EMEA

With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic prompting more consumers to use contactless payments, the U.K.’s banks have lobbied for higher contactless payments limits, a move which could benefit the biometrics payments industry.

The bank will start with a mobile checking account for U.K. customers this year, followed by a full slate of products that could include credit cards, mortgages and car loans.

In a post-Brexit move, Mastercard is raising interchange rates for card-not-present transactions on U.K.-issued cards when spent with European merchants.

Anyone who experiences severe side effects as a result of this mass vaccination campaign must go through a relatively little-known program that has existed since 1979.

The Bank of France will shut down more than a third of its cash handling centers by the end of 2022 as the Covid-19 pandemic accelerates a decline in the use of notes and coins.

Australia Hoover, who started as a call center employee in 1996, succeeds Betsy Mercier, who is retiring after 22 years at the helm.

History will remember Wednesday for the anti-democracy domestic terrorism that resulted in death, injuries and damage inside the U.S. Capitol — but did not thwart the process of confirming the presidential election. It was also a day that Georgia's Senate runoff gave much-needed clarity to the fintech sector.

The final outcome of the November election will be decided on Jan. 5 in Georgia, with the balance of power in the Senate at stake, as well as at least two years of financial services and technology policy.

The simplest of mechanisms, having evolved over time, has now become a trending solution, a beacon of a brighter time and an essential service provider in an hour of need, says PPS' Tessa Unsworth.

Fundraising platform TapSimple has raised nearly £1 million (U.S. $1.3 million) in an investment round that will help it to continue to develop fundraising activity in what it describes as an increasingly cashless world.