U.K.

Nationwide Building Society is investing in the U.K. fintech charity app Percent, broadening Nationwide's support of charities and expanding Percent’s user base beyond its traditional core segment of students and young adults.

The Bank of England fined Citi $57 million for failing to properly report capital and liquidity levels at its European investment bank and other global operations.

Merchants are embracing open banking at a high rate, creating new opportunities once consumers get on board, says Nuapay's Brian Hanrahan.

The rise of challenger banks has meant that this revenue stream is becoming increasingly squeezed.

Modern technology is making it easier for fraudsters to trick consumers into believing they are making payments from their accounts to legitimate providers, but governing bodies in the U.K. are putting the brakes on rushing to create a new fund to compensate victims of those scams.

The adoption of payment cards over cash varies by nation, but debit ruled nearly everywhere on the continent.

A week after U.K. fintech Curve announced its integration with Samsung Pay, it is doing the same with Google Pay in a move that will allow its users to link all of their bank cards to Google's mobile wallet.

Cash access has grown tighter in the U.K. as more consumers adopt digital payments and banks shrink their fleets of branches and ATMs. Could the U.S. could see a similar phenomenon?

While the impact of the U.K.’s endemic late payments culture has captured the headlines over the past couple of years, there is arguably an even bigger problem afflicting the country’s merchant population — the threat of not being paid at all.

Goodbox has raised £1 million (about $1.3 million) in capital, mostly from individual investors using the crowdfunding platform Seedrs following a 2017 investment from tennis star Andy Murray.

The U.K.-based fintech says that a recent crowdfunding campaign shows demand for its product, even though the amount it raised is well below funds obtained from VCs.

Vocalink beat out four other competing bids to secure a 10-year contract to provide real-time switching and settlements for U.K. ATM operator Link Scheme.

Even the homeless are getting on board with contactless payments, through a new U.K. wide initiative between Swedish payments company iZettle and the Big Issue Foundation, which enables homeless people to become street vendors by selling its its Big Issue magazines.

Rapid-fire acquisitions, partnerships and investments in the likes of Uber, Lyft and Grab are transforming these ride-sharing providers. And much of this activity is built on their ability to handle payments seamlessly as part of the experience.

Cash is not dead, but the burdens of ensuring access threaten to break long-standing ecosystems that sustain traditional payments.

U.K. fintech Revolut will use Bottomline Technologies' Universal Aggregator to manage a software-based real-time payments button.

The challenge with cash is its nature makes it hard to transition away from it. On the other end of the scale, digital-only businesses may never accept cash, meaning they may always exclude the cash-based consumer.

Amid the fallout from the catastrophic collapse of Carillion last year, the U.K. government has been getting tough on late payments.

Digital financial services provider Revolut is expanding a partnership with Visa that will allow it to nearly double its global footprint by adding 24 new markets, including the U.S.

The U.K. charity sector is currently facing its biggest ever crisis of trust — with a recent survey conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation finding that the proportion of the general public who donate to charity has declined for the third year in a row — amid rising concerns about wastage and corruption.