Latest long reads: Finextra Research

The UK’s renting and mortgage nightmare: Tools to combat crisis

The current UK rental market is a disaster of epic proportions. The cost of living has spiked, the rental market is a jungle, and salaries have remained the same despite inflation and rising prices. Adding a cherry on top, wage growth is at its lowest in almost two years. Due to these dire circumstances, the UK public is clearly struggling. The a...

18 September 2024 /markets

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

What is mobile banking?

Mobile banking enables customers to manage financial services – such as their balance, transfers, standing orders, statements, direct debits, overdrafts, and bill payments – via their smartphones. For this reason, mobile banking – compared to other legacy banking channels such as branch, internet, and even carrier pigeon – is the fastest-growing ch...

17 September 2024 /payments

Embedded finance adoption: What are the real catalysts?

Retired Member

Embedded finance adoption: What are the real catalysts?

Embedded finance has become one of the biggest buzzwords of the 2020s in the fintech space. It broadens access to financial services, simplifies user journeys, lowers barriers to purchases—and of course has been a major growth driver for all kinds of companies. Embedded finance—which essentially means providing financial services at the point of g...

17 September 2024 /retail

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

US cheque dependency: Time for a change

The US leads the way in cheque usage among most countries across the globe, with about 11 billion items issued according to the most recent in-depth study available (2021). That’s a dubious honour, to be sure, though that annual item number has continued to drop over the past three years. Only France got anywhere close to the US in terms of per c...

16 September 2024 /retail

AI skills are more likely to land you a job interview in the UK

Kirstie McDermott Senior Content Editor at Amply

AI skills are more likely to land you a job interview in the UK

According to research from the Industrial Skills Strategy Council, 20% of the UK workforce could be significantly under skilled for their jobs by 2030. With other data showing that 27% of UK workers feel they don’t have the right digital skills for their job role, a disconnect between what employers want, and what employees can deliver, is emergi...

13 September 2024 /people

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

What is hybrid cloud?

Hybrid cloud is a computer programming architecture used by IT teams to reap the benefits of both the private and public hosting environments. These work in tandem to run an organisation’s workload and applications. Uses of hybrid cloud An example of a firm within the financial services industry which might find use for the hybrid cloud environm...

12 September 2024 /cloud

AI is eating up our energy – how will sustainable ambitions survive?

Sehrish Alikhan Reporter at Finextra

AI is eating up our energy – how will sustainable ambitions survive?

It has become clear to everyone that uses the internet that artificial intelligence (AI) is the next big thing. Nearly every company is releasing an AI chatbot/AI product/AI service to enhance their customer experience and improve efficiency of their products. It is true that AI can improve the lives of customers in many ways, such as facilitating ...

11 September 2024 /ai

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

US cheque dependency: How we got here

Why does the US lead the world in the use of paper cheques? And why haven’t these traditional payment instruments simply ‘gone away’ given all the tremendous advances that have been forged in the financial services ecosystem, especially over the past 20 years or so? In many countries, they simply don’t exist at all, and in some, financial institut...

10 September 2024 /retail

Vietnam's fintech transformation: Driving a new approach to banking SMEs

Ilko Batakliev Head of Design at Techcombank

Vietnam's fintech transformation: Driving a new approach to banking SMEs

This article was co-authored by Leon Gauhman, co-founder and CPSO at digital product consultancy Elsewhen. The World Economic Forum predicts that 70% of new value created this decade will be based on digitally enabled technologies—and Vietnam's thriving, digitally literate, small business sector is an example of this trend in action. Powered by s...

09 September 2024 /markets

Stablecoins under MiCA: What it means to be compliant

Rowan Varrall Associate Director at DTI Foundation

Stablecoins under MiCA: What it means to be compliant

In the rapidly evolving world of crypto and digital assets, regulatory frameworks are crucial for ensuring market integrity and investor confidence. Nearly three years after its initial proposal, the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation was published in the EU Official Journal in June 2023, establishing a comprehensive EU regulatory framewo...

06 September 2024 /crypto

The future is now: Open Finance is here to stay

Dominique Dierks Senior Content Manager at Finextra

The future is now: Open Finance is here to stay

This year, open banking in the UK celebrated its sixth birthday and reached the milestone of 10 million customers. In today’s world of instant and cross-border payments, the era of Open Finance has well and truly arrived. Customer demands are changing, and data is becoming increasingly vital for financial institutions. Open Finance allows banks to...

05 September 2024 /markets

Wind of change: VAT and e-invoicing in the digital age

Jurgen Soetaert Founder of Digicrowd, e-Invoicing expert at Flowin

Wind of change: VAT and e-invoicing in the digital age

Anyone in Europe that’s involved in invoicing and VAT will have heard of the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) proposal that’s been eluding agreement among member states for two years. Designed to streamline VAT across the European Union, member states have once again failed to reach agreement on ViDA during the latest vote in June 2024. A lot of...

04 September 2024 /regulation

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