IBS Journal May 2016
49
measures. We’ve been working hard to educate and inform consumers and small businesses through our continuing marketing activity, but we do recognise there is more to be done.”
£1 BILLION…MasterCard is in talks to buy VocaLink for £1 billion. The 13 banks (including Barclays, HSBC,
Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland) which are shareholders in VocaLink, the British-based operator of the Faster Payments service, have approved a period of exclusivity within which MasterCard can negotiate a takeover.
VocaLink processed 11 billion transactions last year, whilst MasterCard is looking to capture a greater share of UK debit card payments from rival Visa. The talks come after the Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) said VocaLink’s existing ownership structure was “hampering competition and the speed of innovation in the market.”
310…Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is on track to miss an end of 2017 deadline to offload 310 Williams & Glyn
branches. A statement issued by the bank said: “Due to the complexities of Williams & Glyn’s customer and product mix, the programme to create a cloned banking platform continues to be very challenging and the timetable to achieve separation is uncertain. RBS is exploring alternative means to achieve separation and divestment. The overall financial impact on RBS is now likely to be significantly greater than previously estimated.”
Williams & Glyn has to be divested by RBS by the end of 2017 under an agreement between the UK government and Brussels. Failure to meet the deadline is likely to result in significant financial penalties being imposed on the taxpayer- backed FI.
An attempt in 2012 to sell the branches to Santander UK collapsed in 2012 after it became frustrated with IT issues relating to the separation of the network.
$1…Goldman Sachs has launched its new internet-based savings offering, GS Bank. The mega-investment bank, which
has traditionally offered account minimums of up to $10 million, has created a new offering for the man on the street. GS Bank is a result of Goldman’s acquisition of GE Capital Bank. Anyone with an internet connection and a dollar can sign up..
GS Bank is also offering interest rates of 1.05% (or 2% on five-year certificates), which is higher than the average US savings yield of .06% but similar to rivals like Ally. The bank currently has deposits of around $114 billion, leaving it behind much larger consumer-orientated organisations like Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
$10…Bangladesh’s central bank was hacked due to it not having a secure enough IT infrastructure, including
no firewall and second hand $10 routers connecting to global financial networks. The incident took place in February with crooks aiming to steal $1 billion, although they were undone by a spelling mistake in one of the transfer orders (alerting bank staff) and ended up with $81 million.
They took the money from the bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, using stolen credentials to make requests to transfer cash look legitimate. This has been traced to accounts in the Philippines and to casinos in the same country. Most of the money has yet to be recovered. The head of Bangladesh’s central bank, Atiur Rahman, quit as a result. Bangladeshi Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith branded the bank’s approach to the cyber theft “very incompetent.”
www.ibsintelligence.com
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