According to an internal memo seen by the Financial Times, employees of the investment bank will have their own version of a “Chat-GPT-like product,” that is to be used for “general purpose productivity.”

The bot will help with writing, idea generation, and summarising documents through access to third-party models.

“Think of LLM Suite as a research analyst that can offer information, solutions and advice on a topic,” the memo told employees – signed by Mary Erdoes, head of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management business, Teresa Heitsenrether, chief data and analytics officer at the bank, and Mike Uricuoli, CIO of the asset and wealth management unit.

AI in accounting could add £2bn to the UK economy, Sage report finds

It will complement the bank’s other apps that manage sensitive financial information -Connect Coach and SpectrumGPT.

While pockets of the bank first used it earlier this year, around 50,000 employees will now have access to LLM Suite.

According to the FT, the bank developed a proprietary LLM platform in-house because its staff are not permitted to use any consumer AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, or Google’s Gemini, for work purposes.

This is because consumer chatbots are often trained on the inputs of their users, and financial service providers operate under strict regulations to ensure client data does not leave their own secure services.

Last September, rival US bank Morgan Stanley partnered with OpenAI and deployed a GPT-4-powered chatbot that offered financial advisors quick access to all of Morgan Stanley’s intellectual capital.

JPMorgan Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post JPMorgan rolls out Gen AI research analyst to employees appeared first on TechInformed.

The Italian carmaker explained in a statement that this move will better address the “evolving needs of its clients.”

Ferrari has said that it will begin accepting crypto transactions in other countries where crypto is currently legal tender by the end of 2024, after launching in the US last year.

“Ferrari is leveraging the expertise of various companies active in the cryptocurrency payment sector to ensure transaction security,” the Italian carmaker said in its statement.

“These solutions will facilitate dealers in accepting payments without the need to manage cryptocurrencies directly, as these will be converted immediately into traditional currency.”

In the US, Ferrari uses the crypto payment platform ‘Bitpay’, which performs this conversion.

Ferrari said that this approach allows it to verify the source of funds and protect transactions from price fluctuations related to exchange rates.

The high energy usage of cryptocurrencies has deterred other car manufacturers, such as Tesla, from accepting them as a form of payment – although it now accepts the cryptocurrency ‘Dogecoin’ for merchandise purchases.

In 2021, Tesla began accepting Bitcoin before its CEO, Elon Musk, halted it citing “environmental concerns.”

When Ferrari first accepted crypto payments in the US last year, its chief marketing and commercial officer, Enrico Galliera, told Reuters that cryptocurrency providers have made efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.

“Our target to reach for carbon neutrality by 2030 along our whole value chain is absolutely confirmed,” he said in an interview.

Galliera added that the decision came in acknowledgement that many of its clients have invested in crypto.

“Some are young investors who have built their fortunes around cryptocurrencies,” he said. “Others are more traditional investors who want to diversify their portfolios.”

The post Ferrari to accept crypto payments in Europe appeared first on TechInformed.

However, some claim that this also raises security risks, much too large to monitor without automation and insights.

According to observability platform, Dynatrace, 86% of technology leaders say cloud-native technology stacks produce an explosion of data that is beyond humans’ ability to manage.

Additionally, 88% of technology leader respondents added that the complexity of their tech stack has increased in the past year, and over half (51%) say it will continue to increase.

Avoiding tech stack bloat means increased reliance on the cloud, and the use of multicloud services. However, most technology leaders (84%) say that multicloud complexity makes it even more difficult to protect applications from security vulnerabilities and attacks.

This, in turn, is where observability makes its case as a vital component in enterprise tech security.

Offering a single pane of glass view, hybrid observability goes into your tech stack, collects data – including the cloud, and any on-premises storage – and uses technologies such as AI that can identify any anomalies, suggesting a security vulnerability, and flag for better efficiencies.

“It’s really important to observe what’s going on,” says Matt Tuson, general manager EMEA at monitoring firm LogicMonitor.

LogicMonitor utilises AI to catch any problems within the cloud and raises them to “significantly speed up the troubleshooting process.”

“What does that mean to the business? We’re more efficient, I have fewer people, better time to resolution, and my mission-critical services are up all the time when our customers need,” Tuson says.

Fintechs and security

Soldo is an enterprise spending management platform used to track employee expenses.

With a goal to help companies organise and view their spending; while making expense processes more efficient, the protection of customer data is vital.

