The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Nov 26th

By Gaia Lamperti

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

This week, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has opened a consultation on the prospect of extending and aligning payment system operating hours to improve cross-border payments, focusing on the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), the international standard setter, said that an extension of RTGS operating hours across jurisdictions could help address current obstacles and increase the speed of cross-border payments by reducing liquidity costs and settlement risks.

January 14th has been set as the deadline by the Committee for feedback from payment system operators, participants and other interested parties.
According to a survey that involved 62 RTGS systems around the world, there are 3 potential improvements: an incremental increase in opening hours on current operating days; an extension to current non-operating days; and an increase to full 24/7 provision.

Marcus Hughes, Director of Business Development at Bottomline, a global payments company, commented: “This proposal from the BIS is one of a number of important steps being taken to achieve the G20 objective to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper and more transparent. Such proposals are overdue because cross-border payments remain the most inefficient form of payment today. With USD 24trillion of B2B cross-border payments, as well as significant volumes of personal payments, including remittances, this problem needs urgent attention. The BIS is also developing with various central banks prototypes using multiple central bank digital currencies to achieve instant 24/7 cross-border payments, using smart contracts to provide FX market-making and liquidity management.”

Deals of the week

• Payhawk raised $112 million in the second-largest Series B funding round in Central and Eastern Europe
• Airwallex raises an additional $100 million in Series E1
• True Balance raises $30 million in debt for True Credits
• Mouro Capital leads Vesttoo’s $15 million Series B funding round with MS&AD Ventures
• TabTrader announces the closing of a $5.8 million Series A funding round
• Borderless Capital closed a $10 million PLANETS.Fund to build green data economy on Algorand
• GIMO secures $1.9 million in Seed+ round led by Integra Partners

Be on the lookout for

JPMorgan vs Tesla. The American bank is suing Elon Musk’s company for $162 million in warrants. In a court filing, JPMorgan said that warrants sold by Tesla forced the bank to adjust its positions after Musk tweeted that he had “funding secured” to acquire the company.

“Though JPMorgan’s adjustments were appropriate and contractually required,” the complaint said, “Tesla has flagrantly ignored its clear contractual obligation to pay JPMorgan in full.” In the past couple of years, Musk’s tweets already led to US Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges and $20 million fines against both him and Tesla.

Events & Appointments

• Don’t miss BankSec 2021 next week on Nov 30th- Dec 1st at Park Plaza Riverbank in London, the industry’s leading conference focused on physical, logical and cybersecurity. The event comprises a high-quality speaker programme containing important contributions from leading banks, government and law enforcement agencies, solutions providers and a range of industry bodies. We’ll be there too!
• IBSi is happy to announce a partnership as a Media Partner at FinTech Connect 2021, scheduled to be held on Dec 1st – 2nd as a virtual event. The event will gather over 4,000 professionals – including payment and digital transformation leaders – from financial institutions, FinTech companies and technology enablers.