#Alipay’s domination in the mobile payments world is reaching new heights — 30,000 feet, to be exact. Finnish #airline #Finnair today announced its decision to #offer mobile payment service Alipay on flights between Helsinki and Shanghai. Alipay is one of the most popular digital payment methods in its home country of China,Read More
Bank Innovation
The Commercial #Bank of #Dubai (CBD), announced late in November that it is launching “CBD Now”, Dubai’s #first #digital-only bank. They aim to target millennials and digitally connected customers early in 2017.
Peter Baltussen, CEO of Commercial Bank of Dubai said, “The launch of CBD Now during 2016 UAE’s innovation week is a timely example of how CBD supports the vision of the UAE government to develop innovation and drive client happiness.”
Digital-only Banking allows customers to totally change how they manage their finances. They can now use smart #technology to fulfil all their banking needs. CBD will offer customers a technologically smart, and seamless mobile bank, personalised to enable them to perform all their usual financial services from anywhere via their smartphone. So whether it’s managing your current accounts, savings accounts or credit cards that you need, this new development will serve you well.
This news comes hot on the heels of Emirates NBD’s announcement in June that they would be investing Dh500million (US$ 136million) in digital banking systems. Mindful of the fact that the bank is losing its appeal with Millennials, this move is aimed squarely at younger customers.The bank’s Chief Executive, Mr Shayne Nelson said, “We are making a commitment to the future with our digital transformation plan.”
The move into digital banking, globally, has seen huge benefits for #banks and customers. For customers there is a huge improvement in convenience and speed of service, whereas these systems also make cost savings for the banks. There are approximately 800 million customers now using mobile banking systems worldwide. This number is expected to increase to over 1.9billion by the year 2019, according to a report by the auditing company KPMG.
The UAE has a young and affluent population, which is driving the move to digitisation. According to a recent Google study, its 9.2 million population has the highest penetration of smartphone use in the world, at about 70 per cent. Traditionally here, cash has always been king, with credit cards often shunned by young affluent people. However, the ease of use of digital banking is starting to capture the imagination.
EY GCC Digital Banking Report 2015 found that half the banks they surveyed have budgeted between US$ 5 million and US$ 20 million for digital initiatives. These included automation, channels, customer journeys and new technologies etc. Furthermore they found that many of the larger banks were demonstrably willing to spend even more. Possible even more exciting was the fact that banks saw this as a rebirth, rather than an incremental approach to modernisation. Digital-first, a Sharia-compliant retail bank in Saudi Arabia, more than demonstrated this.
The island kingdom of Bahrain is also moving swiftly to keep up. A number of state bodies including the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) are involved in looking at ways in which to develop its #fintech sector. Areas of interest are: Islamic finance, in which in which Bahrain has strong global standing; crowdfunding; payment services; online wealth management service (#robo-advisors); and #blockchain.
Moving forward, CBD Now Co-founders programme being #launched in the near future involves enabling pioneering customers to provide input into building the bank of their dreams. Murray Sims, General Manager Personal Banking Group at Commercial Bank of Dubai, said, “We believe our customers have a lot of know-how when it comes to banking services. Customers can assist during the piloting phase to influence product development and refinements before rolling out the brand to the public.”
Things are really hotting up in the digital banking sector within the Emirates.
The post First Digital Bank Launched in Dubai appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
This autumn the Pitts Circus #movie announced to produce the #very #first #Ethereum #financed movie for #cinema, TV and VOD in 2017. The film which is going to be presented on film festivals and cinemas in 2018 will bring a long term benefit to the Ethereum ecosystem and will bring in new people into the crypto currency space.
The movie corporation who collected Ether from Ethereum investors trough a smart contract recently announced lots of B2B cooperations, sponsoring and product placement deals, which will support the production process of the first Ethereum based Independent movie.
While the first scenes are going to be shoot from the end of January 2017 in West-Australia the Pitts Circus team used the last month to coordinate some important business deals to make the movie look and feel like a crypto-related film. While the Pitts Circus Family (a popular artist family from Australia) will head the cast the movie production the production team around Tony Caradonna signed with Matto Kämpf and Carlos Henriquez movie actors who already have years of TV & film experience. Mera film, a swiss based digital cinema production company supports the production progress and will help to bring a high-quality movie in 2018 to film festivals followed by international cinemas all around the world.
The Ethereum based project closed some important business deals in the last time. In the last month the team closed several sponsoring and product placement deals. Ledger Wallet, will come up with a new version of their cold wallet soon. The hardware wallet, which will also support smart contracts will be part of the movie. Also Trezor Wallet confirmed to support the first Ethereum founded movie in terms of sponsoring and product placement. The Pitts Circus movie recently also received financial support from bilinguisme.ch
The movie production announced to feature Ether Card products in their film. Customized Pitts Circus Ethereum gift cards are available to give away shares of the movies venture as a present. While the team works on more B2B deals inside the crypto space they also brought other companies to the scene who are going to sponsor the crypto related film.