The London-based fintech began in 2015 as a cloud-native firm, working directly with AWS’s public cloud. Although, Luca Domenella, head of cloud operations and DevOps at Soldo, expresses that this was a learning curve for the founding team.

“The technical and management teams who started Soldo had a lot of experience managing on-premises data centres,” Domenella explains. “But we decided to go on the cloud because of the facility to manage initial costs and have a better ability to scale up infrastructure.”

“We had to manage new challenges because we knew perfectly how to manage on-premises security, but there are different behaviours to security on the cloud.”

Initially, AWS helped Soldo provide perimetral security in its design and provided tools to increase visibility, but Domenella insisted it needed deeper monitoring.

“Because Soldo develops our own applications, the most important thing is to create security layers and have all customer data secure,” he says.

“Since we manage payments and financial transactions, we also need to comply with many security certifications.”

Domenella adds that, as the company grew, it needed to move faster in determining the root cause of problems, whether it be vulnerability or security issues.

After spending several weeks testing other products in the market, Soldo landed on Dynatrace’s observability tool.

“After the first year, it became the best brick of our infrastructure,” he says. “It was something I was proud of because I wanted to have more visibility inside the applications.”

Observability has since relieved Soldo when risk has appeared. For example, during the Log4j vulnerability which exposed millions of computers which use the logging tool worldwide to potential attack, Dynatrace immediately alerted Soldo of the weakness in its infrastructure.

“It’s vital simply because we need to understand what’s going on in our infrastructure to protect ourselves and our customers’ data,” he says. “There’s a lot of personal information, names, emails, phone numbers, and our personal information as well.”

“Our customers need to be aware that their data is safe. This is why security is so important to us.”

Observability in financial institutions 

Stuck between an older generation with preferences for in-person banking and a digitally native younger generation, many financial institutions are forced into hybrid cloud models that can cater to each end of the spectrum.

These hybrid models make environments complex, and more than half (54%) of financial services businesses expect it to grow over the next year, according to Dynatrace.

Observability, therefore, provides an overall view, even when it’s a mix of on-premises and off, or multicloud solutions.

“We used to think that all companies would go 100% on the cloud, but that’s definitely not been the case,” says Tuson. “We’ve been seeing even some reverse and coming back to being on-prem.”

This may be because customers feel data on-prem is more secure, for cost reasons, or a lack of optimisation on their end of the cloud.

What observability can also help is tracking how much spending is going into the cloud through monitoring.

“We can look at the cloud and see if a firm is spending too much in this area with regards to cost optimisation,” explains Tuson.

“Because we’re collecting the information, we can see which ones are being utilised and which are not, and make suggestions to banks, insurance companies, fintech firms, to ensure that they’re utilising them efficiently.”

Not only does this eliminate any overspending, but also helps institutions cut back on power usage. “We can ensure your network, infrastructure and applications are running to the highest degree of effectiveness, with the least amount of energy,” Tuson claims.

The post How cloud observability is transforming the finance sector appeared first on TechInformed.

The fintech firm said its use of the technology had led to around 40% of cost savings, worth around $10 million annually, despite increasing the number of campaigns it has ran in Q1.

Klarna’s implementation of GenAI has helped it decrease spend on external marketing suppliers by 25% across translation, production and social agencies, accounting for $4 million of savings overall, it said.

Image generation AI tools such as Midjourney, DALL-E, and Firefly, have also cut production costs by $6 million – even though Klarna has run more campaigns so far this year, with AI generating over 1,000 images for the Swedish firm.

Sainsbury’s checks out Microsoft’s AI tools

It says that this has reduced the image development cycle from 6 weeks to 7 days – helping it streamline processes in its app and website for key events such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Spring refreshes, and sales.

“Traditionally, it would have been very costly to cater to these occasions with bespoke imagery but with AI that is no longer an issue, and we can create relevant imagery to support practically any event,” says David Sandström, CMO at Klarna.

“Essentially, we have removed the need for stock imagery.”

Klarna has also built its own AI-powered copywriting tool, Copy Assistant, which is responsible for 80% of Klarna’s copywriting.

In partnership with OpenAI, Klarna employees have built over three hundred GPTs for internal use, contributing to over a dozen AI-driven projects within marketing, and over one hundred across its organisation.

The post Klarna cuts spend by $10 million a year with AI appeared first on TechInformed.

