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City A.M. has interviewed Howard Womersley Smith, an expert Fintech and Data lawyer and partner in Reed Smith’s Technology & Data London team, on London’s current startup FinTech scene.

Sitting down with Womersley Smith, City AM reflected on a range of London Fintechs urging the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to break banks’ dominance over the use of consumer data. Womersley Smith sided with Fintechs and has long been saying that the startup scene needs exactly that to properly thrive in 2021. Fintechs have argued that the end of banks dominance would increase competition in the savings, credit, mortgages and pensions markets. However, Womersley Smith believes that we are some way off true portable banking. However, he noted that there is another factor in play, that of trust where banking with a household name provides an element of comfort for consumers which is difficult for challengers to compete with.
Continue Reading City A.M. interviews Howard Womersley Smith on London’s start up Fintech scene

The Singapore government introduced a bill into parliament to amend the Electronic Transactions Act (ETA) (Cap. 88) (ETA) on January 4, 2021. The amendments set out in the Electronic Transactions (Amendment) Bill will be of relevance to the trade and commodities finance and fintech sectors as their primary object is to achieve recognition and equivalence…

On 19 November 2019, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) published its report on open banking and its implications for banks and banking supervision. The report builds on the BCBS’ previous findings on open banking and application programming interfaces (APIs) in its 2018 report (“Sound practices on the implications of FinTech developments for banks and bank supervisors”). We highlight findings from the report from a data protection perspective below.

Background

The report (including the 2018 report) recognises that technological advances and customers’ need for greater access to information and services have transformed traditional banking, and potentially opened a divide between incumbent banks, and specialised FinTech firms and new intermediaries.

Data sharing in third party arrangements has been increasingly prevalent due to the diversity of services that open banking brings: financial management tools, seamless payment transmissions between banks, vertically integrated financial services – the list goes on. The BCBS has focused on ‘customer-permissioned data sharing’, where customers grant permission to third party firms to access their data through the customers’ banks. These third party firms would collect such data through data aggregators – which may employ various techniques, such as screen scraping or reverse engineering, to access and store customer credentials.Continue Reading Open banking: the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has its say

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently invalidated Western Express Bancshares, LLC’s (Western Express) U.S. Patent No. 8,498,932 relating to a method of transferring funds through a bankcard. This decision was the result of a motion to dismiss a patent infringement action brought by Western Express against Green Dot Corporation…

Within two weeks, Miami International Holding Inc. and its subsidiaries (MIAX) have attained five victories before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The PTAB declared that five Nasdaq patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 6,618,707, 7,246,093, 7,921,051, 7,747,506, and 8,386,371), related to electronic securities trading systems, are invalid under…

Mark Carney’s extension as the governor of the Bank of England to January 2020 was put in place to ensure a smooth Brexit.

Mr Carney has become increasingly vocal in his attempts to maintain financial stability during that period. This has resulted in ‘Brexiteers’ hurling accusations of fuelling “Project Hysteria” after the bank published its economic analysis of Brexit at the end of November. To help mitigate such gloomy predictions, what else could Mr Carney do to support an orderly exit (and possibly create a lasting legacy for himself)?

Back in June, Mr Carney spoke about modernising the UK bank payment system by rebuilding the Bank of England’s real time gross settlement (RTGS) service “so that new private payment systems, including those using distributed ledgers, can simply plug into our system”, which includes those running off blockchain technology.[1]Continue Reading The fintech Carney-val

London has historically been considered the centre of European financial services. Now it is also viewed as the capital of financial technology (FinTech). However, with the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit becoming ever more real, and increasing attempts to lure FinTech firms to the continent, London’s title is under threat.

London provides a haven where …

On November 28, 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) request for a preliminary injunction against Defendants Blockvest, LLC (Blockvest) and Blockvest’s founder and chairman Reginald Buddy Ringgold, III (Ringgold) was denied by United States District Court for the Southern District of California.

Blockvest and Ringgold were offering and selling unregistered securities in the…

The German regulatory practice has been to treat bitcoin as a unit of account and thus a financial instrument. Consequently, commercial services involving bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (including trading, brokerage, operating exchanges, investment advisory ) are regulated activities, requiring the relevant authorisation of Germany’s Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, or BaFin). On 25 September…

The EU Commission continues to show its support and investment in new technologies in the digital economy. On February 1, 2018, the Commission and the European Parliament launched the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, and earlier this month, the Commission also unveiled its FinTech Action Plan.

The Blockchain Observatory

The observatory is designed to be a comprehensive repository of blockchain expertise and a source of innovation and development. It brings together policymakers, technology experts, regulators, businesses and users with the goal of building on new opportunities offered by the blockchain technology. The initiative forms part of the drive towards the digital single market, a Commission strategy to boost e-commerce, modernize regulations and promote the digital economy. The observatory also aims to support the interoperability of blockchain, which is the ability of computer systems and software to exchange and utilize information without restrictions. It also seeks to address the varied challenges in the blockchain ecosystem – such as trust, compliance, security, traceability by design, among other issues.

The EU Commission has also called for a feasibility study on the opportunity of an EU blockchain infrastructure, with tenders closed in January. The study will research the opportunity, benefits and challenges of an enabling framework supporting blockchain-based services, and whether EU services could run on such an infrastructure.Continue Reading European Commission outlines blockchain development plans, calls for a feasibility study and unveils FinTech Action Plan.