HSBC Global Transaction Banking has expanded its Global Payments Investigations (GPI) capability to 56 countries, with further country deployments scheduled to take place by the end of the year. GPI provides HSBC customers with a global payment enquiry resolution service.

Hub-based mobile communication solutions provider, MACH, has announced enhancements to its financial clearing and settlement solution for mobile operators. Version 2.0 speeds up the clearing and settling of all roaming, SMS Interworking and mobile content transactions for mobile operators, and offers more control and visibility of the process.

Austrian bank, BAWAG, has outsourced its SWIFT infrastructure to the VocaLink SWIFT Service Bureau. The solution is delivered in partnership with BBP AG, one of the world’s largest SWIFT Service Bureaus operators.

Royal Mail has launched a new data service to help businesses to tackle ID fraud. NCOA Alert helps flag to businesses potentially suspicious activity at the point of application for a product or service. The file is built using Royal Mail’s national change of address insight from three years of pending, live, cancelled and expired Redirections, as well as Multiple Residency data from the Postcode Address File.

Premium brand retailer Tommy Hilfiger has chosen Sterling Commerce, an IBM company, to automate its buyer electronic invoicing processes with Sterling e-Invoicing. The product reduces the cost of Tommy Hilfiger’s cross-border and domestic trading by automating customer invoicing processes and extends those benefits to its community of business partners.

SWIFT has launched a digital identity solution – 3SKey, which secures the exchange of information in banking applications, enabling corporate treasurers to manage their various banking relationships using a single, multi-network personal digital identity.

Misys has announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp, building on last year's mission-critical applications development alliance. The alliance will see Misys' banking and capital markets applications delivered via the Windows Azure cloud platform. Financial institutions will be offered the choice and flexibility necessary to maximise the return on their IT investment, and deliver innovative services to customers more rapidly.

HSBC Global Transaction Banking has launched its new Managed Payments Service (MPS), allowing customers to outsource key elements of payments activities,connectivity and data integration. Initially available to financial institutions and large corporate customers seeking an in-house bank or payment factory strategy, the solution offers a flexible, multi-bank proposition over the SWIFT network.

LCH.Clearnet has launched Europe's first clearing service for contracts-for-difference (CFDs). LCH.Clearnet acts as the central counterparty (CCP) to LMAX, the new multilateral trading facility for retail customers.This initial offering includes equity indices, commodities and interest rate contracts.

J.P. Morgan's Worldwide Securities Services business is to expand its direct custody and clearing footprint, providing clients with a consistent and integrated custody solution that extends J.P. Morgan's expertise and disciplined risk management strategies through to the local marketplace.

VocaLink and RBS have signed a deal that will see further improvements on the delivery of Euro payments to UK accounts through the international payments partner's Euro Clearing and Settlement Mechanism (CSM). The partnership, with RBS as a settlement agent, will see banks using VocaLink's Euro CSM service able to deliver payments more quickly and effectively to both Euro and Sterling beneficiaries in the UK.

Euroclear has launched its Common Communications Interface (CCI), a key element of its communications infrastructure consolidation programme, in Euroclear Bank, the international central securities depository (CSD). The CCI will act as a single access point for clients of all Euroclear international and national CSDs to transmit and receive transaction settlement, safekeeping, collateral management and related information.

Infosys has launched Finacle Mobile Banking 2.0, which enables retail and corporate consumers to access banking services through mobile SMS, GPRS, 3G and USSD-enabled handsets. The solution supports multi-host, multilingual, multi-channel, multi-currency banking, and enables integration with disparate host systems to facilitate a unified user experience.

ICT services provider niu Solutions has launched One Workspace, a pay-as-you-go managed service that integrates all the features of a corporate office environment into one virtualised offering. Implemented recently at Metro Bank, the solution helps businesses consume ICT ‘as-a-service’ that is custom-built, innovative, resilient and secure.

Symantec’s VeriSign Authentication group has announced that the VeriSign Managed Public Key Infrastructure Platform will secure the digital communications between government purchasing agencies and their supplier across the EU as part of the Pan-European Public Procurement Online project (PEPPOL). PEPPOL works to streamline the process of cross-border government procurement in the EU by interconnecting various isolated services, using digital transactions and data exchange. Together, European governments represent the single largest buyer in the EU, accounting for approximately 1.5trn Euros annually.

FIS has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Capco, a global business and technology consultancy solely dedicated to the financial services industry. The addition of Capco expands FIS’s established international presence and footprint amongst large US and global financial institutions through the addition of a professional services offering that covers the full financial services value chain.

BT plans to expand its ultra-low latency connectivity into continental Europe. BT Radianz Ultra will provide market participants in Paris and London with sub-millisecond access to market data and execution services, exchanges and Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTFs). It currently provides this for New York and Chicago markets.