Reasons to invest and use the digital currency are varied, some believe its value will stay with inflation, others appreciate the minimal extra cost when transferring money abroad. The fact that it’s decentralised also offers privacy, control, and security compared to fiat money.

While fiat (cash) transactions are shared with the bank, which is often backed by a recognised government entity, cryptocurrencies are less traceable and not as easily accessed by third parties.

The reason for this is to secure an individual’s transactions and ensure autonomy over their finances.

Businesses using these services benefit by keeping their transactions confidential, shielding the details from competitors, and assuring consumers that their transactions are protected from any leaks or breaches.

As Peter Wood, chief technical officer at Web3 recruitment agency, Spectrum Search explains: “Privacy in cryptocurrencies is fundamentally about protecting individual autonomy and security a private sphere of economic activity from unwarranted observation and interference.”

Wood believes that the privacy crypto offers is crucial – not just for personal privacy but also as a defense against potential governmental overreach and financial surveillance, particularly in regions where personal assets are at risk from arbitrary governmental actions.

This may be a reason cybercurrencies remain banned in countries including China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Russia is making efforts to ban cryptocurrencies, too.

Controversially, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently arrested and charged two founders of Bitcoin privacy wallet Samouri Wallet with conspiracy to money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money service business.

Private wallets hold cryptocurrencies and are solely accessible to those who have the digital ‘key.’

Here, presents the issue. While Samouri Wallet aimed to keep its users completely anonymous in the name of financial privacy, the US DOJ claimed its level of concealment allowed unlawful activity to run on its platform.

The arrest went down negatively with crypto enthusiasts, with the argument that the government is forbidding the right to privacy.

At the time, high profile whistleblower Edward Snowden chimed in by posting on X: “The Department of “Justice” has once again criminalised the developers of an app that restores financial privacy.

“The way to fix this [is] to make money private by default. Privacy must never be ‘exceptional,’ or they will make it criminal.”

Fintech-loving criminals

We see cryptocurrencies mentioned regularly in relation to unlawful transactions. Ransomware gangs, for instance, will almost certainly demand funds to be transferred via cryptocurrency to avoid traceability, and those trading illicit goods and services will predominantly use it for money laundering purposes, too.

According to Chainalysis, an estimated $24.4 billion was received by illicit addresses in 2023.

“Cryptocurrencies certainly make it easier for cybercriminals to receive their cyber attack ransoms and are able to launder the ransoms with less chance of being monitored and caught along the way,” says Chris Hauk, consumer privacy advocate at Pixel Privacy.

Using cryptocurrency to move money allows criminals to bypass sanctions put in place through traditional financial systems like banks and makes the transaction much more difficult for the police to track.

Ransomware gangs, for instance, will often ask for money to be transferred via Bitcoin, and although this is known to be easily visible now, it can be moved instantly to a few private wallets without little approval.

There are efforts to tackle this by governments. Most major exchanges within cryptocurrency require proof of identity now, thanks to “Know-Your-Customer” measures the US’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the EU are introducing.

This has helped enforcement step up on bad actors using the cyber currency, including a child exploitation ring, seizing a good portion of $4.5 billion in Bitcoin stolen in 2016.

But, Paul Bischoff, consumer privacy advocate at cyber security firm Comparitech states that it will be impossible to completely criminalise cryptocurrencies since they are decentralised, often open source, and easy to create for those with the skills.

Plus, it only tackles criminals within their countries. It remains difficult for government agencies to disrupt those outside.

Maintaining privacy

For context, while criminal activity runs through crypto platforms, it only made up 0.34% of crypto transactions last year according to Chainanalysis.

Surveys reveal that over a third of users use private wallets, and a tenth hold theirs offline in a hardware wallet, proving privacy is something normal users still care for.

“While it’s tough to track cryptocurrency payments, the government could introduce legislation to monitor and manage cryptocurrencies,” says Hauk.

However, the balance between maintaining privacy for the normal citizen, and monitoring cybercrime and fraud is a tricky one to get right, according to Wood.

“These regulations necessitate a delicate balance for providers, as they must align their operations with privacy assurances while adhering to regulatory frameworks designed to prevent illicit financial activities,” he says.

Wood calls for innovative solutions that reconcile privacy with transparency, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved within the confines of the law.

Hauk adds: “My only concern about the government getting involved is that they’ll likely find ways to use any new laws to monitor the average citizen, who may simply be dipping their toe into the cryptocurrency pool.”

