Europe

With the U.K. government still at stalemate over Brexit, the prospect of leaving the European Union without a deal remains a very real possibility. Despite some recent agreements, this could have major implications for the U.K. payments industry.

Because various aspects of the General Data Protection Regulation were made public two years before they became official law, European lawmakers naturally felt it gave companies plenty of time to get data security compliance in place. But it appears most companies either lost track of time or haven't solved the compliance puzzle yet.

Global payments provider Elavon has established a new partnership with Societe Generale for payments acceptance and acquiring services throughout Europe.

Bank technology giants FIS and Fiserv are spending nearly $66 billion between them in just the past few weeks to add a broad swath of payments technology — including a few key nuggets that will help them go toe to toe with fintechs.

Given the size of the deal — which includes about $9 billion of Worldpay’s debt on top of a $34 billion bid — the pressure’s on to build a global powerhouse that can counter other major fintech mergers announced in the past weeks. FIS must also emerge as a nimble rival to the startups that threaten the old order.

European banks need to look beyond their home countries for mergers in order to tap the region's full economic power and become more competitive, JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said.

A top official at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions defended tougher underwriting rules blamed recently for a slump in the nation’s housing market, but left open the possibility that regulations could ease if conditions change.

In recent years, new machine learning algorithms and big data have reduced fraud losses to an extent — however, their impact has been relatively limited, in part because the industry has been reluctant to use them. But the use of such technology is soon likely to become far more widespread in the U.K., and across the EU.

EU states such as Belgium, Lithuania and Ireland are offering e-money institution, payments institution or banking licenses to fintechs, which can be passported across Europe, in anticipation of the U.K. losing its ability to do so after Brexit. But there is no cross-border deposit protection for European consumers holding accounts at EU banks with passported licenses.

Regulators are handing out fines for GDPR violations, that while relatively small can have a large impact on the push for sharable identity by drawing attention to how large companies use data.