The UK government’s explorations of open banking, an interview with a central banker about digital payments and a brace of stories about fintech hackathons are among our top ten most popular stories this year.
Global Government Fintech launched on 1 September as a dedicated sister publication to Global Government Forum, which covers Payments & Financial Services via a dedicated topic section.
Since then we stepped up our coverage of news and trends, appealing to experts across government authorities worldwide who are working to transform and innovate in the fintech arena, as well as hosting webinars with international speakers. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see our most popular 10 stories.
“From artificial intelligence and blockchain to cyber-security and data, not to mention fields such as digital currencies, open banking and ‘regtech’ – the world of fintech is dynamic and growing. It’s an emerging and exciting patch, particularly in tracking how governments are approaching the topic in different ways,” said Global Government Fintech editor Ian Hall. “We look forward to continuing to build editorial momentum and hearing more of your views during 2021.”
“Our readership of leading public servants is looking to the world of fintech for innovative solutions to some of challenges they face,” said publisher Kevin Sorkin. “Our readers know that not one organisation nor industry has all the answers, so our Knowledge Partner contributions are a great deal of value in supporting the convening of this important community and helping to strengthen industry knowledge, relationships and inspire ways of working together to make a difference for citizens all over the world. So, thank you to our Knowledge Partners – Mastercard, Amazon Web Services Institute and NS&I Government Payment Services – for their important support to make this happen.”
We have exciting plans for events and webinars during 2021 across topics including: digital payments; fintech’s role in driving post-Covid economic recovery; digital currencies; open banking and finance; financial inclusion; and artificial intelligence. If you are interested to find out more, please contact our commercial department on info@globalgovernmentforum.com.
Global Government Fintech encourages you to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter – and to spread the word about our free weekly email newsletter.
GLOBAL GOVERNMENT FINTECH’S TOP 10 STORIES OF 2020
1st) ‘UK government open banking tender puts focus on payments’ [1 September]: Global Government Fintech burst into the world with a story on the UK government’s first government tender specifically for open banking – a ‘first’ for our first story, which comes first in our popularity ranking.
2nd) ‘HMRC explores open banking’s potential to “streamline” tax’ [14 December]: like our first-placed story (above), also an article on developments at HMRC related to open banking – this time the department’s issuance of a request for information (RFI) on ‘tax-compliant banking products’.
3rd) ‘Kenya central bank names fintech hackathon winner’ [1 September]: our third most popular story so far looked at the Virtual African Hackathon.
4th) ‘“We’re in the final lap…”: an interview with the UK’s open banking champion’ [14 October]: Could the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) morph into OFIE – the Open Finance Implementation Entity? With use of open banking gathering pace in the UK, we spoke to Imran Gulamhuseinwala.
5th) ‘Tallinn tales: an interview with Estonia’s payments leader’ [20 November]: a chat with Rainer Olt, who is leading research on central bank digital currency (CBDC) technology for Estonia’s central bank.
6th) ‘Digitising tax could raise $300bn annually for developing counties, says report’ [12 October]: a look at ‘Success Factors in Tax Digitalisation’, published by the Better Than Cash Alliance and the United Nations (UN)-hosted organisation’s first publication dedicated to tax digitalisation.
7th) ‘Global study explores fintech regulators’ Covid-19 response’ [30 November]: we explored ‘The Global Covid-19 FinTech Regulatory Rapid Assessment Study’, one of the largest empirical studies to date on the impact of Covid-19 on the regulation and supervision of fintech.
8th) ‘UK open banking users surpass two million with payments projected to drive further growth’ [28 September]: a report on the significant user-number milestone for UK open banking.
9th) ‘UK fintech hackathon puts focus on tackling poverty’ [9 September]: it seems that you like hackathons… this was a popular news story on the launch of the ‘Fairer Finance Hackathon’ (we subsequently reported that the hackathon was won by Finexos, a UK start-up that is now aiming for take-up of its solution in local authorities across the UK – and potentially beyond).
10th) ‘Singapore grants non-banks access to e-payments infrastructure’ [2 December]: a story on the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’s announcement that eligible non-bank financial institutions (NFIs) such as fintech companies will have direct access to its payments plumbing from February 2021 – a move its director has hailed as a major e-payments milestone.
