Cash is fading in the Middle East, and traditional banks are turning to fintechs to expedite upgrades before challenger banks and digital wallets seize the advantage.

Tech pioneer Bill Gates praised India’s policies for financial innovation and inclusion, saying his philanthropic foundation is working with other countries to roll out open-source technologies modeled on the country’s implementation.

Fintech success stories have encouraged investors to back more startups, but newcomers will be hard-pressed to attract enough customers to compete while keeping expenses down.

E-commerce and digital finance are expanding quickly due to the pandemic, economic downturn and plans for recovery — providing opportunities for VCs that back technology that powers faster, more digital payments.

Improving data management can also help future-proof data infrastructure and put the appropriate protections in place before it’s too late, says Cohesity's Michael Letschin.

The company aims to help borrowers apply for home loans in as little as 15 minutes by automating immediate validation of bank information used in qualification.

AI can add an extra layer that's hard for fraudsters to beat, says Nuance Communications' Simon Marchand.

The banks will aim to attract new small-business customers by targeting the merchants that use Stripe's payment processing platform.

By allowing access to public chains, CBDCs could render much greater, and even revolutionary, functionality, says Cypherium's Sky Guo.

Retailers and merchant acquirers need to adjust to new media in the new year, says Zycada's James Brear.

Visa insists that the Department of Justice, in objecting to its proposed $5.3 billion purchase of Plaid, fundamentally misunderstands the changing role of data in the payments industry.

Figure Technologies would only accept uninsured deposits, so it would not be subject to Fed or FDIC oversight. A major concern for banks is that the effort could open the door to incursions by bigger tech companies.

Especially in a remote environment, the ability to adapt within days to shifting call volumes, different call center locations, new agent groupings, or utilizing a configurable interactive voice response system cannot be underestimated, says Genpact's Jason Osborne.

As it does with savings, Digit's algorithm calculates how much users can siphon off their earnings into retirement without missing the funds.

Whenever a technology moves into the payments or financial data ecosystem, it alerts fraudsters to probe it more intensely — and ultimately, figure out a way to use it as an attack vector.

Jobs will be harder to find for graduates, and there are new underwriting platforms that can better predict students' future income in their chosen field.

Using AI can manage both privacy and security as part of AML reform, says Giant Oak's Gary Shiffman.

The California company agreed to acquire WestRiver Group in a move that will expand its debt fund business.

BBVA USA was one of the first U.S. banks to deploy a real-time core system and to purchase a neobank. Here's what PNC may keep, and what it may jettison, after it acquires the U.S. unit of the Spanish banking giant.

S&P Global has agreed to buy IHS Markit for about $39 billion in stock, a deal that accelerates the wave of consolidation among the finance industry's biggest data providers.