International Banking & Financial Services Technology Exhibition (IBEX 2010) will be conducted from November 9th through 11th at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center, Abu Dhabi, UAE. The exhibition is aimed to provide opportunity to introduce products and offers by the financial and banking sector, financial services and brokerage sectors in addition to up‐to‐date service techniques in the field of modern technology.

Equity Bank and Safaricom have launched a new service to let consumers transfer money from and to their M-PESA accounts via their mobile phones. The newly introduced bank account dubbed M-KESHO allows customers to make remittances with their handsets while enjoying other benefits of bank accounts.

GlobalPlatform has created a new Trusted Service Manager (TSM) Working Group within its Systems Committee. The company explains the launch of the group by the market demand saying it will focus initial activity on specifying a standard language to facilitate communication between TSMs operating within the banking sector and mobile network operators (MNO).

The fall-out from the banking crisis is still hobbling growth at financial services and healthcare software provider Misys but the company is encouraged by growth in its order intake. Revenue in the six months to the end of November rose 29% to Ј361m from Ј280m a year earlier, but was down 1% on a pro-forma constant currency basis. Pro-forma adjustments assume Allscripts healthcare operations were combined on 1 June 2008.

Gemalto, a smart card supplier, will book an exceptional charge of up to EUR10 million in its 2009 results. The charge comes to cover financial claims stemming from a Y2K-related coding error that rendered millions of German payment cards unable to process the 2010 date-change. As a result of the glitch as many as 30 million payment card users were unable to use their cards in cash machines and eftpos terminals across the country. German customers traveling overseas were also hit.

Fiserv has introduced its Deposit Manager, an integrated cash deposit solution that is designed to allow financial institutions to offer their retailing clients an improved way to handle end-to-end cash operations. Deposit Manager enables banks to offer a solution to corporate banking customers in the retailer segment that is designed to streamline cash operations, improve security, increase cash availability, provide fingertip balance and reconciliation reporting, reduce transportation spend and help facilitate a single banking relationship.

IMS Research forecasts that the number of contactless smart cards shipping per annum is projected to break the 1 billion mark in 2014. Today contactless smart cards are being used in a growing number of applications, from fast and efficient metro systems, to contactless debit cards, to quicker transfers in airports with biometric passports.

Webroot, a leading Internet security provider for the consumer, enterprise and SMB markets, and AnchorFree, the creator of Hotspot Shield, the world's most popular free virtual private network that keeps consumers safe online, today announced a partnership to deliver a new consumer security and privacy offering to a large segment of Hotspot Shield's 7.5 million users worldwide.

Nokia, a mobile phone manufacturing giants, intends to enter into the banking industry. The scheme was necessitated as a result of the high level of unbanked people in emerging economies. Dubbed “Nokia Money Solutions”, company officials say the initiative would seek to bridge the gap between the banked and unbanked in developing countries.

 Citi's ThankYou Network, one of the world's largest loyalty programs, today announced a new rewards experience that allows its millions of members to use ThankYou Points to get music downloads from Sony Music Entertainment. ThankYou Members now can use their points to enjoy superstar artists and landmark catalog recordings.

As it became known Wednesday, APMM, being involved in a wide range of activities within the energy, shipbuilding, retail and manufacturing industries, appointed HSBC as its cash management banking partner to help centralize its payments processes across Asia-Pacific region. HSBC's solution in Bangladesh went live in June 2009 and delivers standardized and cost-effective payments processes to enable APMM to initiate payments in Bangladesh through its shared service centre.

Last week Financial Stability Board chair and Italian central bank chief Mario Draghi said that while the world economy has significantly improved to date it is still early to say the troubles are over."We are more or less back at what we were before Lehman, but we are not back to before the crisis," Financial Stability Board chair and Italian central bank chief Mario Draghi said on Saturday.

According to a recent report E-Trade Financial Corp. is working with largest shareholder Citadel investment Group on ways to steady its financial position. As reported by the Wall Street Journal while there is no information about the terms of the deal negotiations between E-Trade and hedge-fund outfit Citadel have been going on for several weeks with prospects of increasing E-Trade's fortunes.

Two more directors left Bank of America bringing the total number of executives who have resigned from the company since April to five persons. The bank announced on Monday that the departure of Jackie Ward and Patricia Mitchell was effective June 3. The move is considered by some people to be in line with of an overhaul to bolster the board's banking and financial expertise. Besides, it is also expected to increase scrutiny by directors of Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis.

It was announced that Australia and New Zealand Banking Group was raising $2.5 billion ($1.95 billion) partially to fund a possible purchase of some of Royal Bank of Scotland's Asian assets.ANZ stated it had made a non-binding bid for the assets. There were some other institutions such as HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered who have also expressed interest in buying the assets put up for sale with the aim of retreating to home markets and exit or shrink in up to 36 of the countries where RBS operates.