Paytech heavyweight Worldpay is adding PAX Technology’s handheld PAX A920 to its line of SmartPay terminals.

Featuring a single software platform, these devices provide a common user experience for merchants, Worldpay says.

SmartPay terminals also use an Android-based operating system with pre-loaded business application bundles –“specifically designed to best meet a merchant’s needs”.

The project stems from the partnership between Vantiv (acquired by Worldpay last year) and AEVI, a Germany-based subsidiary of Diebold Nixdorf. The two companies joined forces last year to work on a solution that gives merchants a choice of smart point-of-sale (POS) devices and applications to manage their store.

“With an open-solution design, powered by AEVI, Worldpay can offer its channel partners and merchants innovative terminals, all of which go beyond the POS with applications that will help grow revenue through loyalty and analytics tools,” Worldpay states.

The new offering enables merchants accept multiple forms of payment and print/e-email receipts whilst having a pre-researched bundle of business applications tailored specifically for them.

Andy Chau, president and CEO at PAX, says PAX A920 has “the horse power to run the kind of innovative applications Worldpay and AEVI are using it for”.

The device features “a sleek design with a large touchscreen, a fast thermal printer and contactless capability making it ideal for line-busting, pay-at-the-table and other trending payment methods”, Wordlpay adds.

It will be available from Worldpay starting in June this year.

UK-based TSB will be migrating its customers’ data from the legacy platform provided by Lloyds Banking Group to its own new platform, Proteo4UK.

The bank says it has been operating many of its key systems from the new platforms for months already (e.g. cash machines, payment systems and a mobile app) and “nobody has even noticed – which is exactly how it should be”.

“However, as we transfer the data this weekend, we do need to temporarily switch some things off over this weekend. We’ve already let our customers know what’s happening and what is/isn’t available,” TSB adds.

The bank has created an infographic that outlines what’s happening this weekend.

“Our focus over the coming weeks is our existing customers – making sure everything is working exactly as it should be,” the bank states. “Therefore, should a new customer want to get a product with TSB from Monday, they’ll be able to do so in branch but we’re taking a phased approach in terms of reintroducing our product sales online. This is what we did when we launched in 2013 as it’s the responsible thing to do.”

“Born in the cloud”

Redwood Bank, which describes itself as UK’s first 100% “born in the cloud” bank, has gone on the record about its technology and providers.

Tech

The bank uses Microsoft Azure cloud, which hosts the DPR Consulting core banking system (as exclusively reported by FinTech Futures last year), the Kentico content management system (CMS) and marketing platform, as well as a range of Microsoft’s solutions, including Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Intune to manage remote corporate and personal devices, and Microsoft Sharepoint for non-technical end users to manage documents and interactions.

CSI (formerly Niu Solutions) provided Azure infrastructure management and security services, New Signature provided Office 365 managed services, Newton IT supplied hardware and telephony, and Distinction was responsible for website design and monitoring.

This is the first instance of a “pure Azure implementation” of DPR’s core banking solution.

“From its inception, Redwood actively undertook to minimise its ‘on premise’ IT infrastructure and successfully operate with a modest hardware footprint, limited to end user devices and network infrastructure,” the bank states.

“This cloud-based outsourcing strategy enables Redwood to implement sophisticated digital solutions, without the need to build a sizeable in-house IT team.”

Speed

Gary Wilkinson, co-founder and CEO of Redwood, says the team achieved “one of the fastest ‘licence-to-launches’ in UK banking history”, which was achieved thanks to the cloud environment and would not have been feasible to build in-house.

The bank launched just 12 months after submitting its banking licence application to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and after a mobilisation period of just four months following receipt of an initial, restricted banking licence.

“In launching a new business bank in a highly regulated environment, we needed to take advantage of latest technology to build a secure and cost-effective banking infrastructure. We decided to partner, wherever possible, with external specialist software, technology and infrastructure providers, to acquire high levels of expertise,” he explains.

“The team saw significant benefits in adopting a 100% cloud-based strategy” – the result is becoming the first licensed bank in the UK to “fully utilise” Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Focus and ownership

Redwood says its “mission is to offer simple and transparent loans and savings accounts to SMEs, focusing on providing simple and well designed business mortgages and business savings accounts, backed up by personalised service and efficient digital systems”.