“The history of any cyber-related legislation we’ve seen in the past 30 years has simply led to increased surveillance on the average citizen,” he adds.

However, he also points out that money moving around in crypto won’t get very far in the real world: “Eventually, cryptocurrency must be converted to fiat currency, which are the transactions we should be monitoring most closely.”

Ben Stickland, member at cyber security firm CovertSwarm adds that at least  many UK banks now have policies in place that prevent the purchase of cryptocurrencies or have higher levels of security before allowing those transactions to take place.

According to Wood, there are still many cyber-enabled crimes which rely on traditional methods such as moving money via gift cards and stolen banking information.

“It is critical to understand that these technologies themselves are not inherently geared towards facilitating criminal activities any more than traditional financial systems,” says Wood.

“This requires a collaborative effort among all stakeholders in the cryptocurrency ecosystem to develop balanced solutions that safeguard privacy while preventing abuse,” he concludes.

The post Navigating the line between crypto surveillance and privacy protection appeared first on TechInformed.

Panama-based Towerbank is a fifty-four-year-old family-run institution serving a largely Latin American customer base in a region that is experiencing a higher than average inflation rate.

It’s a conservative organisation, according to Gabriel Campa – the commercial bank’s head of digital assets – and one that prides itself in being free of money laundering scandals.

Nonetheless, Towerbank’s president and CEO recognised that the bank needed to reboot its business model: all banks were offering the same products and services, and it was getting harder to compete with bigger players.

During an analysis of customer activity was carried out as part of the bank’s next ten-year plan, Campa noticed that more were buying cryptocurrency on their credit cards.

“Initially this was a risk for us, because we had no idea where the money was coming from,” he recalls. “We want to serve our customers – but we needed transparency.”

So, Tower started asking its clients what they were doing with the crypto and how the bank could help. It transpired that most uses were similar to regular bank services. Customers were using crypto to buy, to sell, for custody (secure storage), loans and overdrafts – ”All the normal standard banking products, but in the crypto space,” Campa observes.

While this might not seem like a radical use of crypto, in Latin American markets where inflation is still high (Venezuela’s inflation rate hit nearly 190% last year; Argentina’s hit 287% this March), people are turning to cryptocurrencies to protect their economic security.

To investigate further how the bank could help its customers who were buying crypto, Campa invited forty of them into the bank to find out more about what their clients needed.

The vision

Following its initial research, Tower kept the proposal simple to begin with, but broadly crypto friendly. If customers were transparent about their uses of crypto and its origins, it was willing to accept fiat currency that had initially come from crypto, so long as the crypto wallet it came from could be verified by [blockchain data platform] Chainanalysis.

At this point, the bank also got the regulators involved as well as other banks and informed them of its intentions to work with crypto. For Campa, this was about building trust.

“They know we are going to do things right. We are going to report what we find. That trust has allowed us to work behind the scenes without making much noise,” he says.

The next step was to enable crypto-to-fiat transfers. Campa says that one of the first transfers Towerbank received in crypto was from a client who had funds in the ill-fated cryptocurrency exchange FTX – just at the point where it was collapsing.

“He had to make payments in Panama. He called us and said, ‘I have $10K I need to make payments I have no way of sending my money’. We had the basic model in place by this point. So, we’d receive $10K in fiat currency and we’d ask them to show us the crypto wallet where that $10K came from. Which was verified by Chainanalysis.

“We gave him a deposit address he sent us his money in crypto we exchanged it into fiat in four hours,” Campa recalls.

While it was possible to handle this new service for 40 or so clients, it was still a time-consuming process. To scale, the bank needed to create an app-controlled crypto wallet that operates as a bank account, and to automate as much of this process as possible.

Campa’s vision was for this app to do all the things a bank offers – ACH transfer, SWIFT payments etc, but one which also handle clients’ crypto so that they can buy and sell in one place.

“The only policy we’ve established in the bank is that we don’t buy or sell or take custody of crypto,” Campa adds. “ We are not an exchange, and we don’t believe that banks should have crypto on the books. That’s too risky.”

To separate digital from fiat the bank set up its own trust to handle its clients’ crypto.  Campa explains: “That way if something were to happen to the bank the crypto is safe. Or let’s say crypto goes to zero – it’s the client’s crypto. We don’t put our any of our customers’ funds at risk.”