The Giant Squid Audio Lab Company, who produces high fidelity microphones will spons o r the mov i e and many mo r e cooperations are on negotiations. Moreover the project signed the experienced sound engineer Rainer Jesky from Berlin.
First results of production will be shown on the COVAL/ VOCAL podcast early next year. The movie will also include a COVAL placement (Circuits of Value #cryptocurrency). It will be the first movie which shows the innovative use case of storing and sending cryptocurrency inside a MP3 file or ordinary usbsticks. The movie soundtrack is in progress but independent musicians will be able to upload their music on the aurovine platform (Audiocoin cooperation) and the audience will decide which music will be part of the film.
In sum the Swiss movie production was able to collect financial resources, equipment and human labour time of more than 80,000 USD. Parts of it come from donations during the summer, followed by their first sold smart contracts (Ether investment) as well from closed business deals with sponsors and partners. There will be some more deals signed in the next weeks. Currently the project also announced a partnerships with other companies e.g. Mycolab or Aardvark Film Emporium.
Tony Caradonna producer of the Pitts Circus movie also announced, that there will be an Ethereum Movie Venture coin in future. This coin will be used to give out the yearly movies (ETH) dividends, while the investment can be traded on exchanges. One reason for this action was the wish of many investors to make the investment able to trade on a short-term basis. Moreover, the Ethereum Movie Venture coin will be used to produce more independent film project and eventually provide a ethereum based VOD solution.
Right now the the team is exited to see so much progress and support all over the world and would like to thank all partners and the international community members who are supporting the production process. In that way the Pitts Circus movie also cherish the work of Jose Antonio Leon Rojas, Ludwig Amadeus Moncrieff and the team of Social Husky international who support the project from Venezuela, who will produce merchandise material for film festivals.
The post The Very First Ethereum Financed Movie For Cinema appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Hamburg-based #FinTech firm Naga Group AG and Deutsche Börse Group are to launch the #first global #exchange for virtual gaming products. The two companies have set up joint venture firm Switex GmbH which will launch the world’s first neutral, secure and reliable platform for the exchange and trade of in-game items.
The management team of Switex will comprise the founders of the Naga Group, Yasin Qureshi and Benjamin Bilski, who will serve as Managing Directors of Switex. Christoph Brück from Naga Group, Victor Hugo Gomez from Deutsche Börse and Nikolay Kolev from Deloitte Digital Ventures will join the advisory board.
The in-game #items market is estimated to be worth over 46 billion USD a year and has seen steady annual growth of over ten percent in the recent past. But at the moment there are few opportunities for players to legally trade game items.
Yasin Qureshi, CEO Naga Group and CEO Switex, said: “We believe that there is a great demand in the gaming community to trade in game items in a fair, secure and legal environment. We will give gamers the chance to monetize the values they have earned through their skills and efforts.”
Naga Group Executive Director Christoph Brück added: “We are proud to announce this cooperation and strongly believe that, with the support of Deutsche Börse, we will create a new standard for trading virtual items.”
“The entrepreneurial team at the Naga Group has strong know-how and industry expertise. We look forward to helping them develop the platform and to providing our market infrastructure expertise,” said Victor Hugo Gomez, Senior Vice President, DB1 Ventures, Deutsche Börse.
“We are pleased to bring in and leverage Deloitte’s network and expertise to support the venture together with Deutsche Börse,” added Nikolay Kolev, Managing Director Deloitte Digital Ventures. Deutsche Börse AG holds a minority stake in Switex. Naga specializes in disruptive financial trading technologies and is the maker of SwipeStox, its first open API social trading app where users traded more than 5 billion euros within 3 months after launch.
The post First Exchange for in-Game Items. appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Debt happens, guys–that’s the message from #Goldman #Sachs&8217;s new #consumer advertisement for its much-talked about new consumer lending arm, #Marcus. It&8217;s also Goldman&8217;s #first advertising campaign… ever. Marcus&8217;s goal, like all consumer lending arms, is to provide consumer loans. However, most consumer lending arms are not backed by #banks thatRead More
Bank Innovation
Debt happens, guys–that’s the message from #Goldman #Sachs&8217;s new #consumer advertisement for its much-talked about new consumer lending arm, #Marcus. It&8217;s also Goldman&8217;s #first advertising campaign… ever. Marcus&8217;s goal, like all consumer lending arms, is to provide consumer loans. However, most consumer lending arms are not backed by #banks thatRead More
Bank Innovation
Daily #Fintech is a global business that happens to be based in #Switzerland. Our Subscribers (over 13,800 as I write) are #from all over the world, pretty much tracking the growth of Fintech globally. So we don’t take sides in the Fintech capital of the world debate. I have enjoyedRead More
Bank Innovation
Digital Federal #Credit #Union has joined the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the Washington, DC-based #blockchain #trade organization.
Mention #wearables, and most of us immediately think consumer #first – the Apple Watch, Fitbits, Google Glasses and so on. But when it comes to business or enterprise applications for wearables, many of us draw a blank. The challenge for many of the companies that create wearables (Apple, Google etc),Read More
Bank Innovation
Russia’s #central #bank said today that it has successfully completed a #distributed #ledger trial.
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