The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | May 13th

By Puja Sharma

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

Democratizing Credit

Zeta, a provider of next-gen banking technology to financial institutions globally, has announced the launch of its Digital Credit as a Service offering at its Democratizing Credit 2024.

Zeta’s offering is underpinned by NPCI’s Credit Line on UPI scheme, which harnesses the power of the UPI network to turbo-charge credit issuance in India.

Zeta estimates that the transaction volume on this scheme will exceed $1 trillion by 2030 and aims to capture 50% of this market opportunity with its end-to-end solution, which can help banks conceive and rapidly launch multi-form credit products.

Citi has made a strategic minority investment in Cicada, a FinTech based in Greenwich, to facilitate institutional e-trading of Mexican Government Bonds.

The investment was made by Citi’s Markets Strategic Investments unit, which is responsible for the sourcing and execution of strategic investments relevant to Citi’s Markets franchise. Citi will also act as a liquidity provider for the trading platform.

“We are excited to invest in Cicada. The technology of the trading platform, together with Citi’s partnership, has the potential to enhance the efficiency of the multi-billion-dollar Mexican fixed-income market,” said Aldo Alvarez, LatAm Lead at Citi’s Markets Strategic Investments unit.

Contactless cardholders for commuters

Validata has expanded its partnership with Temenos and has extended its integration with Temenos core banking to provide banks and Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) with a next-generation, cost-effective solution for Cash and Nostro reconciliation. This includes payment investigations and case management, intelligent matching, and exception management.

Banks and EMIs are required to perform regular internal and external reconciliations with speed and accuracy to manage liquidity, mitigate risk, meet regulations and secure client payments across different currencies. This makes back-office operations reconciliation anything but simple.

Temenos clients can leverage the capabilities of Validata’s ConnectIQ platform, a cloud-native, no-code data enablement platform.

Payment technology company Nexi has partnered with JCB and UnionPay to enable contactless cardholders to access Rome’s public transportation.

The move makes Rome the first city in Europe to offer contactless payment service to cardmembers in possession of contactless cards from the international JCB and UnionPay circuits.

The service, commonly known as open-loop transit, is now available through Nexi and the contactless sales channel developed by ATAC across the entire transportation network of Rome.

Millions of tourists and citizens, especially from Asian countries, will benefit from the service on all public transportation vehicles in Rome. The service is active on all surface lines, buses, trams, and trolleybuses, as well as on the entire metro network and some urban railway lines equipped with entrance turnstiles.

What is the buzz

The European Central Bank (ECB) is embarking on trials for the settlement of wholesale transactions using central bank money, marking a significant step in exploring new technologies. In its initial phase, ten market entities with access to TARGET and six distributed ledger technology (DLT) providers will participate. European central banks including Deutsche Bundesbank, Banque centrale du Luxembourg, Banque de France, Banca d’Italia, and Oesterreichische Nationalbank will be actively involved. Testing is slated to commence on May 13, with additional trials scheduled for later this year.