The bank plans to make its money on conversion fees rather than charging for the bank account. In terms of the type of crypto, Tower will accept Bitcoin, ether (ETH) and US dollar backed stablecoins Tether (USDT)and USD Coin (USDC). The plan is to allow more over time, Campa adds.

The tech

To achieve Campa’s vision of offering a hybrid banking service “that acts as the bridge between the fiat and the crypto ecosystem” Towerbank needed to build a scalable and flexible model. And one that was capable of handling two entirely different worlds – the crypto users who view traditional banks as “way too complicated” (in Campa’s words) and the traditional banking community.

Initially, Tower started building a model in AWS Cloud, but soon realised it needed a more robust solution. After attending Amazon’s re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, he was introduced to low-code no-code platform Appian.

Campa explains that this platform has enabled the bank to automate many of the process (96% in total, he claims) that were taking its team hours to do manually.

“Appian runs our entire onboarding process. It opens a bank account and a crypto account at the same time all in one shop. Before it would take our team around seven hours per client: one hour with the client and then six in the background doing paperwork. Now it’s 10 minutes with the client,  and an hour and a half of paperwork. We are feeling the impact immediately,” he says.

Appian also handles the crypto backend – as well as the transfers and execution of ACH and SWIFT, debit card processing and due diligence and compliance.

Campa adds that another advantage of using the process management system, is its ability to connect the bank’s other partners via APIs, which include its cloud banking platform provider Mambu;  payment gateway provider, Frame Banking and verification tool Chainanalysis.

In the background the Appian system also collates data and sends it to the bank’s data lake to enable deeper analytics in the future, to create more products and services to support these clients.

Another key tech provider was the crypto wallet, ikigii, which claims to be the only crypto wallet that is also a US dollar bank account.

Campa enthuses: “There’s nothing like it. It’s the only wallet where you can put both currencies into one place to allow payments for conversion to send and received; for P2P; custody and digital finance space loan and overdraft. International wires and payments.”

The results

According to Campa, the bank has already managed to on board around 700 clients with this system – and that’s before the app‘s official launch, which is scheduled for next month.

He estimates that the bank handled about US$30m in transactions from crypto clients last year: “We might have US$2m to US$3m in deposits. We have around 2,000 new clients with around 200 to 300 of these constantly transferring fiat to crypto, crypto to fiat.”

Campa maintains that if clients send over their crypto today, they will receive the cash in their accounts “within 50 seconds”. The bank is forecasting 2x growth this year and is hoping to enhance its hybrid platform with blockchain and generative AI technology, launching new products that include asset tokenisation and e-commerce with crypto.

While there are other means of converting crypto, Campa concludes that, even in the decentralised world of crypto and blockchain, banks can have a key role in acting as a trusted intermediary. This is especially true, he adds, in territories where crypto scams are so common that many banks won’t touch the currencies – leading to a great vulnerability among users and investors and a rise in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) crypto scams.

“There are lots of P2P scams that involve the seller accepting crypto and then ringing up the buyer’s bank and trying to get the money back. With a transparent relationship at the bank, a relationship with the regulators and corresponding banks, Tower can verify transactions and push back against refunds knowing that it was a legitimate transaction.

“We’ve got to this point because our clients trust us and are willing to tell us they are using crypto,” says Campa.

The post Towerbank builds hybrid crypto-fiat platform for LatAm clients appeared first on TechInformed.

Additionally, connectivity is a ‘must-have’ as smart cars seamlessly integrate into the Internet of Things (IoT), while augmented reality (AR) enhances the driving experience, from navigation to in-car entertainment. As a result, self-driving dreams become reality as companies invest heavily in AI and sensors.

The global in-vehicle payment system market is projected to grow from 1.53 billion USD in 2023 to 6.18 billion USD by 2030. Now, we can cover all driving costs – parking, tolls, fuel – and on-the-go expenses like grabbing a coffee directly from our cars, thanks to advanced in-vehicle interfaces.

Tech has made cars as smart as our tablets and smartphones. Yet the process of buying a car is still clunky and long overdue for a makeover.

Many dealerships still wrestle with cumbersome manual bank transfers, drafts, or cheques. For those accepting cards, high processing fees and transaction limits add to the administrative hassle of splitting payments. As a result, cards are often used for deposits, but not for purchase.

But customer expectations are changing – and the bar is higher. There’s a growing call for fast and frictionless buying experiences, coupled with robust protection against evolving fraud tactics. Enter open banking, a game-changer for high-value payments. Customers can enjoy a quick, secure, and seamless way to pay directly from their bank accounts.

