European Union

As perhaps the world's most wide-reaching, comprehensive data protection rule, the General Data Protection Regulation is having a ripple effect that almost seemed inevitable.

Google Payment, a company owned by Alphabet Inc., obtained an e-money license in Lithuania, joining a growing number of fintech firms that have secured permission from the Baltic nation to offer financial services across the European Union.

The Bank of Lithuania is positioning the country’s capital Vilnius as a hub for payments-related fintechs wanting to enter the European market — a move that's timed to take advantage of the uncertainty Brexit has cast over London's claim to the title.

The European data sharing regulation, PSD2, is often seen as a compliance burden for banks — but if used correctly, the rules provide a path to boosting digital payments revenue.

For all the media attention around the best options for cardholders when making transactions abroad, there's little focus on the lack of transparency on the costs involved with making a purchase in the local currencies where Visa, Mastercard and the issuers manage the conversion, argues Gino Ravaioli, chairman of the DCC Forum.

For banks, initially concerned that PSD2 would allow others to come between them and their customers, the prize comes in keeping themselves at the center of their customers’ digital banking experience, writes Huw Davies, CCO of Token.

London-based digital payment provider Revolut has applied for an e-money license in Luxembourg in case the Brexit impact creates legal complications.

The highly lucrative remittance business, once the sole purview of established players with large agent-based locations such as Western Union and MoneyGram, is under an all-out attack by digital fintechs.

British Airways may become the first high-profile company to face Europe’s far-reaching data privacy rules that come with potential fines after a computer hack compromised credit card data from some 380,000 customers.

Since his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump has loomed over the international payments system with a series of threats that are proving increasingly empty.

The U.K.’s Food Standard Agency completed its first successful blockchain pilot this month, with plans to expand the test in August.

Overreliance on the smartphone risks mistaking device authentication for user authentication.

Brexit's implications for the U.K.'s technology industry are deepening political fractures, with no clear answer as to how startups fintechs and challenger banks can operate in the U.K. after it leaves the European Union.

South Asian remittance firm InstaReM has launched its cross-border P2P and B2B digital money transfer service in the U.K. and the EU as it prepares for an IPO in 2021. It also expects to become profitable by then.

There are forward-looking regulations that govern the landscape of how personal data gets collected, processed, analyzed, stored, retained, monetized, and accessed by any organization that collects data in the EU. Its goal is the protection of individual privacy and will require a multi-year strategy, according to Bassim Alkhafaji, a partner at Andra Capital.

The rules that govern data are changing rapidly, creating confusion for the companies that use blockchain to support payments, as well as potential investment opportunities for third parties that can ensure compliance.

European financial institutions and central banks, along with critical European banking and payments infrastructure providers, face an increasing onslaught from hackers that has prompted two major responses from the EU.

It's a race to the finish line that also affects U.S. companies with European customers. In these final moments, every company must at least show good faith in attempting to follow the law and having procedures and technology in place to do so.

Many in Europe and the U.S. view GDPR as Europe's first true data breach protection measure — in part because it requires notification of any breach within 72 hours. But they also see it as a complex and costly race to the May 25 deadline.

TransferWise is the first nonbank to become a member of the U.K.’s Faster Payments service (FPS), but with Brexit on the horizon, it has to make sure it is similarly invested in other markets.