SWIFT

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, exhorted developers to think about unintended consequences, saying he felt guilty over the digital divide and the proliferation of fake news.

A San Francisco startup working with Swift plans to launch a network that would tie self-executing contracts to independent data sources.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication plans to add instant payments messaging for the European market by late 2018, marking another step in its ongoing faster payments projects.

Calling it a first in international payments, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication [Swift] is providing a cross-border, real-time payments tracker for banks handling global transactions.

The global messaging network Swift and its fintech challenger, Ripple, have been vying for bankers’ hearts and minds for more than a year. Whoever prevails, their latest moves could bring needed change to how international banking is done.

Bottomline Technologies, which specializes in business payments, is the latest to introduce a fraud-fighting solution for members of the Swift payment network.

Leaked documents appear to show NSA analysts were able to hack into Middle Eastern banks’ servers through the Swift service bureau EastNets. The same tools could conceivably be used by cybercriminals and nation-states with more sinister motives.

The new controls include transaction-screening parameters users may adjust to their own risk and compliance policies.

The move is noteworthy because Delatinne had led customer engagement for Swift’s global payments innovation initiative, with which Ripple’s cross-border payment system competes.

The certification covers compliance, risk and strategy expertise as the payments industry becomes increasingly digitized and global.