Recent activities in UK banks

1. 1
UK Bank's current and upcoming
activities

2. 2
Brexit

Brexit coming into effect at 11pm UK time on Friday, 29 March 2019
could result in potential difficulties in managing EUR from the UK.

In fact, after the UK voted to exit the EU on 23 June 2016, many
companies have already established treasury hubs in Europe, with
Amsterdam coming out as the preferred location.

3. 3
Open Banking
Lloyds
HalifaxBank of
Scotland
RBS
NatWest
Nationwide or
Santander
Barclays is the first to let Brits see their accounts from other providers
from within its main app.
The Barclays service uses the industry-approved Open Banking API to
ensure that customers’ accounts are linked into the app securely,
without them ever needing to give out their other banks’ usernames or
passwords. Customers will also be able to view all their data permission
history.
Open Banking
with Barclays

4. 4
Payment Services Directive -
PSD2
PSD1 only regulated payments within the EEA and in member state currencies
(e.g. GBP, EUR, PLN etc).
The key areas of change are as follows:

Expand the scope of payments to include non-EEA currencies for intra-EEA
payments and so called ‘One Leg Out’ transactions (i.e. payments into and/or
out of the EEA).

Mandate the use of the SHA charging option for all intra-EEA payments,
irrespective of currency.

Standardize Complaint handling.

Set minimum standards for Strong Customer Authentication.

Allow third party providers to enter the market as Payment Initiation Service
Providers and/or Account Information Service Providers to pave the way for
Open Banking.

5. 5
SWIFT gpi - transforming cross-
border payments
Cross-border payments have traditionally had four main
challenges –

they can take days,

they can’t be tracked,

they lack transparency on fees taken,

and remittance information can be altered in the payments
process.
SWIFT gpi – the new standard in global payments – substantially
increases the speed and ease of execution of cross-border
transactions for banks, corporates and market infrastructures.
Sending and receiving funds becomes faster and more secure,
with full transparency of the payment status across the
correspondent network.

6. 6
SWIFT gpi - transforming cross-
border payments

7. 7
Different types of fraud

Authorized push payment fraud - In this fraud, criminals use a variety of
social engineering techniques and interception of communications to trick
victims into making a payment to them.

Account takeover fraud - Fraudsters have always been interested in taking
over people’s accounts, but real-time payments make it more attractive.
Types of bank accounts that offer customers the ability to send money
instantly, especially if they allow for relatively large value payments, are
likely to be a target for fraudsters.

Money mules and money laundering - The movement of criminal proceeds
requires access to multiple bank accounts, therefore the criminals look to
recruit otherwise legitimate account holders to allow them to use their
accounts as money mules.

Account opening fraud - Fraudsters need the money generated by activity
related to real-time payments to end up in an account that they control. To
do this, they are opening accounts using stolen or synthetic identities. In
cases where the money going into these accounts is from a fraud such as
authorized push payment fraud, the victims may seek restitution from a bank
that has allowed a fraudster to open an account using a stolen or
synthesized identity.

8. 8
Protect consumers against APP
scams
Authorised Push Payment (APP) Scams Steering Group, established by the
Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) earlier this year, has published its
consultation on its industry code for the reimbursement of victims of
authorised push payment scams.
The proposed direction would require banks and payment service providers
that are participants in the Faster Payments System to:

Be capable of receiving and responding to confirmation of payee requests
from other PSPs by 1 April 2019

Send confirmation of payee requests and present responses to their
customers by 1 July 2019
Confirmation of Payee:
CoP is the industry-agreed way of ensuring that names of recipients are
checked before payments are sent. It will work by checking the account
name and account details to make sure there is a match. Alerts will notify the
payer whether there has been a match or not, meaning corrections can be
made before the payment is made.

9. 9
ATM Footprint Report from LINK

ATMs are closing at a rate of more than 250 per month, prompting the
UK’s Payment Systems Regulator to take action to protect the
availability of free-to-use (FTU) cash machines in the country.

LINK, the UK’s largest ATM network provider, is currently in the
process of a controversial plan to reduce the fees that banks pay to
cash machine operators. It has already cut fees by 5% and intends to
continue to reduce fees by 5% per year until 2021.

10. 10
UK Banks - recent news

B recently introduced an account aggregation service enabling customers to view
accounts they hold with other banks in their B mobile banking app. Moving forward,
customers will later this year be able to use the same platform to sync up their plastic
cards for paying with PayPal.

BABB - Users will be able to create “sub-accounts” for family members, and will even
be able to shop or book flights from the app—all without having to enter their
personal details, which is where blockchain and data come into play.

11. 11
References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit

https://www.barclayscorporate.com/insight-and-research.html

https://www.psr.org.uk/psr-publications/news-announcements

https://www.fico.com/en/solutions/managing-fraud-in-real-time-payments

https://www.cashpaymentnews.com/issues/october-2018/