Its HQ is in Letchworth, Hertfordshire and it also has a regional office in Warrington, Cheshire.

Redwood is owned by private investors and by the UK local authority, Warrington Borough Council. It is believed that this is the first time that a UK local authority has made such a direct investment in a licensed bank.

“This innovative financial partnership is helping to stimulate economic growth, both in the heartland regions in which it focuses, including Warrington and the North West as part of the UK’s Northern Powerhouse region,” the bank says. It is quick to add, however, that it also offers products and services to businesses nationally across the UK too.

To chart its journey and the results so far, Redwood has produced a white paper, “Redwood Bank: Born in the Cloud”, which can be viewed here (PDF file).

“We are proud of our achievements in building and launching our new bank, with a small internal team and within challenging timescales,” Wilkinson concludes, “so we think it would be beneficial to our customers, partners, colleagues and other stakeholders, to share our story.”

Our comprehensive article on UK’s challenger banks and their tech can be found here.

New core banking tech client for Finastra in US

Mechanics Cooperative Bank, a savings bank in the US state of Massachusetts, has selected a suite of front-to-back solutions from Finastra (formerly DH Corporation), including the Fusion Phoenix core banking system (formerly PhoenixEFE).

Finastra says its products will form the bank’s “new technology foundation”, creating a “single environment that is more easily managed in the back-office, providing greater workflow and interface efficiencies for the bank’s staff, and ultimately customers”.

Fusion Phoenix is based exclusively on Microsoft technology, which, the vendor points out, “will enable Mechanics Cooperative Bank to use commodity hardware, lowering the total cost of ownership, while also exposing the banking system to the many capabilities inherent to Microsoft technologies”.

Management consultancy firm The NBS Group assisted with system selection and will also be working with the bank and Finastra throughout the implementation.

“The banking core is the single most important technology investment a financial institution can make,” notes Tom Grottke, CEO of The NBS Group.

“By upgrading our core technology, we are making a statement to our customers and employees,” says Joseph T Baptista Jr, president and CEO, Mechanics Cooperative Bank. “This is an investment in our future.”

Meniga, a white-label digital banking solutions provider, has received a €3 million equity investment from its customer, Swedbank.

The two firms partnered in 2017 to improve Swedbank’s digital customer experience through a personal finance activity feed and data aggregation platform. The new solution is intended to “give customers better control over their daily finances and a more personal, engaging experience than today”, according to Meniga.

Georg Ludviksson, co-founder and CEO of Meniga, also highlights Swedbank’s “ambition and dedication to digital innovation”.

Lotta Lovén, head of digital banking at Swedbank, says the bank sees Meniga as “an innovation partner” and is “very pleased with the agreed partnership”.

The investment forms part of a strategic financing round for Meniga, and also features other key customers of the banking tech vendor.

Meniga’s personal finance management (PFM) software has takers in 23 countries (and 50 million digital banking users), including IberCaja in Spain and BPCE in France.

Its offices are in London, Reykjavik, Stockholm and Warsaw.

Who is laughing now

The US financial services regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has charged the three owners of Centra Tech, Sam Sharma, Robert Farkas and Raymond Trapani, with fraud. The latter is the “mastermind” of the scam, according to the SEC.

All three have been arrested.

Centra raised $32 million last year for a cryptocurrency debit card via an initial coin offering (ICO), which was endorsed by boxer Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled.

“We allege that the Centra co-founders went to great lengths to create the false impression that they had developed a viable, cutting-edge technology,” says Robert A. Cohen, head of SEC’s cyber unit. He urges investors to “exercise caution about investments in digital assets, especially when they are marketed with claims that seem too good to be true”.

According to the SEC, Centra falsely claimed major credit card partnerships, misrepresented the product, created fake founder biographies and manipulated the price of the Centra Tokens (CTR).

Deputy US Attorney Robert Khuzami says Trapani “conspired with his co-defendants to lure investors with false claims about their product and about relationships they had with credible financial institutions”.

He adds: “While investing in virtual currencies is legal, lying to deceive investors is not.”

The trio exchanged a number of text messages that revealed the phony nature of the enterprise. For example, when a large bank sent them a cease-and-desist letter to remove any reference to the bank from Centra’s marketing materials, Sharma texted to Farkas and Trapani saying they “gotta get that s**t removed everywhere and blame freelancers lol”.