According to a Prommt report, automotive is the top-performing industry for open banking payments, with the highest single transaction value of €72,714.25. Typically, the average transaction value (ATV) for an open banking payment (€4,679) is four times higher than the ATV for a card transaction (€1,147) on the Prommt platform.

Using open banking, which enables the secure sharing of financial data between banks and third-party financial service providers – car dealerships can cut costs and protect margins by significantly reducing high transaction fees, card fraud, and chargebacks, as well as payment operation costs associated with tedious manual bank transfers, drafts, or cheques.

Payments are instant, and all parties are immediately notified, so deals can be completed more quickly.

Here are five ways open banking payments are revolutionising how we buy cars:

1. Payment orchestration and reduced costs

 With smart payment orchestration controls, car dealers can automate thresholds to present their desired payment method, depending on factors such as value, location, or transaction type. This strategy allows them to achieve substantial savings on transaction fees and operational costs, while also mitigating card fraud and minimising chargebacks.

2. Faster payments for a ‘drive away today’ service

Open banking accelerates payments. A simple pay-by-bank link or embedded button on the merchant website enables customers to swiftly make deposits and pay for services and parts. Funds land in the dealership’s account within seconds, allowing customers to drive away with their cars on the same day.

3. Reducing fraud

Open banking significantly reduces fraud, chargebacks, and unauthorised access to or misuse of sensitive financial information. Studies indicate a 60 per cent reduction in fraud by 2024, thanks to advanced encryption and real-time authentication through open banking APIs. Additionally, open banking is backed by the EU Payment Services Directive and is designed to ensure safe transactions.

4. More data privacy and control

Open banking transforms how businesses and customers interact with financial data. Customers authenticate payments directly from their banking app, and their personal information is encrypted and safeguarded by industry-standard banking security. They have more control over who has access to their personal data and greater visibility of their transactions and account balance.

 5.  Better customer experience

Since buying a car is often the second most significant purchase after a house, providing a luxury experience that extends to the checkout is essential. By offering flexible, convenient, and user-friendly payment options, dealerships can set themselves apart from competitors tethered to traditional, less adaptable models. In a crowded market, differentiation is key.

Payment success

Open banking streamlines the process of accepting bank payments with a slick, fast, and seamless buying experience. Dealerships can slash high-value card processing fees and greatly reduce chargebacks, card fraud, and payments admin.

With advanced paytech solutions, businesses can increase payment success by easily following up on failed or late payments with automatic chasers through different channels and alternate payment methods.

They can receive instant notifications when payments hit their beneficiary bank account and easily initiate full or partial refunds, with restricted access for added security.

The post How open banking is driving car sales appeared first on TechInformed.

Last year, we reported how the fintech is using AI. In this follow-up podcast, Bud’s VP of engineering, Michael Cullum, reveals more, with advice for others who are earlier on in their AI journeys.

“The key thing is to validate as quickly as possible: exactly what makes sense and what doesn’t so you can take those learnings into your processes as quickly as possible,” he says.

More broadly, we talk to the software engineer about sustainability and AI and whether he thinks that all business problems can be solved through code and algorithms.

For more of our podcasts and to check out our weekly vodcast of TI:TALKS, click here

The post AI & Financial Services with Michael Cullum, Bud Financial appeared first on TechInformed.

“Significant progress is expected in the development and implementation of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Governments around the world are beginning to view digital currencies less as threats and more as opportunities, heralding a major shift for a space that has, to date, carried a more countercultural feel.”

Maz Karimian, strategy director, Ustwo

“In 2024, we’ll continue to see central banks across the globe experiment and test a variety of CBDC applications across retail, wholesale, and cross-border transactions. We will also see more central banks delving into the technology, functionality, and use cases, including offline payments.

“There are ongoing conversations within the industry surrounding the interoperability of CBDCs and other regulated types of money, including tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins. With the European Union’s MiCA regulation set to take off in mid-2024, it will bring stablecoins under regulatory oversight and treat them as regulated liabilities.

“Digital currencies are the next phase of the digital revolution, and we can expect the fintech landscape to develop accordingly to meet the increased interest and demand in digital assets. But there’s a long road ahead, and the launch of CBDCs will require time and careful planning to sit alongside existing payment solutions.”