Oracle, Fundtech and Sierra Atlantic have announced the introduction of Seamless STP, a solution integrating bank payments and receivables processing systems with their corporate client’s ERP systems. The solution offers corporate treasury executives a single, transparent view of cash flow, and enables a bank to be the single point-of-contact for their corporate client’s multi-bank needs.

Tesco Bank’s move to enter the mortgage market in early summer 2011 has seen it sign a five-year agreement with Vertex, a global provider of Customer Management Outsourcing. Two-hundred permanent jobs will be created in Glasgow to provide sales and service for Tesco Bank’s mortgage business, based at Atlantic Quay.

Metro Bank has installed teller cash recycling technology from NCR Corporation, cutting the cash handling time and enabling an open plan branch design. According to NCR, up to 40 per cent of a teller’s time is spent counting and re-counting cash at traditional teller lines, and these teller cash recyclers automate the acceptance, authentication and validation of note deposits, and make the cash instantly available for dispensing to customers.

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has announced that its non-trading market participants, including vendors and service providers, can take their own cabinets within the Exchange’s Hosting facility. The move is a strategic step in the evolution of the Exchange Hosting service, and paves the way for the creation of a community of both trading firms and solution providers in the Exchange’s datacentre.

ACI Worldwide has merged the services company ACI Soluciones, a previous joint venture between ACI and processor 4B, into ACI’s Spanish operations. The merger will deliver more flexibility and choice to companies that are operating in the Iberian and North African financial markets.

Danish Danske Bank has selected Fidessa group’s sell-side trading platform to support its equity trading business. The managed enterprise model will provide Danske Bank with access to a sophisticated workflow platform delivered through a fully hosted infrastructure.

Direct Debit Limited, a Bacs-approved payments-management software provider, has introduced a Faster Payments module for its PayCentre payments platform. The module allows customers Faster Payments via Direct Corporate Access (DCA). The new module gives businesses another option for paying suppliers and employees, and makes it easy to submit files to the UK’s clearing and settlement mechanism, Vocalink, via Secure-IP, for same day clearing.

Cardiff Pinnacle and Intelligent Environments have joined forces to provide an integrated systems solution to the banking and financial services sector, enabling the provision of short-term income protection (STIP) insurance as an additional module to IE’s existing NetFinance product. IE is part of the Parseq group, and its NetFinance produces are already established in the financial services market.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has joined CHAPS Clearing Company Limited, the organisation that is responsible for the operation of the UK’s high value, same-day money transfer system, and the Faster Payments Service. The new addition brings total membership to 18 members.

American Express and SAP AG have joined up to develop an integrated solution that will enable SAP customers in the US to process electronic payments more seamlessly with American Express. The companies aim to clear roadblocks that can delay or deter corporate adoption of electronic payments, such as costs of deploying and connecting a myriad of third-party systems.

FIS and NICE Actimize have expanded their partnership to provide employee fraud detection capabilities. FIS will augment its enterprise financial crime solutions by integrating the Actimize Employee Fraud solution within its core processing systems, and across its customer base. This builds upon the companies’ existing partnership relating to enterprise financial crime management.

SwapClear has announced that it is to clear over-the-counter (OTC) Rate Derivatives in six new currencies from Q1 2011. Interest rate swaps denominated in HUF, CZK, KRW, MXN, BRL and SGD will be clearable from this date. The extension enables over 95 per cent of the global IRS market to be cleared through SwapClear.

Microgen Financial Systems Division has announced that it has implemented a new Trust Administration system at Charterhouse, designed to improve customer service and retention and reduce operational risk. Charterhouse Lombard Limited will migrate its Trust and Corporate Services administration from multiple disparate legacy systems to a single integrated solution, Microgen 5Series Trust Administrator.

Voice Commerce has launched Cashflows, a suite of consolidated payment services for businesses. The launch reflects the Group’s expansion from the provision of payments processing to meeting broader financial requirements of a growing business customer base, Voice Commerce said, and offers a complete range of services to businesses.

Open source data management software provider Talend has announced a partnership with data management software and services provider Cloudera to simplify the processing of large scale data. The partnership integrates the two companies’ open source solutions to tackle the issue of data management.

Trading communications solutions provider IPC has opened its latest office in Zurich, Switzerland. The new office forms part of the company’s ongoing European expansion, designed to support banks in the extension of trading networks.

Monitise and DeviceFidelity have joined forces to enable mobile phone users to conduct contactless Visa payWave transactions. The partnership combines Monitise’s experience in mobile financial services and user interface design with DeviceFidelity’s In2Pay technology, a new technology that enables mobile users to transform a smart phone with a microSD slot into a mobile payment device. The solution offers customers a suite of mobile services, including payments, balance queries, mini-statements, bill payments and fund transfers.

Global electronic payments innovator Ixaris has launched an application development and operating platform that enables financial institutions to tap into the growing market for open payments online. Ixaris Opn also allows developers and entrepreneurs to create payment applications for specialised market segments.

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