In another instance, Trapani texted Sharma asking to “cook up” fake documents to get the CTR Tokens listed on an exchange. To this, Sharma replied: “Don’t text me that s**t lol. Delete.”

Trapani is now facing one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. Three out of the four charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. Lol indeed.

Earlier this month, the SEC charged Michael Liberty, the founder of mobile payments start-up Mozido, with a scheme to trick hundreds of investors into investing in his shell companies instead of Mozido.

Digital Financial Services (DFS) Lab, a fintech accelerator supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is investing in four African start-ups.

The four start-ups, which received $200,000 funding from the Gates Foundation, are:

• Cherehani Africa, which relies on mobile-based tech to provide credit and distribute personalised financial literacy content to women and adolescent girls who own micro-enterprises.
• NALA, which is building a Venmo-like interface to create a single, unified wallet for Tanzanian smartphone users.
• Nobuntu, a savings-focused product in South Africa to prepare for retirement.
• An unnamed start-up in Kenya, which is currently in “stealth mode” and will focus on digital lending.

DFS Lab is an early-stage accelerator that helps fintech entrepreneurs and start-ups launch businesses in developing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

“We are excited to have the opportunity to invest in companies that are creating products that will improve, simplify, and enrich people’s lives,” says Dr. Jake Kendall, director of DFS Lab. He adds that DFS Lab’s current portfolio of companies uses technology to create solutions for low-income and unbanked populations.

Kendall encourages other investors “to look at Africa and Asia for investment opportunities”.

The accelerator is funded by a $4.8 million three-year grant from the Gates Foundation and is based at Caribou Digital, a provider of advisory, strategy and research services to build inclusive digital economies.

FNB to launch m-wallet

South Africa’s First National Bank (FNB) is launching a mobile bank account for the country’s unbanked and underbanked segments of the population.

The account, called eWallet eXtra, comes with no monthly fees and requires no paperwork to set up. Everything is done on a mobile phone – consumers will have to provide their ID number and name to get eWallet eXtra – and completed in just three minutes.

Users will be able to send/receive money, withdraw from FNB ATMs or at participating retailers, make purchases and pay utility bills.

Daily spend limit is ZAR 3,000 ($250) and the monthly one is ZAR 24,000 ($2,000).

The bank estimates the size of the market for this m-wallet service at over 11 million people. It will be launched in June.

Blockchain news time!

National Bank of Canada (NBC) and JP Morgan have tested blockchain technology for debt issuance. Consultancy firm Synechron provided business and technology consulting for the project.

NBC issued a $150 million, one-year floating-rate Yankee certificate of deposit, with a parallel simulation of the issuance using blockchain technology. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Pfizer, and Western Asset were among the investors in the Yankee certificate of deposit.

The simulation test had the banks mirror the execution of the actual transaction through a debt issuance application developed by JP Morgan, based on Quorum – a permissioned-variant of the Ethereum blockchain.

Quorum was developed by JP Morgan and unveiled in 2016. The bank is now planning to spin off the business as a standalone entity.

Christine Moy, blockchain programme lead at JP Morgan, says the project with NBC is “an exciting example” of how the bank can leverage its “combined capabilities in capital markets and blockchain technology”.

The solution incorporates functions across the complete debt instrument transaction lifecycle, including origination, distribution, execution, settlement, interest rate payments, and maturity repayments.

First full-year profits for FairFX

FairFX, a UK-based banking and international payments group, has posted profits for the first time in its full year results (the year ending 31 December 2017).

Ian Strafford-Taylor, CEO of FairFX, describes the year as “ground-breaking” for the company in terms of growth and expansion of operations.

“The group has reported its maiden full year profit as a public company and completed over £1 billion of transaction volume for the first time,” he says.

“The strategic acquisitions of Q Money and CardOne Banking have been key to evolving the business and enabling FairFX to move further into the digital banking sector.”

For its 2017 financial results, FairFX highlights the following financial stats:

• turnover in excess of £1.1 billion (£0.8 billion in 2016);
• revenue of £15.5 million (£10.2 million in 2016);
• gross profit of £11.9 million;
• adjusted EBITDA of £1.0 million (2016: loss £1.5 million);
• adjusted PBT of £0.9 million (2016: loss £1.6 million).

