It’s Friday and time for the latest fintech news and new developments. First, a look at why fintech is booming in Finland, people paying by selfies, simple banking software for SMEs from Xero, Raisin hopes to raise its EU business deposits and Moneyou goes after millennial banking customers in The Netherlands and Germany.

EU Ministers will meet in Estonia to craft a fintech strategy for Europe. Apple’s Face ID could pave the way for payments by facial recognition as consumers start looking at features on the new iPhone X. Xero and Santander are partnering to bring simpler banking and accounting software integration to SMEs.

ING Capital and Scalable Capital will bring robo-advisory wealth management services to customers in Germany. Raisin and Banco BNI Europa from Portugal, Younited Credit from France, and Greensill Bank from Germany will target the business deposits market. ABN Amro’s digital bank subsidiary Moneyou makes moves to appeal to millennial bank customers in the Netherlands and Germany.

Banking Tech has an excellent list of UK challenger banks and what tech makes their services unique. Next week, Google will launch a mobile payment service in India and join a crowded, competitive marketplace. Payments UK reports 39% of consumers use mobile banking at least once a month while 79% use online banking monthly.

Finland’s FinTech sector is gaining impressive traction, raising over $80m over 53 deals since 2014

FinlandFinland is establishing itself as a significant player in the Scandinavian fintech space. Investments in H1 2017 surpassed the total invested in FinTech companies in 2016 and it looks set to surpass the $26.9m invested in 2015.

Four of the five largest deals to Finnish fintech companies were closed in the last five quarters, with WealthTech company VertaaEnsin closing the largest deal to date in the first quarter of 2017. The largest sector within the Finish FinTech ecosystem is Payments & Remittances with companies such as P2P payments app Scrooge receiving a total funding of $234.3K since 2014. Via Fintech.Global

EU Finance Ministers to Discuss Fate of Fintech Industry Post Brexit

brexitEuropean Union finance ministers are gathering to discuss ways to attract more fintech companies as the continent’s largest fintech hub, Great Britain, prepares to exit the group in less than two years.

The E.U. finance ministers will meet Friday in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, according to a Reuters report.

The report states:

The EU fintech market is dwarfed by those in China and the United States. It is concentrated in Britain, which is set to quit the E.U. in 2019, leaving the bloc with a fraction of the small but flourishing industry.  Via Bank Innovation

Will Apple’s Face ID Be a Boon for Video Banking?

selfieApple introduced the iPhone X yesterday, and as pundits predicted, it does away with Touch ID in favor of Face ID, a biometric authentication system based on the user’s face.

The accuracy of Face ID is supposed to reduce false positives to 1 in a million (though the demo failed on stage yesterday) compared with 1 in 50,000 for Touch ID. Still, it can be fooled by identical twins, and someone authenticating your phone on your sleeping face, which seems to be a slight concern but discussions are raging across Twitter about pernicious siblings and roommates, as well as suspicious spouses.

In the world of commerce, Face ID means the people in line in front of you at the store will be taking selfies before waving their phone in front of the POS devices. Sorry about that.  Via Bank Innovation

Xero and Santander team on SME banking service

londonToday, Xero, the UK’s leading online accounting software, and Santander, announce an integrated service for SMEs. The service will provide a secure and simple solution for customers that delivers their financial data directly from their bank account into Xero free of charge.

Launching in the coming weeks, small business owners will receive the benefit of their accounting software and bank accounts communicating with each other through seamless Application Programming Interface (API) synchronisation to enhance business productivity.

Santander customers who use Xero will soon be able to reconcile their accounts with a few clicks. The enrolment process is secure, quick and easy.  Via Finextra

ING moves into digital wealth management with Scalable Capital

ING CapitalING in Germany is to roll out a digital wealth management service in a pilot project with robo-advisory startup Scalable Capital.

Customers of ING in Germany will be able to register for the online-only service in less than 15 minutes. With a minimum investment of EUR 10,000 they can monitor their portfolios and all account details, such as performance and fees, on both Scalable Capital and ING mobile apps and online portals in Germany.

