Latest opinions that Laura Francis has shared on Finextra

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Laura Francis

Head of Brand and Marketing

Form3

Member since

14 Mar 2019

Location

London

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Laura's opinions

Why financial institutions are banking on cloud-native technology to stay competitive

Digital banking has exploded, fueled by growing digital confidence, technology advancement and new, agile challenger banks but also a global pandemic creating an almost overnight shift in how both businesses and consumers move money. Pre-Covid, digital transformation was already gaining importance among UK and European Banks as a strategic necessit...

17 November 2020 /payments /cloud Cloud Banking out of the Box

Future-proofing your payments infrastructure

Any chief technology officer (CTO), in any financial institution big or small will tell you that the challenges in payment processing are the same. After all, a payment is a payment and people want them to be fast, really fast. Speeding up payment processing is one thing but being able to handle the complete, end to end payments journey from first ...

23 September 2020 /payments /cloud Payments strategies 2015-2020-2030

The future of payments is in the cloud

Why now is the time to move away from legacy payments infrastructure Technology is moving at a remarkable pace – by the time something has been built and launched it already feels outdated. So it may come as a surprise that many European banks are still using systems originally implemented several decades ago. The introduction of open banking (PSD2...

13 July 2020 /payments /cloud The future of Payments in Europe

SME banking in times of uncertainty

How Covid has accelerated the Fintech/Bank collaboration model to become the new normal In these uncertain times, it is no secret that SMEs are some of the hardest hit by the economic impact of COVID-19. But help is at hand. Financial services providers are working to help SMEs navigate the current wave of uncertainty but are they doing enough? a...

22 June 2020 /payments /covid-19 Banking Strategy, Digital and Transformation

The New Reality: Directly connect to SEPA Instant without the need for a Central Bank

What do a Fintech, a Tier1 bank and a non-bank PSP have in common? The committment and drive to make payments faster, easier and more cost effective for the global financial community. This includes non-banks. The possibility of collaboration between these parties was once thought impossible but today, by utilising close partnerships with Tier 1 b...

05 May 2020 /payments SEPA and European Payments

SME Challenges in Cross Border payments

The economic scale of the SME market is substantial, contributing £2.0 trillion (52%) a year to the UK economy alone and growing. But for SMEs wanting to trade internationally, they’re met with highly complex infrastructure and a myriad of lenders, brokers, FIs, processes and systems in place that lack sufficient integration or none at all. What’s...

20 April 2020 /payments The future of Payments in Europe

Accelerating innovation in financial services: Is Faster Payments doing enough?

The concept of real-time payment processing both from an operational and cost advantage is big news yet only 36% of all electronic payments in the UK are now via the Faster Payments Service (FPS)1. One could argue that FPS has fundamentally changed the nature of payments, user experience and the real economy. But in reality, the race to real-time ...

14 April 2020 /payments Payments strategies 2015-2020-2030

Trading without borders: The cross border payments evolution

Plenty is unfolding in the global payments arena. There is a stream of new products or partnerships being publicised by financial institutions to improve the user experience across both domestic and international payments. One common theme rings true, the existing system is failing to meet the demands and realities of cross-border payments, especia...

02 March 2020 /payments The future of Payments in Europe