them of masterminding a criminal racket to fake the company’s financial acco...
UK to beef up City watchdog powers over crypto-assets
The UK’s finance ministry has proposed giving the City’s watchdog new powers to regulate crypto assets like bitcoin, and also outlined a crackdown on misleading sales l...
Ant Group lines up dual listing on Hong Kong and Shanghai markets
Ant Group, the FinTech wing of Alibaba Group, has stated that it has begun the process of a dual listing in Hong Kong and on Shanghai’s market, kicking off one of the world&#...
Singapore says blockchain payments project is now ready for commercial rollout
Singapore has developed a blockchain-based payments network that could enable faster and cheaper international settlements, authorities have said, noting that the next step was a c...
German prosecutors open Wirecard money laundering probe
German state prosecutors are investigating individuals at Wirecard for suspected money laundering, adding to probes into alleged fraud, balance falsification and market manipulatio...
Deutsche Bank and Google agree a multi-year strategic partnership
Deutsche Bank has said it has agreed a strategic, multi-year partnership with Google to give the German lender access to cloud services and drive innovation in technology-based fin...
Brazil central bank says WhatsApp payments service faces further review
Brazil’s central bank president has said that Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp would be allowed to launch its new payments service in the country, but called for p...
EU banks to take on Visa and Mastercard with new payments system
Sixteen banks from Germany, France and three other euro zone countries said a “truly European” payments system was expected to be up and running in 2022 to fully digita...
Germany passes the buck on Wirecard scandal
Germany’s accountancy watchdog has denied blame for failing to spot problems at collapsed payments firm Wirecard, the latest in a string of agencies to shirk responsibility f...
Lithuania dabbles in crypto-coin as cbanks look for ways to fend off Facebook
The Baltic nation of Lithuania is about to issue the first central bank-produced digital coin in the euro zone, part of a project to trial state-backed digital currencies and block...