ING’s global head of fintech, Benoit Legrand comments: “As with all 100 fintech partnerships we currently have, we aim to ensure that the solution empowers our customers to stay a step ahead in managing their finances.” If the pilot proves successful, the bank will look to introduce it across other European markets he says. Via Finextra

Raisin takes on business deposit market

RaisinEuropean financial deposit marketplace is moving into corporate banking territory, offering German business owners the opportunity to open term deposit accounts from its panel of banks.

Three European banks, Banco BNI Europa from Portugal, Younited Credit from France, and Greensill Bank from Germany are the first to offer interests to business clients, with more expected to join from end-2017.

Raisin’s CEO and co-founder Tamaz Georgadze says the service is initially being targeted at the low-interest German market, where businesses are typically offered -0.14 percent when they want to invest in a term deposit. Via Finextra

Moneyou moves on millennials with Bankable platform

Moneyou logoMoneyou, the digital consumer subsidiary of Dutch bank ABN Amro, has implemented UK-based Bankable’s Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform.

The service is now open to selected customers in the Netherlands. Moneyou provides savings accounts to more than half a million customers and says it is diversifying via Bankable’s multi-wallet and multi-card technology to launch a product portfolio targeted at millennials in the Netherlands and Germany.

Liesbeth Rigter, Moneyou’s CEO, says: “Our business model with a lean setup is based on close co-operation with our partners. The flexibility of Bankable’s BaaS platform allowed us to go to market faster than opting for bespoke development with on premises integration. It also prevents any future legacy issues thanks to its open evolution capability.”  Via BankingTech.com

UK challenger banks: who’s who (and what’s their tech)

UK challenger banksWith so many new entrants trying to muscle into the UK banking sector, Banking Technology has put together a comprehensive list of the known challengers to date and the technology they are using.

We’ll be revisiting and updating this list on a regular basis. If you have any additions to the list, please get in touch with our editorial team.  Via BankingTech.com

Google to launch mobile payment service in India – report

Alphabet Inc’s Google plans to introduce a localized digital payment service in India as early as next week, technology website TechCrunch reported, citing a report from news site The Ken.

The payment service, called Google ‘Tez’, will offer payment options beyond the existing ones like Google Wallet or Android Pay, the report said.

Tez, meaning fast in Hindi, will include support for the government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and other consumer payment services including Paytm and MobiKwik, according to the report.  Google did not comment on the report, but sent a media invite for the launch of a new product for India on Sept. 18.  Via Reuters 

Piraeus Bank hails automated ‘e-branches’

technology_07Greek bank Piraeus is hailing the performance of three new fully-automated bank branches, claiming that their popularity has freed up staffers at traditional branches to focus on more complex, higher value work.

Piraeus opened the e-branches at the end of last year in the region of Attiki, offering longer opening hours than normal branches and a range of services, including instant gift card issuance and receipt, automated passbook updates, Internet banking registration points and a digital zone replete with computers and tablets.

The bank says that the e-branches have proved popular, with more than 37,000 users per month making over 32,000 transactions. After seven months of operation the new outlets are processing 84% of the volume of transactions undertaken in nearby traditional branches. Via Finextra 

Payment Instrument in Profile: Faster Payments

As you would expect from a newly launched payments service, growth rates for Faster Payments transaction were very high in the first few years. Initially, a large proportion of early faster payment volumes were the result of the migration of standing order payments from Bacs. By 2012, this migration was virtually complete.

In recent years growth has come from single immediate payments, such as a one-off payments we initiate from our bank account to pay a plumber or a P2P payment via Paytm.  Impressive, especially considering it is now nine years since it went live, Faster Payments is still the fastest growing payment system in the UK, growing 14.5 percent in 2016. At present, growth is primarily being driven by increased usage of remote banking channels, such as mobile and internet banking.

According to Payments UK, 77 percent of UK adults regularly use at least one form of remote banking service in 2016 [1]. This is important because research shows that consumers who use remote banking service interact with their bank more than those who do not. For example, Mintel research reported that 79 percent of current account holders use online banking at least once a month, compared to just 36 percent who use in-branch counter services and 39 percent that use mobile banking. At the same time, 71 percent of current account holders agree that online banking is the most convenient way to manage their bank accounts.  Via VocaLink