Operational highlights:

• 73,237 new customers added to the business bringing the total to 728,985;
• acquisition of Q Money in January 2017 provided FairFX with e-money licence to diversify business;
• oversubscribed fundraise of £26 million to acquire digital banking provider, CardOne Banking.
• full Mastercard Membership granted.

This year, FairFX will be focusing on the SME banking sector and cross-selling its existing services, Strafford-Taylor says. The company “has enjoyed a good start to 2018 to date”, including the completion of another acquisition, City Forex, which specialises in supply chain and cross-border payments. City Forex came with a price tag of £6 million.

FairFX has also inked an agreement with Alternative Business Funding, a UK-based SMEs lender, to provide FairFX business customers access to lending; and commenced self-issuance of Mastercard branded cards.

In Q1 2018, the company recorded the turnover of £439.5 million (a 31.6% increase compared to Q1 2017 on a like for like basis) and the revenue of £4.8 million (up 18.7%).

FairFX is a challenger brand in banking and payments “that disintermediates the incumbent banks with a superior user experience and low-cost operating model”. Its platform facilitates payments either direct to bank accounts or at 32 million merchants and over one million ATMs internationally.

It provides services to consumers and businesses through four channels: currency cards, physical currency, international payments and bank accounts. It was founded in 2007.

Want to know more about UK’s challenger banks? You can find our comprehensive (and free) list here.

ClauseMatch lands £3.6m

ClauseMatch, a UK-based start-up in the regtech space, has raised £3.6 million ($5 million) in its Series A funding round.

ClauseMatch, specialises in smart document management. It is a graduate of Barclays’ accelerator programme, Techstars, and has Barclays and Intesa Sanpaolo on its customer list.

According to Barclays’ global head of compliance operations and frameworks, Steven Burman, “ClauseMatch is now mandated for all global policies and standards for the Barclays Group”.

He adds that ClauseMatch works as “one centralised hub to aid accessibility for all staff. Full audit trail, in-built governance around document stages, structured data advantages and quick turnaround for enhancements for Barclays make it very helpful for work with high-risk internal documentation.”

ClauseMatch also took part in the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory sandbox and partnered with JWG to develop new reg reporting solution at FCA’s TechSprint in 2016.

“The regulatory system is broken. Regulators don’t have a full view of how regulation impacts the industry, over-regulating as a result, whilst companies struggle to keep up and stay compliant,” states Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures.

“We believe ClauseMatch can make the entire regulatory ecosystem function much better for both the regulated and the regulator, by providing new, simple to use tools replacing outdated document management and word processing software.”

UAE and China team for new exchange

Abu Dhabi’s international financial centre, Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) and Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE), China’s largest securities exchange, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to create a “Belt and Road” exchange based in ADGM.

The new exchange “will serve as a key international capital-raising platform supporting Chinese enterprises, foreign companies and global organisations to finance their investments, including along the Silk Road Economic Belt network,” the two parties say.

“The partnership with SSE is a testament to ADGM’s commitment to China and further cements the deep mutual respect and existing long-term relationships between ADGM and various Chinese authorities and stakeholders,” they add.

Since 2015, ADGM has entered into “various discussions and significant co-operation arrangements” with a range of Chinese authorities, including the People’s Bank of China (central bank), China Banking Regulatory Commission, China Securities Regulatory Commission, Shanghai Free Trade Zone, Qianhai Authority, and State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Tech in Texas

R Bank, a new community bank in Texas, is moving to Fiserv’s Premier core banking system, which will provide the bank with “an integrated and scalable technology foundation”, the vendor says.

R Bank was launched in 2009 and today has eight branches, 90 employees and $455 million in assets.

“The inefficiencies of our old system made it more difficult than necessary for our employees to provide excellent service,” explains Steve Stapp, president and CEO of R Bank. “With our move to Fiserv technology, processes that took five steps can be reduced to two or three. This takes a lot of pressure off our employees and makes it easier for them to focus on the customer.”

According to Stapp, the bank’s prior technology environment posed a particular challenge when serving customers with multiple banking relationships. If a customer called with questions about a business account, a personal account and a loan, the employee would need to enter and move between three systems to find the answers. In contrast, Fiserv emphasises that its technology provides information for all of a customer’s banking relationships in a single view.

Before choosing Fiserv and its Premier core system, a team of 18 people from R Bank went through a six-month evaluation of four tech vendors.