Julia Demidova, head of CBDC & Product Strategy, FIS

“We’re going to see an accelerated convergence between digital assets and traditional finance. Namely, the likely approval of multiple spot Bitcoin Exchange traded funds (EFTs) will galvanise the market but may not have the immediate big bang impact that some in the industry are expecting.

“If approved, we will see a gradual mindset change as more traditional asset allocators start to include digital assets in their portfolio and build it more naturally into their investment philosophy. Crucial steps, such as the EFTs, are being made towards greater institutional adoption of digital assets and ultimately the maturation of the crypto industry.”

Philippe Bekhazi, founder and CEO, XBTO Global

2: GenAI will yield productivity in the fintech space

“Looking forward to 2024, it’s clear Generative AI is going to make an impact – especially when it comes to corporate reporting and compliance. Next year, we’ll begin to see reporting teams moving beyond experimentation to using genAI to boost productivity in meaningful ways, such as drafting starter disclosures and performing data analyses.

“There’s also a near-term opportunity to leverage genAI as a compliance check, focusing on how internal teams meet disclosure requirements, and even leveraged to perform audit tests and audit reporting. For these reasons, in relatively short-order, genAI will become increasing critical in boosting efficiency and enabling insights that lead to better and faster data-driven decisions.

“As the momentum of Generative AI increases, so do the attendant risks and it will be paramount for organisations to ensure proper governance, controls, and human oversight of the nascent technology.”

Steve Soter, VP and industry principal, Workiva 

3: Open banking and AI will be widely used to combat fraud

“In 2024, Fintechs will adopt open banking [the secure sharing of data between banks and third parties via APIs] much more, not for payments but mainly to verify users and reduce fraud – something we started to see a shift towards in 2023.

“We’ve seen AI employed in fraud detection and avoidance in 2023 as it calculates through massive amounts of data to prevent fraudulent activity. Where we see the next steps in AI use are in customer interfaces, allowing users to visualise their data easily and conveniently.

“The next step in AI use is going further and engaging prospective customers, to show better ways of interacting with financial platforms and fintechs.”

Sadra Hosseini, CEO, and Alex Mackenzie, MD, Rift

4: Embedded finance ramps up — and AI may help

“2024 will be the year of embedded finance technology. It’s the year we’ll see new tech and regulations change what we know about how the sector operates.

“Since embedded finance refers to the digital process of integrating financial services into non-financial products and services, and everything digital seems to move at breakneck speed, it will ramp up next year.

“In addition, several emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, will slowly make their way into the embedded finance space. We can expect to see increased adoption of these technologies by corporate embedded finance platforms.

“Tentative steps have already been made, but the serious consequences of issues arising from implementing these sorts of technologies have made those integrating them trepidatious. Both AI and ML are yet to be seen in corporate embedded finance. That’s mainly because integration, especially regarding lending, will be all about data collection and how to analyse the information extracted. Those two technologies, when linked to data science, will therefore be key differentiators in the future.

“Embedded finance platforms will also need to comply with new regulations and laws to ensure that nobody can take advantage of the great tools that are being produced.”

Eduardo Martinez Garcia, CEO & co-founder, Toqio

5: The fintech M&A landscape will include more cross-border deals

“In 2024, the fintech M&A landscape is likely to be characterised by a surge in consolidation, particularly in mature markets such as North America and Europe. This trend will be driven by the need for traditional financial institutions to integrate innovative fintech solutions to remain competitive, and by fintech startups seeking to scale up and expand their market reach.

“Emerging markets, especially in Asia and Africa, will also witness significant activity, fuelled by the rapid adoption of mobile banking and digital payment solutions. Cross-border M&As are expected to rise, as fintech firms strive to overcome regulatory barriers and tap into new customer bases.”

Emre Kenci, CEO of Papara,

6: As market tightens, fintechs embrace the long-term

“In the next 12 months, there will be a major shift towards sustainable growth strategies. With tighter purse strings in a cautious market, fintechs and investors are getting serious about making profits for the long term, not just ultra-fast hypergrowth. In an environment where cash is scarcer, greater creativity is required which leads to new innovations.

“2024 is the year of acting smart, staying lean, and thinking long term. Success for fintechs will be less about the flash and more about the fundamentals — real performance will be king.”

Rodolphe Ardant, CEO and founder at Spendesk

7: SME customers will become more selective

“In 2024, we’ll see a huge shift in the business banking sector. SMEs have had a rough 12 months and more than ever they’re in need of tailored support from banks to help them weather the storm.

