At the Crossroads of Law, Innovation and Commerce
By Jim Bulling
The banking industry is expressing overwhelming support for the development and use of new technologies to improve the banking experience and have expressed their desire to enter into partnership with Fintech businesses.
By Cameron Abbott and Meg Aitken
Chinese regulators launched a website on Saturday to aid authorities in their mission to investigate the gigantic Ezubao “Ponzi scheme” that allegedly stole money from more than 900,000 investors.
Ezubao, China’s largest peer-to-peer lender, was caught red handed fabricating the majority of its listed investment projects and using investor money to fund the extravagant lifestyle of the company’s executives earlier this month.
K&L Gates will be sponsoring the AltFi Europe conference, which will take place in London, England on 4 May. London partner Jacob Ghanty and New York partner Ed Dartley will participate in a panel discussion.
By Jim Bulling
International banking group Investec Australia has purchased a 20% stake in equity crowdfunding platform Equitise. Equitise, which is based in New Zealand, was founded in Australia in 2014, but has developed its business model in New Zealand as a result of slow development to crowdfunding regulation in Australia. The deal values the startup at close to AUD$10 million.
By Cameron Abbott and Meg Aitken
The number of Australian consumer using contactless payment mediums is on the rise. Statistics revealed in the World Payments Report 2015 ranks Australia behind only the United States, Finland and the Netherlands as the countries recording the highest number of non-cash payments per person.
NAB is the most recent big-four bank to respond to changing consumer behaviour in the market. This week, NAB launched a new payment solution that allows customers to ‘tap and pay’ on Android phones. NAB claims the new ‘NAB Pay’ facility is the first in Australia to utilise the Visa Token Service and enables customers to make contactless payments via the bank’s existing app without revealing their account details.
Read more about the new NAB Pay mobile payment service here.
By Cameron Abbott and Meg Aitken
Tech start-ups are infiltrating the finance sector at a rapid rate, and customers love it. Changing consumer expectations and behaviours are forcing traditional banks to lower costs, be more efficient and provide better security in order to remain competitive.
By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
Rival technology powerhouses Apple, Google, Amazon, Intuit and PayPal have joined forces to form an advocacy group known as Financial Innovation Now, focused on enabling technological change within the finance industry. The group will work with policy-makers and key stakeholders to promote policies and regulations that encourage greater innovation in the financial services sector as well as ensuring that policy-makers understand the advantages that technology can bring to the industry.
By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
Twitter is changing the future of e-commerce by introducing a “buy now” button to users in the United States, making online shopping even more accessible to consumers. Twitter has joined forces with major e-commerce platforms Stripe, Shopify, Bigcommerce and Demandware to allow retailers to sell physical and digital goods and services directly through a simple 140-character tweet.
By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
Blockchain, the public decentralised ledger technology behind Bitcoin, is gaining attention from a much wider audience within the financial services industry in terms of the potential application to securities clearing and settlements, payment processing and loan transactions.
By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
The Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (JCESA) is considering what regulations, if any, will be required for robo-advice throughout the European Union (EU). JCESA has released a discussion paper on automation in financial advice to assist it evaluate how robo-advice is currently being used in the EU and its potential growth in banking, securities and insurance. The discussion paper highlights what the JCESA identify as the main potential benefits and risks to both consumers and financial institutions which offer some form of robo-advice.
Copyright © 2024, K&L Gates LLP. All Rights Reserved.