“Once we narrowed the vendors to two, we visited financial institutions running each potential core account processing platform. This gave us the opportunity to speak one on one with others and really get a feel for how they use the system,” says Marc Bone, R Bank’s CFO. “The way Fiserv technology can support our people, including helping our operations staff provide needed information to the front line, is a strength that stood out among other account processing solutions.”

Bone notes an important attribute that attracted the bank to Fiserv was the ability to provide more options and tools for serving businesses of all sizes. R Bank also found Fiserv has the capabilities the bank needs to continue growing its lending portfolio in the business market.

HSBC live with Swift gpi

HSBC has joined Swift’s global payments innovation (gpi) service, bringing the number of banks and financial institutions signed for gpi around the world to 160. Nearly 50 of these are now live.

Swift claims its gpi offering “dramatically increases the speed, transparency and traceability of cross-border payments for users, allowing banks to credit payments to end beneficiaries within minutes, many within seconds”.

Overall, nearly 50% of Swift gpi payments are credited within 30 minutes and over 90% of payments within 24 hours. Those that take longer do so for a clear, known reason, Swift states, such as extra compliance checks, complex foreign exchange conversions, or regulatory authorisations.

It also enables customers to track the status of a payment in real-time and provides “an unprecedented level of visibility” into each payment, including information about each bank in its path and any fees that have been deducted.

According to Swift, more than $100 billion in gpi messages are being sent daily across 350 international payment corridors, accounting for nearly 10% of Swift’s cross border payment traffic.

Stephen Grainger, head of UK, Ireland and Nordics at Swift, comments that the addition of HSBC is “a testament to the service, which is quickly becoming the gold standard for international payments”.

Stanbic Bank puts reg reporting in the cloud

BankBI, a UK-based business intelligence (BI) and analytics solution provider, has been selected by Stanbic Bank Zambia to implement its tech for regulatory reporting.

The project with BankBI is “a strategic decision” by Stanbic, the vendor says. The bank, which is a subsidiary of South Africa’s Standard Bank, will “increase productivity and reduce cost by automating its regulatory reporting requirements”, BankBI says.

Mwindwa Siakalima, CFO of Stanbic Bank Zambia, says the vendor demonstrated “a clear understanding of the bank’s reporting needs”. Siakalima also highlights the company’s “proven capabilities”.

BankBI’s solution will be interfaced to Stanbic’s core banking system, Infosys’ Finacle.

Established in 2012, BankBI targets banks, credit unions and microfinance entities. It has a single multi-tenant BI solution deployed for all its customers in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It now claims around 60 clients across 40 countries. Among them are international microfinance networks VisionFund and Microcred, and US-based Ideal Credit Union and Our Community Credit Union.

Pay with a touch of a finger

Nordic paytech firm Nets is piloting finger vein payments at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark.

“Now, students and visitors at CBS can leave their cash, cards and smartphones behind and buy lunch using just their finger,” the vendor says.

In collaboration with CBS, Smart Payments (an independent business founded by Nets) and Fingopay (part of Sthaler), Nets has installed finger scanners at the check-outs in the business school cafeteria. Anyone with a Dankort, the Danish domestic card scheme, can enrol in the system and link the unique pattern of veins in their finger to their account.

The solution was first trialled in Nets’ Idea Lab last year.

“Biometrics, the use of biological recognition for identification, is not a new phenomenon,” Nets observes. “Paying with your finger vein is similar to the biometric capabilities on smartphones that consumers are already comfortable with – and even more secure.

“The payment process is very much like other contactless payments but the increased security creates one key difference – even high-value transactions do not require the extra step of PIN entry.” Users can unlink the function at any time they want if they wish to stop using it.

Jeppe Juul-Andersen, VP of the Dankort sector, Nets, says the latest project demonstrates the speed of paytech development. “In 2017 we launched Dankort on the mobile using brand new technology, and now only one year later customers can become their Dankort themselves,” Juul-Andersen adds.

If the CBS pilot is well received, Nets will consider launching similar schemes in other Nordic countries.

New IFRS 9 project for Jaywing

UK-based Secure Trust Bank has selected credit risk analytics firm Jaywing and its new Echelon solution to automate commercial IFRS 9 processes.