Banking is a service industry, but often banks forget that part. Relationships, trust, and personalised support are the cornerstones of successful business banking. As we move into next year, I think we’ll start to see this prioritised as SMEs search for banking partners that truly understand their problems. As entirely digital products are becoming the new norm, human touch and empathy will define the new era of business banking, empowering entrepreneurs and SMEs to thrive.

Yanki Onen CEO and co-Founder, Wamo

The post 2024 Informed: Fintech and digital currency predictions appeared first on TechInformed.

That represented a 57% drop from $13.8 to $5.9 billion, but despite this, the UK remains a global leader in the fintech space. And it is by no means the only territory where funding has dropped.

Globally, total funding and the number of deals dropped from $63.2 bn across 2,885 deals in the second half of 2022, to $52.4 bn across 2,153 deals in the first half of this year.

“Despite a slowdown in UK fintech investment compared to last year, the UK remains at the centre of European fintech innovation with British fintechs attracting over half the funding of Europe,” says John Hallsworth, client lead partner for banking and fintech at KPMG UK.

More promising news for those working in the sector has come from the recent CB Insights Fintech 100: The most promising fintech startups of 2023 report, which has highlighted a number of UK-based startups to watch.

In fact, this year’s winners represent 24 different countries internationally, with the UK taking second place with 12 winners. And while 43% of the selected companies are headquartered in the U.S., this is actually down 10% on last year.

Account-to-account payments, spend management automation and embedded finance are just some of the notable areas of fintech focus for startups this year. That compares to 2022’s high-performing digital lending, financial services, insurance and market map segments.

UK fintechs to watch

From Accelerant, an insurtech company, to Allica Bank and Apex Global, which is involved in cross-border payments, there is also Banked and Volt, A2A payments fintechs, Payhawk, offering spend management, and Genesis, involved in capital markets.

LemFi is a mobile wallets and remittances company, Moniepoint handles payment acceptance, Liberis is in lending, and Moneyhub and Thought Machine both offer core banking and infrastructure.

Whether you’re looking for a new role in an established fintech or want to explore a job at a startup, the Tech Informed Job Board is the ideal place to start your search. It features thousands of listings in companies that are actively hiring, such as the three below.

Software engineer, Ripple, London

Ripple is seeking a Software engineer to join the team, building trading and liquidity infrastructure at Ripple. In this role, you will deliver reliable, high-throughput, low-latency (micro)services to support systematic market making, trading, and execution to deliver best-in-class liquidity to customers. You’ll also participate in the full software development lifecycle, and you’ll dive deep in researching and understanding what practices to bring from traditional financial systems to the crypto space and continuously raise the standard of engineering excellence by implementing and driving best practices for coding, testing, and deployment. To be considered, you will need two or more years’ of hands-on software development experience on large scale distributed systems, and experience building and deploying containerized applications (e.g. Docker) into modern distributed computing environments such as Kubernetes. See more requirements now.

Vice president, Start Path Emerging Fintech Lead, Mastercard, London

Start Path is Mastercard’s suite of award-winning global startup engagement programs, and the Vice president of Emerging Fintech is an integral member of the team focused on fostering partnerships with, and investments in, emerging fintech technologies, as well as supporting fintech strategy across the organisation. Through rigorous analysis and a structured process, you will perform research and analysis, synthesise data to uncover insights, and develop critical strategic recommendations around partnerships and investments. You should be a senior leader who is a strategic thinker well-versed in the fintech, startup engagement and venture capital domains, and be experienced in payments, banking, and fintech segments, with technical and systems knowledge foundation in each. Find out all the requirements now.

Engineering manager (Mobile) – Global Bank, SumUp, London

SumUp is seeking an Engineering manager to lead a squad of mobile engineers building and supporting the mobile banking features in the SumUp Super App. You will help to shape the technical vision and strategy for both iOS and Android apps, and will also contribute to building and maintaining strong developer relations inside the mobile chapters. You’ll support engineers to reach their full potential, mastering their current skills and developing new competencies to advance their personal growth. You should have seven or more years’ of software development experience, with three years’ working as engineering manager, be experienced leading co-located and remote agile teams and have solid experience in mobile app development for iOS and Android platforms and have a deep understanding of the mobile landscape, industry trends, and user expectations. Apply for this role today.

Find thousands of tech jobs today via the Tech Informed Job Board

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