COST OF UK CREDIT CARD DEBT COULD BE HALVED WITH ALTERNATIVE FINANCE

UK consumers pay £3.2 billion per annum too much on expensive credit card debt annually, warns peer to peer (P2P) lending firm Madiston LendLoanInvest.  This is despite a wealth of alternative finance options, like P2P lending, being available on the market that could reduce borrowing costs.  Madiston LendLoanInvest has built a unique debt consolidation process into its peer to peer lending which gives lenders accurate information about the proposed loan and doesn’t disadvantage borrowers in the calculation.

Annual credit card interest costs borrowers around £6.04 billion, based on an average interest rate of 17.1 per cent, with the typical UK consumer holding up to five cards each. If UK borrowers considered consolidating  credit card debt with a P2P loan on a site like Madiston LendLoanInvest at around 8 per cent, then as much as £3.22 billion could be wiped off their 

credit card bills, leaving a drastically reduced debt cost of £2.82 billion per annum.

 

RISKS AND REWARDS IN FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY

The purported Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times, remains as apt as ever in the global financial markets and for those providing financial technology services. Fintech delivery has never been straightforward at the best of times, but the changing geopolitical landscape presents new uncertainty for a sector that has barely recovered from the aftermath of the global economic downturn.

As technology markets evolve, geopolitics has become an unlikely determining factor in a firm’s technology strategy and its ability to grow and meet the needs of its business. Whether viewed from the point of a fintech provider or consumer, geopolitical factors now almost certainly play a role in the outcome of technology projects.

Firms are having to react accordingly by adopting their own geopolitical stance. Earlier this year, a Russian IT services supplier was forced to relocate its headquarters to Switzerland in light of the growing tensions between East and West. Its clients, including several European banks, were forced to place key IT initiatives on hold until this relocation ‘workaround’ was agreed.

MARKET READINESS FOR HOST CARD EMULATION (HCE) MOBILE PAYMENTS

Mobile payments continue to make headlines. Trials have come and gone and cross-industry relationships have been set up and crumbled after the honeymoon period. Many of us, I’m sure, have questioned whether mobile NFC payments would ever become a mass-market reality.

Google changed all of this with one announcement in 2013. The incorporation of host card emulation (HCE) into the Android platform brought significant relief to many of the key banks and service providers that have been trying to make progress in launching mobile payments using USIM secure elements.