Jaywing is an existing tech supplier to the bank. The new project will see the development of the underlying credit grading – “slotting” – models. Using Echelon, Secure Trust Bank credit grades each application at point of risk assessment. The solution, which is web-based and fully supported by Jaywing, provides the underwriters with consistent commercial credit grading which feeds into the bank’s IFRS 9 processes. The results are delivered “faster and with far greater consistency”, the vendor states.

“We needed to implement a solution which would tick a number of boxes,” says Mark Guise, head of risk at Secure Trust Bank.

“We had to be confident that the software would be user friendly and of value to our existing lending process, without disrupting our existing systems and processes. It was also critical that we were able to control the rule-sets very quickly and easily.

“Echelon provided the cross-site flexibility we required, whilst also providing the stability and security needed.”

Jaywing’s other customers include Ghana Bank, Shawbrook Bank, Everyday Loans, Coventry Building Society and Paragon.

Secure Trust Bank has been trading for 66 years, based in Solihull, West Midlands. It specialises in real estate business finance, asset and commercial finance, consumer finance (mortgages, motor and retail finance). It has 767 employees, a customer base of nearly one million, a loan portfolio of £1.6 billion and customer deposits totalling £1.5 billion.

Intesa Sanpaolo signs for Avaloq tech

Avaloq’s Business-Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) solution, Avaloq Banking Suite, has been implemented at Intesa Sanpaolo Private Bank Suisse as its new core banking platform.

Avaloq Banking Suite replaced ERI’s Olympic core banking system, FinTech Futures understands.

Avaloq says the new tech “will enable the bank to accelerate its growth strategy of client acquisition and geographic expansion”. Intesa Sanpaolo’s private banking division recently embarked on an international expansion programme and was looking for a system that could be implemented “within a short period of time”.

“Avaloq used its tried-and-tested ready-for-business approach to bring Intesa Sanpaolo Private Bank Suisse live in the quickest time possible,” the vendor states. “This involved using a BPaaS solution based on a fully working, pre-tested standard, including the delivery of new digital channels, which significantly lowered costs and time to market.”

Off to the cloud

Denmark-based Saxo Bank has announced a “strategic partnership” with Microsoft, which will see the bank’s entire technology stack moved to the Microsoft Azure cloud.

The bank states that with this partnership, it “aims to be at the forefront of cloud-based solutions in the financial industry”.

Saxo specialises in multi-asset trading and investment, servicing clients in more than 170 countries. It also offers Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) to other banks and brokers, which enables them to leverage Saxo’s technology and global capital markets access.

It supports more than 120 white-label partnerships globally and facilitates access to more than 35,000 financial instruments across multiple asset classes.

As Saxo expects a significant increase in the number and scale of partnerships, it has decided that Microsoft’s cloud environment will “ensure scalability, flexibility and security in the digital infrastructure”.

Kim Fournais, the bank’s founder and CEO, believes the future of financial services is cloud-based. “Saxo Bank was a fintech long before the term was created, and it is a natural step for us to also pioneer cloud-based solutions in financial services,” Fournais states.

“We are proud to break new ground together with Microsoft,” he continues.

“At an early stage, we saw opportunities in using the internet and digital solutions to differentiate ourselves. Since we launched one of the first online investment platforms in 1998, we have been a Microsoft house, as such the Microsoft cloud is a natural fit for Saxo Bank.”

RBS’s answer to challenger banks

RBS is progressing with its mobile bank initiative, with plans to move one million customers onto the new offering, according to Forbes.

These customers will come from RBS’s retail banking subsidiary, NatWest, and will help the bank make significant per-customer cost savings compared to what the costs are now, Forbes says.

It is understood Mark Bailie, COO of RBS, is spearheading the project. The team consists of 80 developers and bankers.

The beta version of the mobile bank is on track to be ready in Q3 this year.

The business model, according to Forbes, will focus on “marketplace” banking, enabling customers to “switch and save” on financial products from RBS as well as a range of its partner fintech firms. RBS will earn commission on this.

The target customer base will be less financially fortunate and savvy customers of NatWest, it is understood.

RBS remains government-owned, following its bailout during the financial crisis a decade ago. It unsuccessfully tried to carve out a separate bank under the Williams & Glyn brand, sinking £345 million into the project and giving up after three years (defeated by the tech complexities). It was then mandated by the government to set up a £750 million fund for smaller banking players in the UK that offer business current accounts and lending.